Digital painting

Anonymous digital painting The Woman of Rock (detail) created in Photoshop CS

Joseph Nechvatal Orgiastic abattOir 2005 computer-robotic assisted acrylic on canvas 112 x168 cm

Wade Guyton Untitled (2008) Epson UltraChrome inkjet prints on linen 84 x 587 inches

Digital painting is an emerging art form in which traditional painting techniques such as watercolor, oils, impasto, etc. are applied using digital tools by means of a computer and software, a graphics program offering a virtual canvas and painting box with a large amount of brushes, colors and other supplies. The box contains many instruments that do not exist outside the computer, and which give a digital artwork a different look and feel from an artwork that is made the traditional way.

Visual characteristics

Specific visual characteristics include transparency, symmetry, distortion, repetition, and texture, and a flat surface due to the (up to now) technical impossibility to make the brush stroke visible. The option to undo without a trace up to twenty or more brush strokes or other actions, permits a more spontaneous, intuitive way of working than is possible in traditional painting. The choice of program determines the output to have the characteristics of a watercolor, lino cut, oil painting etc. Thus, digital painting is not so much a new medium as a new appearance of the whole range of existing mediums, supplemented with some new features.

Separate carriers

The creative process in traditional and digital painting is more or less the same, but when the digital artist is done, there is nothing to hang on a wall. The painting is on the hard disk of a computer. The usual way to make it presentable and salable is to project it on a traditional carrier, such as paper or canvas. This is commonly done by a professional printer.

Specific difficulties

Working with two separate carriers – the hard disk where the artwork was created and saved as a file, and the paper, canvas, etc. on which it is projected and which becomes its actual physical appearance – raises some specific difficulties for digital artists as well as art dealers. The most prominent is: how to protect the numerical uniqueness of an artwork if the source is stored in singe digits in the computer and can be exactly and infinitely reproduced? Other typical problems are: how to match the colors of the projection accurately with those on the computer monitor, and how to sufficiently increase the length and width dimensions of the work without distorting lines and forms and without the file becoming unmanageable. A problem of an entirely different nature stems from the relative ease to copy-and-paste in the digital working space, which occasionally raises questions about copyright.

Market for digital art

The emergence of a market for digital art is currently (2013) still hampered by the fact that the fact that the original is often indistinguishable from the (cheaper) copy. As a result, along the current development path, the sale of the original painting is gradually supplanted by the sale of prints, and the market for digital art moves in the direction of the market for the printed book, where the original manuscript is mainly a tool to maximize the sale of exact copies. Certification (see below) might bring a change of direction. Whether this will lead to a mature market for digital originals is hard to predict.

Standard Certificate of Uniqueness (SCU)

In an attempt to address problems with uniqueness and copyright and to stimulate the development of a clear and trustworthy formula for the selling and buying of digital paintings, a Standard Certificate of Uniqueness was drafted in 2013, that can be voluntarily adopted by digital artists and art dealers. It contains the statement of the artist that he or she is both as a whole and in parts of the artwork its only creator. The artist promises to offer only one physical representation of the work for sale, with the clearly visible fingerprint of the maker in wet paint or ink at the front. Transfer of the digital source file is part of the sale. The artist's physical representation of the artwork along with its digital source file are "the original". The buyer of the original gets the exclusive right of exploitation, an added value to the purchase of the original over a print. Once the buyer has paid the purchase price, the artist deletes the source file. The buyer permits the artist to exhibit 'display copies' for informative purpose only. The economic appreciation of the artist would thus be determined at a traditional market for original digital art, possibly influenced by a secondary market for prints.

Digital technique

Digital painting differs from other forms of digital art, particularly computer-generated art, in that it does not involve the computer rendering from a model. The artist uses painting techniques to create the digital painting directly on the computer. All digital painting programs try to mimic the use of physical media through various brushes and paint effects. Included in many programs are brushes that are digitally styled to represent the traditional style like oils, acrylics, pastels, charcoal, pen and even media such as airbrushing. There are also certain effects unique to each type of digital paint which portray the realistic effects of, for instance, watercolor on a digital "watercolor" painting. In most digital painting programs, the users can create their own brush style using a combination of texture and shape. This ability is very important in bridging the gap between traditional and digital painting.

Digital painting thrives mostly in production art. It is most widely used in conceptual design for film, television and video games. Digital painting software such as Corel Painter, Adobe Photoshop, ArtRage, GIMP, Krita and openCanvas give artists a similar environment to a physical painter: a canvas, painting tools, mixing palettes, and a multitude of color options. There are various types of digital painting, including impressionism, realism, and watercolor. There are both benefits and drawbacks of digital painting. While digital painting allows the artist the ease of working in an organized, mess-free environment, some argue there will always be more control for an artist holding a physical brush in their hand. Some artists believe there is something missing from digital painting, such as the character that is unique to every physically made object. Many artists post blogs and comment on the various differences between digitally created work and traditionally created artwork.

Comparison with traditional painting

Apart from separation of carriers, the main difference between digital and traditional painting is the non-linear process. That is, an artist can often arrange his painting in layers that can be edited independently. Also, the ability to undo and redo strokes create nonlinear intervals in the creative process. Digital painting is also different in how it employs the techniques and study of traditional painting because of the surface differences and the wider variety of tools. The digital artist has at his disposal several tools not available to the traditional painter. Some of these include: a virtual palette consisting of millions of colors, (however these colors are ultimately limited by the capabilities of screen and printing technologies, whilst traditional forms of painting deal with pigment as a tangible material) almost any size canvas or media, and the ability to take back mistakes, as well as erasers, pencils, spray cans, brushes, combs, and a variety of 2D and 3D effect tools. A graphics tablet and a stylus allows the artist to work with precise hand movements simulating a real pen and drawing surface, while other programms (Adobe Eazel) are developed for fingerpainting directly on the screen. Both tablets and touch screens can be pressure sensitive, allowing the artist to vary the intensity of the chosen media on the screen. There are tablets with over two thousand different levels of pressure sensitivity.

Origins

Sketchpad

Many artists prefer using graphics tablets to create digital paintings instead of using a mouse.

The earliest graphical manipulation program was called Sketchpad. Created in 1963 by Ivan Sutherland, a grad student at MIT, Sketchpad allowed the user to manipulate objects on a CRT (cathode ray tube). Sketchpad eventually led to the creation of the Rand Tablet for work on the GRAIL project in 1968, and the very first tablet was created. Other early tablets, or digitizers, like the ID (intelligent digitizer) and the BitPad were commercially successful and used in CAD (Computer Aided Design) programs. Modern day tablets are the tools of choice by digital painters. WACOM is the industry leader in tablets which can range in size from 4" x 6" all the way to 12" x 19" and are less than an inch thick. Other brands of graphic tablets are Aiptek, Monoprice, Hanvon, Genius, Adesso, Trust, Manhattan, Vistablet, DigiPro, etc. All these graphic tablets have the basic functions of a mouse, so they can be used as a mouse, not only in graphic editors but also as a replacement for a mouse, and they are compatible with practically all Windows and Macintosh software.

Tablets

The idea of using a tablet to communicate directions to a computer has been an idea since 1968 when the RAND (Research and Development) company out of Santa Monica, developed the RAND tablet that was used to program. Digitizers were popularized in the mid 1970s and early 1980s by the commercial success of the ID (Intelligent Digitizer) and BitPad manufactured by the Summagraphics Corp. These digitizers were used as the input device for many high-end CAD (Computer Aided Design) systems as well as bundled with PC's and PC based CAD software like AutoCAD.

MacPaint

The first commercial program that allowed users to design, draw, and manipulate object was the program MacPaint. This program’s first version was introduced on January 22, 1984 on the Apple Lisa. The ability to freehand draw and create graphics with this program made it the top program of its kind during 1984. The earlier versions of the program were called MacSketch and LisaSketch, and the last version of MacPaint was MacPaint 2.0 released in 1998. Much of MacPaint's universal success was attributed to the release of the first Macintosh computer which was equipped with one other program called MacWrite. It was the first personal computer with a graphical user interface and lost much of the bulky size of its predecessor, the Lisa. The Macintosh was available at about $2500 and the combination of a smaller design made the computer a hit, exposing the average computer user to the graphical possibilities of the included MacPaint.

Adobe

Another early image manipulation program was Adobe Photoshop. It was first called Display and was created in 1987 by Thomas Knoll at the University of Michigan as monochrome picture display program. With help from his brother John, the program was turned into an image editing program called Imagepro, but later changed to Photoshop. The Knolls agreed on a deal with Adobe systems and Apple, and Photoshop 1.0 was released in 1991 for Macintosh. Adobe systems had previously release Adobe Illustrator 1.0 in 1986 on the Apple Macintosh. These two programs, Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator are currently two of the top programs used in the productions of digital paintings. Illustrator introduced the uses of Bezier curves which allowed the user to be incredibly detailed in their vector drawings. A recent development is Adobe Eazel, that allows fingerpainting in watercolor directly on the screen of an iPad, and export in a higher resolution to the larger working space of Photoshop CS5 on the pc.

Kid Pix

In 1988, Craig Hickman created a paint program called Kid Pix, which made it easier for children to use MacPaint. The program was originally created in black in white, and after several revisions was released in color in 1991. Kid Pix was one of the first commercial programs to integrate color and sound in a creative format. While the Kid Pix was intentionally created for children, it became a useful tool for introducing adults to the computer as well.

Web-based painting programs

In recent years there has been a growth in the websites which support painting digitally online. Internet resources for this include Sumo Paint, Queeky and Slimber. The user is still drawing digitally with the use of software: often the software is on the server of the website which is being used. However with the emergence of html5, some programs now partly use the client's web browser to handle some of the processing. The range of tools and brushes can be more limited than free standing software. Speed of response, quality of colour and the ability to save to a file or print are similar in either media.

See also

• Digital photography
• Art software
• Computer art
• Computer painting
• Electronic art
• Tradigital art
• New Media
• Computer graphics
• Digital illustration
• Software art
• Digital Art by Microsoft

Books and articles

• Donald Kuspit The Matrix of Sensations VI: Digital Artists and the New Creative Renaissance
• Joline Blais and Jon Ippolito, At the Edge of Art, Thames & Hudson Ltd, 2006
• Christiane Paul Digital Art, Thames & Hudson Ltd
• Donald Kuspit "Del Atre Analogico al Arte Digital" in Arte Digital Y Videoarte, Kuspit, D. ed., Consorcio del Circulo de Bellas Artes, Madrid
• Robert C. Morgan Digital Hybrids, Art Press volume #255, pp. 75–76
• Frank Popper From Technological to Virtual Art, MIT Press
• Bruce Wands Art of the Digital Age, London: Thames & Hudson
• Christine Buci-Glucksmann, "L’art à l’époque virtuel", in Frontières esthétiques de l’art, Arts 8, Paris: L’Harmattan, 2004
• Margot Lovejoy Digital Currents: Art in the Electronic Age Routledge 2004
• Brandon Taylor Collage Thames & Hudson Ltd, 2006, p. 221
• Wayne Enstice & Melody Peters, Drawing: Space, Form, & Expression, New Jersey: Prentice Hall
• Frank Popper Ecrire sur l'art : De l'art optique a l'art virtuel, L'Harmattan 2007
• Fred Forest Art et Internet, Editions Cercle D'Art / Imaginaire Mode d'Emploi
• Lieser, Wolf. Digital Art. Langenscheidt: h.f. ullmann. 2009

External links

• "The A-life Undeadening of Painting via the Digital", an essay on art digital painting by Joseph Nechvatal at Kritikos: an international and interdisciplinary journal of postmodern cultural sound, text and image Volume 2, October 2005, ISSN 1552-5112