Periodically, I have people ask me about how to get started in digital painting. I decided to write up something to use in the future as a response to that particular enquiry, since it's far from a simple answer. You could call it my lazy reply. To be fair, it's a pretty loaded question, and it seems a lot of the people who ask don't realize how much they're actually asking. I'm not a teacher or personal tutor, mind you, so this will have to do.
First of all, one of the most important things for you to know is that digital painting is not some magical solution to making awesome art if you can't already do so with regular drawing materials. I