If we use a computer to create visual artwork, would it be considered digital painting?
The answer to that would be – no. So, what is digital painting?
Digital Painting is an artform where artwork or painting is done in a fashion similar to that of traditional mediums like oil painting, water colors, color pencils, inking or others. Digital painting is done with the help of raster graphics tools or softwares like Painter, Photoshop, or GIMP.
Digital Painting and CG
Digital Painting is a subset of, or a specific case of Computer Graphics (CG). Computer graphics has presently grown into a very broad topic that involves photo-manipulation, 3D rendering, vector graphics, graphic effects, and also digital painting.
What seperates digital painting from the rest, is that the process followed for the digital painting is more akin to the traditonal painting processes. All of the artwork is usually done from scratch. Full scale effects are usually not used, and if it is used, it is done for localized areas. Even if it is used to modify the artwork, the base artwork would have been created by the artist.
Digital painting usually involves the use of digital tablet and stylus to create artwork.
Digital Painting and Traditional Medium
When compared to traditional medium, digital painting has its own advantages and disadvantages.
Most of the advantages owe to the features of a computer in general.
- Undo and redo – most of the graphic tools provide for undo and redo capabilities. The number of times it can be done is usually limited only by the memory. In traditional medium, it is really hard to undo a mistake you have done. Some mediums may let you erase – like charcoal and pencils. Some may let you paint over your mistakes – oil painting. But they are nothing compared to the control given in the digital painting medium.
- Layers – Digital painting softwares lets you organize an artwork in different layers. This allows for greater control in terms of edits and corrections. This is not possible in traditional medium.
- Canvas size – In digital painting, the canvas size is only limited by the memory of the computer, or how much the software can handle. To an extent, traditional medium lets you choose large canvas sizes but like with digital medium, you cannot change the size half way through you artwork – you will have to decide and stick to a size once you start in traditional mediums.
- Color pallete – In computer graphics you get to choose color from a pallate which would usually contain millions of colors, and it lets you choose them with good accuaracy. In traditional medium, it is often a challege to get the correct colors.
There are few cavets of the digital medium as well.
- Feel of texture – You do not get the feel of the texture, that is a major factor in creating good artwork. Even with the use of digital tablets, the extent of this feel is limited in digital medium.
- Output – The output of digital painting remains as a stream of zeros and ones. It does not have a physical form like the traditional artworks do. Of course, you can take prints of digital paintings, but it usually does not have the extent of value that traditional artwork builds.
Digital Painting, in spite of its quirks, is considered an artform, and has a market for itself.
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Digital painting is sure more convenient, but I would say for any medium painting the basic knowledge; pencil strokes and light and shade effect etc. are a must. What say?!
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Agree.
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well, off topic, but I really think that you should make full use of the All in one seo plugin. don’t forget to change the Homepage title to something which has got keywords.
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Thanks again Mayank for that plugin pointer.
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I’ve found with digital painting you loose some of the nuances of brush, paint, canvas but you more than make up for the loss.
As far as getting a textured feel with digital a look at the work of Craig Mullins or Cali Rezo among others and the many users of Corel Painter will dissipate that myth. It’s simply a matter of becoming adept at manipulating the brush engine. A little talent and lot’s of work doesn’t hurt. I’m still working on that one. And as Rosalin writes it sure a lot more convenient and forgiving.
I’m not a professional graphics artists. The cost of Photoshop and Painter is also an issue for me. The development team for Gimp are quick to tell you Gimp isn’t a paint program. Maybe something will fall into place eventually that will be workable on the Linux side.
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Oh yes. In terms of texture or as they say – ‘the feel’, it is just a small nuance.
The cost of Painter and Photoshop is an issue indeed. I am not sure if there is something out there, that fills in the needs of ‘hobby’ painters or entry level artists.
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Pingback from Impasto on July 14, 2007 at 12:25 pm
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Well Ive found a program that has a load of plug ins and works nicely as a free version of photoshop its called PaintDotNet, this has become my new program that I am using more and more, also theres one called ArtRage2, which is also free for the basic features which is still overwhelming and a small cost for the full version.
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Yup – ArtRage is a good one, I have tried out its free version.
Paint.NET is said to be good – I used it quite long time back, but after got hooked with GIMP, I stopped looking at other solutions.
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