How digital painting developed. Disadvantages of Digital Painting

general information

Examples of digital artists' work

• The Inquisitor, author Ruslan Svobodin
• Angels, author Ilya Komarov
• Bank bridge in St. Petersburg, author B. Slobodan.
• A flying castle for a little princess, by Eduard Mango Kichigin
• Deisis-Presentence, author Konstantin Khudyakov (ART&SPACE Gallery, Munich)
• God from the machine, author Evgeniy Volos

Progress of digital painting

At the end of XX - beginning of XXI centuries, CG art (Computer Graphics Art) is rapidly developing and occupies a strong position in the design of books/posters, prevailing in the industry computer games And modern cinema, popular in amateur art. Reasons for the rapid displacement of previous funds from these areas:

Availability

In order to create digital works of any level, you need to purchase/have a personal computer of sufficient power, a graphics tablet and several programs for computer painting. All this will cost ~$1500 (most of this amount is the cost of licensed programs) in the initial version (professionals buy more expensive computers, monitors and tablets, but they only increase the convenience of work).

High speed

Particularly critical in the paid sector artistic activity: design of books, movies, games. Specialized programs for CG artists (for example Painter) contain a large number of tools that speed up work. Choosing the right color is a matter of seconds (unlike traditional painting, where you need to mix paints to get the desired color - requires experience and time), choosing the right brush/tool ​​is also an almost instantaneous operation. The ability to cancel your actions, as well as the ability to save at any point in your work and return to it later and again big list opportunities and advantages - all this makes the work of a professional artist several times faster with the same quality. Besides, computer work immediately ready for use in digital technologies of cinema, games, layout - a canvas painted in oil must first be transferred to digital form.

Unique tools

For example, working with layers or applying textures from photographs to the areas of the painting you need; generation of noise of a given type; various brush effects; HDR pictures; various filters and corrections - all this and much more is simply not available in traditional painting.

Prospects

Traditional art practically reached its limit in terms of perfection of technology and means back in the 18th century. Since then, nothing new has been added - you still have pigment, oil (or a ready-made mixture of them), canvas and brushes. And nothing new will appear. It’s fair to say that modern computer painting is still far from the best paintings of the geniuses of the past in terms of quality and scale of work - but it has room to develop. The resolution of monitors is growing, the quality of color rendering is improving, the power of computers is growing, programs for digital painting are changing and improving, there is a fundamental possibility of creating new methods and devices for working with color/outputting color (projectors or holography).

Ease of use by some groups of people and ease of operation

If you know how to work on a computer and are an inquisitive and energetic person, it will not be difficult for you to understand the interface of computer painting programs - it is the same as most Windows programs + a completely logical digital artist’s toolkit. Both paid and free video lessons on working in a particular program are available on the Internet. In relation to cg-art programs, such video tutorials contain a recording of all stages of the digital artist’s work on a painting.

Disadvantages of Digital Painting

Difficulty of mastering

On this moment There are very few schools or more serious educational institutions teaching in this specialty - mainly the most energetic and curious people and especially children who can learn and find information on their own; designers and printers (with experience working with graphics on a PC); most famous digital artists have graduated educational establishments in traditional painting and only then independently switched to CG art. Also modern digital artist It’s unthinkable without the Internet (communicating with colleagues, employers, searching for new programs or drawing methods, etc.) - and again, not everyone has it. There are practically no books on creating drawings on a computer, but the situation is gradually improving.

As of 2007, the situation is in a fairly good position - at this moment Quite a lot of different educational resources are being made to train future art teachers to work with digital devices. They are intensively mastering techniques for working on a computer with graphics tablet and various programs that allow you to engage in media drawing. In the near future, similar courses will be launched in the main pedagogical universities of the country, which in turn will subsequently have a positive effect on schools and other universities when recruiting new teaching staff who have good experience in working with media drawing and digital painting.

The current limit of computer technology

Modern monitors still do not work at resolutions close to the resolution of our eyes. That is, the monitor is not capable of displaying the amount of detail that can provide live observation of a section of canvas of the same size classical painting. You can print your painting on a printer - but this gives rise to the third problem of CG art:

Problem with outputting a computer image to a tangible medium

Monitors operate in the RGB color space - 16.7 million colors. Printing on paper cannot physically cover this entire range of colors - the CMYK color space covers a smaller number of colors and shades. At this point in time, inkjet large-format photo printers, such as Canon or HP, exist and are increasingly used. Such printers operate in the RGB color space with a resolution of 1200-2400 dpi and can print on various, sometimes exotic, printing media. However, the cost of such work is very high. Monitors that can show all the colors of a picture (and have brightness, contrast, color settings) have too low a resolution that does not allow them to show all the details of the picture (they don’t show it in full size without interpolation - a regular monitor cannot simultaneously display more than 1-2 megapixels; special and quite expensive LCD monitors can show about 8 megapixels).

Copyright issue

Whoever has the original (source) file of the drawing is the owner of the drawing. But, like any digital information, the file can be copied and replicated in unlimited quantities without any significant costs. The simplest example protecting your drawing - posting a reduced copy on the Internet (usually professional artists draw in high resolution- 6000×10000 pixels and even more - it’s convenient to draw details, and they post it on the Internet small option- 1600×1200 or less; or even a fragment). In this case, whoever has a large version of the drawing is its author and owner. The copyright on a digital drawing is easy to change and real help Only well-known artists can feel its presence.

Links

External links to Russian-language forums

where artists of all genres communicate

• - 2D artists forum. Founder ash.
• Skill.ru is a creativity site where everyone can post their work (any - from photographs to poetry) and learn the harsh public opinion at their expense. Or get well-deserved recognition during your lifetime - it depends on your luck.
• Hofarts.com is a forum with a specialized “School” section and a CG news magazine.
• Guro art forum is a specialized forum founded famous artist Roman Guro Gunyav in December 2002
• CGFight.com is a forum specializing in “fights” and competitions between artists (including team ones).
• CGTalk.ru - forum on CGTalk.ru
• Manga.ru - forum for artists in the manga style
• Real time is a subsection of the Real Time school. One of the few institutions that trains computer art in all directions (2D, 3D). At the beginning of the development of the forum, the direction of the drawing was led by the most famous Russian CG artist - Anry. The forum is currently inactive, but the archives are very useful for both beginners and professionals.
• Arttalk.ru - Community of creative people
• Render.ru - online magazine on computer graphics and animation
• artburn - Collection of CG artists.
• “A Certain Aesthetics” is a community of young artists. Founder famous artist Ketka.
• Sketchers.ru is a somewhat younger resource that has many convenient functions (magazines, galleries) for artists. Founded on January 17, 2004 by artist/designer AJ. This domain is currently not working. 2010.01.10
• ecreatorman.com - an original site for creating collective digital canvases.
• PointArt - Portal for artists.
• DigitalBrush - Gallery of original works by leading digital artists.
• ArtTower.ru is an art forum dedicated to computer graphics, drawing and photography. Available electronic journal ArtTower Magazine. Contains a regularly updated catalog of lessons for beginners.
• - All about graphics, art forum.
• - Design and graphics.

External links to foreign forums and artist communities

• pixiv.net in Japanese

Digital painting programs

Free Software

• GIMP is a raster graphics editor, also suitable for drawing.
• MyPaint is a drawing program, an endless canvas, many brushes and a minimum of functionality.
• Krita is a drawing program, part of the Calligra Suite.
• Alchemy -
• Inkscape is a vector graphics editor designed for drawing.

Proprietary programs

• Painter - A program from Corel for digital artists.

Computer models, and due to the use of human computer simulations traditional instruments artist.

general information

Examples of digital artists' work

• Opium, author Milenky Evgeniy. milenkiy.com - gallery of works
• Theft in the Caravanserai, by Guro Roman.
• Daisies and Gargoyles, by Ellion.
• Evil Guy by Ellion.
• Bank bridge in St. Petersburg, author B. Slobodan.
• A flying castle for a little princess, by Eduard Mango Kichigin

Progress of digital painting

Availability

High speed

Unique tools

Prospects

Ease of use by some groups of people and ease of operation

Disadvantages of Digital Painting

Difficulty of mastering

The current limit of computer technology

Problem with outputting a computer image to a tangible medium

Copyright issue

Links

External links to Russian-language forums

• 3d center is a popular website and forum on CG (Galleries of 3d and 2d works, W.I.P, lessons and articles).
• Guro art forum is the oldest specialized forum, founded by the famous artist Guro in December 2002.
• СGTalk.ru - forum on СGTalk.ru
• Manga.ru - forum for artists in the manga style
• Real time is a subsection of the Real Time school. One of the few institutions that teach computer art in all areas (2D, 3D). At the beginning of the development of the forum, the direction of the drawing was led by the most famous Russian CG artist - Anry. The forum is currently inactive, but the archives are very useful for both beginners and professionals.
• Render.ru - online magazine on computer graphics and animation
• "A Certain Aesthetics" is a community of young artists. Founder of Ketka.
• Sketchers.ru is a somewhat younger resource that has many convenient functions (magazines, galleries) for artists. Founded on January 17, 2004 by artist/designer AJ. This domain is currently not working. 2010.01.10
• Hofarts.com is a forum with a specialized “School” section and a CG news magazine.

Hi all! There are different types of collectors: some love stamps and coins, others love bottles from distant countries, but I became pretty hooked on the work of digital artists/simply artists/photographers n number of years ago. Therefore, in this blog test first post, I bring to your attention a selection of the most interesting (in my opinion) digital artists. Let's go!

Marek Okon- Polish illustrator with an amazing sense of detail and his own very special drawing style. He is incredibly talented in the field of digital “painting” and digital art. He currently works primarily as a conceptual artist, video game and literary designer. A large number of his works circulate on the Internet and his works are often used as desktop wallpaper.

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Daniel Conway- he is 23 years old and currently lives in the UK. Daniel has a degree from the University of Dundee (Scotland), where he spent three fantastic year(as he himself states) by studying both traditional and digital animation. As can be seen from his personal portfolio, Daniel works a lot in digital painting, having been practicing creating paintings for the past four years. Daniel Conway's artwork is instantly recognizable. His works are filled with vibrant colors, and fantastic scenes simply incomparable. They immerse us in a world where man and technology live in colorful harmony. Daniel's dedication to his craft is clearly visible in his galleries with many the most beautiful drawings that decorate the whole world. In recognition of his talent, Daniel Conway is rightfully considered one of the most successful artists in the deviantART community, whose leadership in October 2008 decided to award him a monthly honorary prize.

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Martha Dahlig(Marta Dahlig) is one of the contemporary artists who creates in the style of digital art. Marta Dahlig was born on December 23, 1985 in Warsaw. As a child, I was fascinated by the works of Tadeusz Micinski and Boleslav Lesmian, who created a wonderful galaxy of fairy tales about magical creatures, about princesses and sorcerers.
Now Marta is a 4th year student (although the information may be outdated) at the University of Krakow at the Faculty of Management. These modest data are all that is officially known about the artist for now, simply because she filled out a profile on the website where she posts her works.

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Franz Steiner- advertising photographer, 3D designer and art director of her own studio. The studio specializes in photo retouching and creating 3D images. The studio's employees are fluent in professional retouching tools, collaborating with large and well-known fashion magazines, studios and agencies. The works of this studio are always distinguished by their special brilliance and charm. Their works shine, play with reflections and undoubtedly attract the eye. Such high-quality work helped attract such clients as: Apple, Microsoft, Mercedes-Benz, Renault, Braun, Volkswagen.

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Matt Allsopp- an illustrator with an amazing sense of detail and his own very special drawing style. He specializes in illustration, character design, and concept art. His updated portfolio features work for Killzone 2 (a series of illustrations created for Sony and Guerrilla), character designs for Fight Night (EA Sports), as well as dozens more stunning illustrations created for clients such as Microsoft, Fujitsu and the BBC .

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Reid Southen- a young and talented illustrator from Michigan, often working under a pseudonym Rahll. He is a freelance illustrator, collaborating with video game and film production companies. His style differs from most ordinary artists - the absence of unnecessary details, thorough drawing, ideological nature and scale. His portfolio is a combination of personal creative work and commercial assignments. To understand the extent of her enormous talent, you just need to look at his amazing website.

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Radojavor- Slovak illustrator with excellent command of graphics. His updated portfolio is a combination of personal creative works and commercial assignments. Amazing patience and perseverance do not dry out the works - they remain alive and picturesque (if one can say so about his illustrations). The artist's works are drawn characters, ships and planes. They live in his illustrations own life. Therefore, I propose to move directly from the texts, closer to his masterpieces.

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Graphic designer, creator and illustrator Pirosca Marce l from Romania, who draws completely unusual objects and objects. He creates websites and enjoys photography and design. Most of his works can be viewed on the studioul website. In general, Pirosca Marcel is a completely mysterious young man who, apparently, is so absorbed in his work that he has no time left for anything else.

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Alex Broeckel - talented artist from Germany. He has been a professional 3D artist for over 12 years. Spent most time as a designer, digital artist in the entertainment industry. Worked on TD coverage for films such as Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, as well as Roman Polanski's Oliver Twist. His portfolio includes: fantastic ships, stations, planes, military bases and battles. In general there is something to see.

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Digital artist from New Zealand Stefan Morrell creates authentic futuristic illustrations in best traditions genre. To do this, he uses his drawing skills, as well as his 3D skills. In his portfolio, Stefan briefly describes how this or that work was completed and how long it took him.

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Chase Stone, also known as Chase-SC2, is a 21-year-old illustrator from the United States who, according to him, in my own words has been drawing all his adult life. He also trained as an illustrator at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York and believes that classical drawing techniques are very important even in digital illustration, where he has gained fame.

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Talented 3D designer Max Chelyadnikov works in several areas at once: modeling, visualization and animation. The use of 3D in design makes it possible to turn any customer’s idea into reality. And the experience and skill of such professionals as Maxim allows us to guarantee high quality work. It provides services for creating high-quality photorealistic 3D visualizations for use in advertising, presentations and technical documentation. Makes advertising effective, turns ideas into reality, creating professional advertising videos and presentation videos.

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Incredibly high quality! That's the only way to describe it professional level works of Turkish 3D designer Morteza Najafi. The main directions of its activities are: graphic design, 3D modeling and animation. His page presents a relatively small list of works, but it is from these works that one can trace the designer’s development in a professional direction. Morteza Najafi was able to develop his own unique style and today he is a successful and sought-after specialist in the field of 3D modeling.

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Octane Render is a combination of architectural and design abilities, a sense of style with 3D graphics and 3D modeling technologies in the hands of professional designers. Octane Render creates architectural visualizations, 3D design and animation, as well as video creation. The portfolio is divided into categories: product design, architecture, jewelry, automotive design, fantasy & characters, nature & abstract art.

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Max Kostenko- talented Russian illustrator. Engaged in the creation and development of characters, as well as different types illustration. Max collaborates with many Russian studios and agencies around the world such as: Kotetkat (France), lemonade (UK), Lebedev Studio (Russia). Recently I completely changed my web design, which I don’t regret. Now he draws funny, and not only, little people for his own pleasure and gets a lot out of it great pleasure, and sometimes even money.

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Dan LuVisi is a digital artist working in the field of cinematography and video game creation. His boundless talent was recognized while he was still in school. His career began at DC Comics, where he drew various superheroes. Subsequently he worked for the benefit of Hasbro, Fox, Universal and Microsoft. He developed his own style, his works are recognizable and unique. In addition to being a talented illustrator, Dan LuVisi is also a costume designer, enjoys painting, storyboarding, and drawing posters and packaging.

This article is the second part of a series of articles about computer graphics. In we learned about how special effects are made in the film industry, and also followed historical development special effects in cinema.

So let's continue...

Digital painting

Digital painting is the creation of electronic images through computer imitations of the artist’s traditional means (my free interpretation of the concept from Wikipedia). In fact, you will almost never meet a computer artist who uses the term " digital painting" Firstly, because there is already a foreign abbreviation - CG artist (sometimes CG specialist). Secondly, those works of art (that’s right!) that such artists create do not really fall under the definition of “painting”. Thirdly, everyone is already accustomed to using the abbreviation CG, since it is generally understood by Russians, Americans, Chinese, etc.

The concept of “art” came to us from Latin and Italian languages: art – art, artistry, skill. Usually among CG artists, the work is called 2d art (if drawn on a tablet) and 3d art (if done in a three-dimensional editor).

2DArt

The work process is very similar to the work process ordinary artist. Only instead of an easel there is a monitor and a tablet.

Since previously monitors were limited in color scheme(and even earlier they were monochrome), then digital painting appeared only when svga monitors and video cards appeared.

Having a tablet with an artist is a mandatory attribute for the drawing process. And don't confuse tablet computers with drawing tablets. A digital painting tablet looks something like this:

You simply draw on such a tablet with a special pen (pen, brush, sometimes a “stick” - a plastic stick), and what you draw is displayed on the monitor screen, namely in the graphics editor window.

Everyone uses it graphic editor, in which it is more convenient for him to work. But most often they use “Photoshop” - Adobe Photoshop.

Why do CG artists draw on tablets... At least try to draw an oval using a mouse! No matter how developed the technology is, you will still have to draw with your hands (and some people can draw with their feet). This means that to become a good CG artist, you need to be able to draw well on paper, know the basics of perspective and everything else that you can learn in art school.

Entirely computer-drawn paintings and images have many useful qualities. Firstly, such work is easier to redo. If the customer does not like your work (painted on canvas), you will be forced to completely redraw it from scratch. Certainly, small parts can be corrected, but significant changes cannot be made. But a CG artist will simply open a file of his work in Photoshop, where all his changes are scattered in layers. Then he will edit the necessary layers and get an improved work. This way, artists can rework, for example, the background, which is impossible to achieve on canvas.

Secondly, if you need to transfer a painting on canvas into digital form, then it is simply scanned. No matter how good and high-quality the scanner is, the quality component will still be lost during scanning. But a painting completely created on a computer can be drawn in great quality, and then it can be printed either the size of a picture in a book or the size of a house (the main thing is in what resolution the artist worked).

Here step by step example creating the work “On Tall Trees” by artist Anastasia Kustova in Adobe Photoshop:

As you can see, it all starts with a sketch, then the details are worked out. In the first part of the article about computer graphics, I provided a list of sites where you can see amazing works. And since not all people have time to visit art galleries, but everyone has access to the Internet, then everyone can join art. Who knows, maybe very soon digital painting will replace classic way drawing...

Here are examples of several works performed exclusively using computers and digital means:

To create a picture using a three-dimensional editor, you first need to model all the objects in the scene, then apply textures to them, and adjust the lighting. And after setting up the scene, it is rendered. Rendering is the process of drawing a three-dimensional scene as a two-dimensional image. Those. with this kind of work you need to be able not so much to draw as to be able to model (the process is similar to creating a sculpture).

Work done in 3D editors has several advantages.
Firstly, a ready-made scene can be rendered from different viewing angles, resulting in a new composition. Secondly, if you need to print an image on a huge poster, then in the rendering settings you can specify any resolution (depending on the power of the computer). Thirdly, such a scene can be used to create animated film or interactive presentation. Those. in three-dimensional editors you can create both special effects for films and create masterpieces in the form of paintings.

Here are examples of 3D art:

That's all. On my own behalf, I would like to add that the ability to draw well and the ability to transfer one’s mental images to a canvas or to a computer monitor is positive quality person. Learn to draw! You don’t have to paint like Van Gogh or Shishkin, you don’t have to take special courses. There are now many tutorials, video tutorials and other useful things on the Internet. The ability to draw means the ability to fantasize, the ability to concentrate and the ability to endure. In general, go for it! Take a pencil in your hand and start drawing something right now! Who knows, maybe you have talent and you will become the new Picasso, or you will create special effects for Hollywood blockbusters...

Surely many artists have repeatedly wondered how to create digital illustrations, and not just of a satisfactory level, but high-quality work that will take the breath away of any sophisticated viewer. This, like any craft, requires constant attention and time.

First, you need to understand the process of creating digital painting, which can develop in several directions. The article will tell you about these options, among which you can choose the one that suits you.

Creating an illustration from a photograph

The main advantage of this method is that it is suitable for everyone, without exception, giving an opportunity to those who cannot boast of the ability to draw well. The principle of such sketching is as follows: the original photograph serves as the basis for the drawing until the artist feels comfortable continuing to work without it.

If, for example, you work in Adobe Photoshop, then by reducing the transparency of the photo and creating a new layer, you can safely create an illustration, stroke by stroke, repeating all the lines and folds of objects. This can be done either with a mouse or using a special tablet with a stylus - an accessory in the form of a small thin pen for controlling a device with a touch interface.

Below is a video showing this method creating illustrations like this:

Creating an illustration from a scanned drawing

This method is already for people who actively practice creating high-quality illustrations, that is, who know how to draw.

So, the finished (or partially finished) work is scanned and opened in the appropriate program on the computer for further application of strokes on top of the drawing.

The following videos will demonstrate this method in practice:

https://youtu.be/UVGxAJL7dSQ

Create an illustration directly on your computer

As the name suggests, this is the most difficult level, which is actively used by professionals in this field.

Relevant videos are attached: