About My Art March 2008
About My Art March 2008
I use the computer program Corel Painter 9.5, a 9" x 12" Wacom tablet and an Intuos Pen to create my work. Wikipedia defines Corel Painter as a “raster-based digital art application created to simulate as accurately as possible the appearance and behavior of traditional media associated with drawing, painting, and printmaking. It is intended to be used in real-time by professional digital artists as a functional creative tool.”
Brushes and techniques constantly evolving
Over the past year or so I have developed a large number of custom brushes, mostly variations on the digital watercolour, watercolour, pastel, pencil, watercolour airbrushes and blender brushes available with Corel Painter. These brushes are in constant evolution as I continually experiment with new brushes and techniques. It is a real bonus when I finally figure out why a brush does a certain thing and why you would need one to do that very thing! My learning style is not really conducive to figuring these things out at a more opportune time ... like in the beginning. I tend to jump into the middle of things, make lots of mess and through sheer determination and much trial and error come up with something I can control in some way.
Needed a focus
This is partly the reason I decided to focus on Florals a little over a year ago. As much fun as it was experimenting and playing with Corel Painter; going off in too many different directions was hindering my progress. I naturally gravitated to the medium and subject that appealed to me the most - floral watercolour, and pastel.
Not as much information available on painting florals digitally as painting them traditionally
There is such a wealth of information available on the subject of painting watercolour flowers, and not much at all on digitally painting watercolour flowers. There are obvious differences between the two mediums. Digital painting lacks the physicality of traditional painting in that the brush and paint don't react with the paper the same way. Nor does the paint 'run' together on the paper in that lovely way watercolour does using wet-into-wet technique. The fluidity and spontaneity of real watercolours is somewhat lacking, at least for me (so far!)
Painting digitally has features that are extremely useful for learners
Despite these drawbacks painting digitally has features that are extremely useful for learners. Being able to erase and undo parts and start over permits a degree of freedom to experiment that facilitates and accelerates the learning process. In other words, you can keep trying to get a certain part right without wearing a hole in the page from erasing! I can't imagine the amount of paper and paint I would have gone through by now if everything I've done or ever attempted to do was done 'virtually' instead of electronically. The cost of supplies has always been a limiting factor, as I'm sure it realistically is with many artists using traditional tools and methods. Another mundane consideration is, that digital painting takes up a lot less room and makes a great deal less mess, something you have to consider when your space is limited.
Description of Digital Painting
The process is amazingly similar to painting with a real brush and paint. Although I have not painted a great deal with traditional watercolours, I see that I would still have to ‘control’ (for want of a better word describing a technical skill) many of the same variables.
How much water in proportion to paint on the brush, whether the paper is wet or only damp, which angle to make the bristles connect with the paper, how hard to press on the brush and so on. The choice of variables is mind boggling. How does this translate into what I have to do with my pen (stylus) to make a particular mark on the paper (Wacom tablet)? As long as I am the one creating the mark and not the computer, I believe that it is the mark on the paper that matters in the end, not how it got there. Artist Fred Taylor describes it best, "If you have to have a computer to produce it, and it can't be produced with traditional artists' materials, it isn't digital painting." This is the big difference between digital art and digital painting.
I plan to illustrate how one neophyte digital artist struggles through the technical and creative steps to 'paint' a picture. I will attempt to show you and describe to you what it is I am doing at various stages in the process. It’s a fascinating subject when you consider the technology available today for artists of all kinds and of all levels of skill. I am only using a very small part of the creative capabilities of this amazing program, and it is only one of many types on the market.
Please take a moment or two to view my site, find out a little bit about this exciting medium...and enjoy looking at the art I have created with it.
Posted in Artistic Growth. Updated February 3rd, 2011.
Share on
StumbleUpon, Delicious or Digg.
