About Digital Painting

Digital painting is creating an image on a computer screen instead of paper or canvas. It is easier than traditional methods, and very forgiving...you can erase mistakes at the flick of a button. It has gotten a bad rap over the years because it lends itself to intensely colored, overblown scenes from other planets, monsters, cartoons and skulls dripping blood. Until recently, critics wouldn't even consider digital painting as art. It was banned from competitions. But then so was Impressionism, water color, photography and color photography in days gone by. With current tools and software, digital painting lends itself well to a traditional sort of image creation. It is especially attractive to people (like me) who can't draw worth a damn. You can compose your scene using a variety of images gleaned from (mostly) photos, get the outlines right, then ignore extraneous detail and paint. The result is as satisfying and hopefully as attractive as anything that comes from a brush or pencil. You can do it all on Photoshop with a mouse, but a dedicated program like Corel Painter or Rebelle (my choice) and a tablet and stylus to hold in your hand gives superior results.