This article is for people who’ve heard of digital painting and are curious to learn more about it, as well as those who’d like to give it a try, but aren’t entirely sure how to begin. I’ve deliberately not written for experts, since in my experience, experts tend to skim for tips and tricks rather than peruse whole articles; this is, in any event, a deliberately uncomplicated floral study involving no exotic techniques. I’ll be glad to share exotic techniques by E-mail with anyone who’s interested; since my ISP (intermittent service provider) limits this site to ten megabytes, however, it’s impossible to publish more elaborate articles.
Painting digitally is a type of painting much as working in water color is a type of painting. Digital painting relies on tools and techniques not employed in traditional painting, and final production remains a limiting factor, but the fundamental vision and attitude and approach are identical. I frequently employ scanned photographic transparencies in my work; many other digital painters do not, and at least a few traditional painters make use of photography to one degree or another. I switched to digital methods in the early and middle 1990s because I found them at once easier and faster, and soon discovered brush work is brush work is brush work. The water colors and oil-based paints I used as a boy were both richer in color and more subtle than those of the digital output devices I use today; I perceive such differences, however, as being about like the differences between painting on board and linen, drawing on rough paper with pencils and using India ink on glass-smooth paper, painting with inexpensive water colors or one’s own mixes of pigments and oils: insignificant.
In case you’re curious, “Inexpensive Flowers” is eight inches square at a resolution of 300 pixels per inch. Much has unavoidably been lost during the reduction to 72 pixels per inch and JPEG compression. I’ve included sequentially arranged views of the painting in progress based on approximately half the iterations it required. I used an aging Macintosh Power PC, two monitors, and a Wacom digitizing tablet and stylus, as well as Adobe Photoshop 5.5 and an assortment of Adobe and third party filters, and Painter 6.
Copyright © 2000–2007, James Stillwater. All rights reserved. This article may be freely downloaded, printed, copied, transmitted, and republished, providing no changes are made to it and authorship remains credited to James Stillwater.