Traditonal Painting VS Digital
The underworks
Adoration the Magi is an incomplete art piece done by the famous artist Leonardo Da Vinci. This is an extremely interesting pieces as it shows you the beginning stages of Da Vinci's work and his strategy towards colouring in the image. As you can see before adding colour he first focuses on the lighting and shading using tones of orange and browns.
For my digital artoworks in Photoshop I use a very similar technique to Da Vinci's strategy. Once I've drawn the rough outline for my drawing I then begin to paint the actual piece completley in grey-scale first. This means I can consentrate speciafically on lighting and shading as this is the most key detail into adding realism in artwork. Once the image is done in black and white and I am happy wirht it I can then "paint over it" in colour. On a seperate Layer above I change the mode to 'colour' and this means as I paint of the picture with colours the shading combines with the colours as it would with a traditional painting.
So using this technique the underworks of painting with traditional and digital can be very similar. The difference between however is that tradional can be more complicated than digital as painting over shading wiht colour ona canvas can cause colours to mix and lighten darker areas which means you would likley have to re-do darker areas. However with Photoshop you do not have this trouble as the colours are controlled so this could be seen as a much mor efficent and improvment over traditional.
Can digital painting replace paintning on canvas?
Brushes
Scale
Brushes are the main tool in painting and their are multiple types of brushes out there of different shapes and sizes, made form different materials and made specifically for types of paints. The type of brush you use can make all the difference in the detail and style of your painting that you want to acheive.
The above goes exactly the same for digital, brushes are extremley important when it comes to drawing. There are a huge viariety of brushes you can download for Photoshop randing from pencil strokes to acrylic, water colour splatters etc. Proffesional brushes are commonly made by scanning in prints of traditional brush stroks on paper and then edited for digital use creating as close to the real thing as possible. When drawing a tablet is comonly used which acts similar to drawing with a pencil on paper and tablets are now advanced enough that pressure can be detected when you draw which adds an even more natural flow to your strokes as with traditional painting.
The main difference is however is digital will always lack that added extra such as with say a splatter effect. With traditional you can easily get a paintbrush and flick the brush ends scattering paint or make the the brush extra watery so the paint drips. With Photoshop this things are hard to do as gravity and force isn't yet a developed side to it, you can still get splatter brushes or drip effects but they'll lack that natural feel which traditional can acheive.
Texture
The image below shows the artwork of Raft of the Medusa by Theodore Geiucault, you can see how large the piece is and how difficult it must have been to move across the canvas in order to paint different areas. With digital art moving across alarge canvas is made easier with you being able to zoom in and out and move across the canvas with it all remaining on the size of the monitor. However that can be its downfall as working on a monitor means you can never truly zoom out and view the piece and the true size that it is. Of course once the piece is finished you could print out on the image on large scale paper etc but this loses value compared to a large scale traditional painting as the latter requires much more effort and the diifuclty is higher. The digital side does get another gain though as the artwork can be rescaled and printed again on a variety of canvas. Plus the image can be easily cropped etc and easily transported wirelessly unlike a canvas which can be a struggle to move and avoid damage if it is very large.
Texture is not the same at all when it comes to tradtional and digital painting. With tradtional their are a wide range of materials to paint on with specific types of paper with different weights, usually the more colour stain or wetness of the paint you'll be using means you need a high weight in paper. When it comes to digital none of this matters as you will always be working in one type of media. You could say that the graphics tablet you use could count as the texture you work on, and it is quite a hard surface but the texture does not affect the outcome on screen, all that matters is where you move the pen and the pressure. You can also get a cross between tablets and monitors now such as the Cintique, which enables you to paint with the technique as you would a canvas, increasing the feel of digital painting to be more natural.
Value
I believe value is the biggest difference between the two types. With digital there isn't really an original piece apart from the file itself which contains the true secrets and process behind the piece. However the actual final digital piece saved in a flat image and uploaded online lacks value and meaning as a tradtional painting would as it gets duplicated across many sites and it can be easily copied and re-edited or the artist could re-edit their work and upload multiple versions meaning there's never truly an original piece such as with traditional. When you go to see a painting in a gallery you know its the only one in the world and it imedietly makes it special as no one else can see this unless the go to it. Traditional artwork can sell for millions and you'll nearly never see a ditial artoworkr being sold for that much unless it hold the privacy and one piece rarity as a traditional painting does.
Digital painting certainly wins more over traditional paintings from the point above, it really is a the modern and much more efficent way of painting with so many added benifits. However can it truly replace traditional painting and wipe it out? I don't believe so. Traditional painting will always be around as to be homest I think it reqires more talent to do a traditional painting than digital. However many would argue and say why make it difficult for yourself when you can just go digital and that is a good point but an argument to oppose it would be that traditional paintings are so much more valuable than digital. Like I said before if you paint traditionally their will only be on version of that painting it will be the only one in the whole world and so it is treasured. However digitally it can be copied and duplicated and theres no original making it worthless. I believe digital paintings are mainly valuable not because of the art but because of the idea, thats why concept art would typically be the most valuable type of digital art. I feel as well people will natually respect a tradtional piece more than a digital and im not saying digital art is easy because its not t is also very tough to do however I feel when many people see a traditional piece they can brush it off and say you've copied it etc however with a traditional piece you know that it cant be copied or traced, each stroke had to be handone. I do believe that traditional painting will become less popular however will stick within the artist side of the world as it cannot be exinct.
Conclusion
Digital Artists
1700s Oil Paintings
Sophisticated Europeans from the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries deemed “history painting” to be the supreme achievement in the visual arts. In addition to imaginatively re-creating actual events from the past, history paintings also illustrated heroic or moralizing episodes from religion, mythology, and literature.The central challenge of history painting lay in selecting a particular subject that could engage the heart and instruct the mind. In devising appropriate figures, the painter demonstrated his mastery of anatomy and expression. Grand settings and symbolic accessories proved the artist’s grasp of perspective depth and still-life draftsmanship. Compositions and color schemes had to be carefully conceived to accentuate the principal characters and to clarify the meanings of the incidents.In depicting significant events that appealed to the conscience, history painting deserved its reputation as the most demanding and rewarding form of art, both for the creator and the viewer. The same desire for profundity in narrative pictures often invested portraits and landscapes with allegorical meanings and poetic overtones.
Theodore Gericault
Theodore Gericault was an influential French painter in the 1700s-1800s. He is famously known for is work called The Raft of the Medusa and other paintings. The paintings which stand out to me though are the ones of the human figure painting in dyanimc poses as this shows off Gericault's talented at the human antomy and muscles. I believe he is the best artist I've ever seen so so far who paints the figure so beatifully and detailed. the saw mucles on the body are done beaitfully and this is a detail many skip out., the body has never been so interesting to look at. The poses feel so natural as well, they are not at all stiff and rigid. The one of the man pulling the rop or bent over the rock are touch poses to capture as they involve pressure and force and he manages to capture perfectly with the man bent over but I do feel like he struggled slightly with the man pulling on the rope. His arms seem to be belivable but when it comes to his legs they seem odd and lack spring or force. However it is still a wworthy painting and the body is just as beautifully drawn. One of the key features as well is Gericaults colour palet, he really captures the different colour of the skin well however they do come off overall quite pale, however this is not a bad thing. Again the one of the man bent over you can clearly see the hughs of blue, pink and green which are used accurtaley and add to the realsm of it. I could use this knowlege for my own and make myself understand the key colours used for skin and how he achieves that look. As well as this I reliase how important it is to show key details of whats under the skin even if it may not show originally on a photo, adding these details adds realsm and beauty.
Peter Paul Rubens
I chose Rubens as an artist to research into as he was a talented oil-painter for portraits. With Theodore Gericault he concentrated on the bodies whilst Rubens had artwork mainly concentrating on the face, this means it is easier to see and understand the use of colour. Rubens is just as clever with his use of colour palette, again you can make out the different tones of blue, green and pink. Pink areas seem to strongly appear on the cheeks, nose and ears whilst blue tones are under the eyes, temples and chin. These are all essential details i should note down and remember to use in my own portraits. #it's difficult to learn any more from Rubens as I can hardly make out any of his brush strokes which is a good thing for him as it just makes his paintings look that more realistic and photo-like. I've always wondered how artists achieve such a smooth look, this is something I see rarely done in modern day paintings. A piece I do really like though of Rubens is the one on the far left below, in this piece the use of colours are really obvious and has a strong contrast. It's defiantly a lot more rough than his other works and is the closest I've found to seeing his underwroks.
Trying out Oil Painting
I decided to try oil-ainting myself, I have never used these media ever before and actually had no idea that they are resitant to water and you have to get special product for it to mix with. I did follow some basic tutorials online previous so I had more understand of how they work. I went out to the store and bought a pack of 12 oil paints, oil paint brushes, paper paint pallete, --- and a small a5 canvas. I drew the portrait first in pencil onto the canvas lightly so I had guidlines to follow, I decided I was going to draw captain Jack Sparrow the famous fiction pirate from pirates of the Carribean. With the sketch done I began painting and started with the face first. When creating the skin tones I made sure to use the four main colours, red yellow, green and blue as i've learnt this from studying the previous artists above. You can see areas where I added blue as I did go slightly strong on them, you can see by the eye and under the nose but I reall wanted to experiment and ty emphasise on this odd colours. When mixing to get the main skin pigment I did find I had to mix green in their even thought the final outcome was an orange colour. Mixing the colours really gave me an understanding of what the true colours are made up of and will help me with my final portraits for sure even if its done digitally. When I started with he oil paints I actually hardly dipped the paint brus into the solution as I wasnt treating it like water but rather more something to wash my brush of any colour after 5 minutres. This causes a rather dry gritty look with my painting but I wonder if I had wtenned the brush more, I would have acheived a softer and less brushs troked look like with Gericault and Rubens work.
1700s Illustrations
Illustrations in the 1700s were very basic with them usually being drawing completely in black with no colour on white or yellow paper. The common styles was for the basic outlines of the person to be drawn and then stripped lines (not crosshatched, but flow in same direction) used to add in details or shading. Of course this various for other illustrations such as the one of Francois L'ollonais which is very detailed and seems almost as if it was dotted. Anatomy was much harder to understand in them days then now as there were not really any books on it or tutorials, also it wasn't as well known what muscles and bone are under the skin unless you were a medical professional. This is why many of the faces in these illustrations are oddly proportioned as well as bodies and movement. However they are still well-done enough to understand the piece and for them to seem somewhat realistic.
I decided to experiment and try this style out myself, I got myself a pencil, Black fine liner and yellow tinted paper (for true authenticity). I first drew out the portrait light in pencil as I'm not that bold to go straight in with pen. Once the sketch was drawn I went over it with the fine liner. I started first on the face and as you can see I really tried to follow along with the rules of drawing lines in the same direction for shading on the face. I then filled in dark areas completely black with odd highlights in the hair. As I proceeded to do the clothing this is when I began to get a bit careless and began cross hatching. This deterred from the common simplistic style but hey at least I got to try both styles in one picture. With cross hatching this makes it more fast to do but is still a good method and keeps things realistic. Because of the crosshatching these turned the portrait into a realistic one, the face still looks cartoony though because of the straight lines, its a strange combination. I really enjoyed doing this, I'm not sure if I will use this technique for my portrait though as after this I still intend to do my portraits in colour and without the use of black lines but you never know what might come useful in the end. Revolution, scavengers would rob graves for teeth to be used as dentures.
Nicky Barkla
Nicky Barkla is a self-taught artist based in Australia who has an unmistakable style when it comes to portraying pop culture icons, giving them a whole new persona. Making use of a variety of mixed media and techniques the colour spectrums is challeneged to produce beleeding, technicolour creations giving a very trippy psychedelic effect. Unbelievably all her art work is done traditionally yet the all looks so smooth and brush marks are hardly noticble, I wonder if this is because she maybe touches up her works in photoshop or she really just that skilled to get all her pieces so perfect.
Barkla's work of Frankenstein (shown to right) and a similar piece she did of Keith Richards inspired me the most as unlike her other paintings she seems to have merged two photos into one. For example with her frankenstein piece. she drew his main facial feaures such as eyes, nose, mouth so his face can be recognised and then for the wrest of his silioute it is glaxy image and the two merge beautifully.
I could do a portrait of my interpretation of Black beard however then merged in with his face is concept art of the battle of his death. For example at the top of his siloute could be the persuit of Manyward on his tail with the ocean behind a large part of then it will progess to Black Beard climbing onboard Manywards ship and then the intense battle between them. The overal background so it doesnt become too confusing with all the colours. I wander if for the portrait it could be of black beards head and neck with a roped tied round his neck or something attatched to the top to show how the final outcome of the story was his head being strung up. This means at first glance you see the ending of the story and are intruiged and confused but then when looking closey at his face you can see the story flowing across his face and so when you look back on the overall picture again you understand the meaning behind it and suddenly hit with the realisation of the ending oucome.
Guzzardi Twins
Shenae and Mel Guzzardi are twins in Australia who collaborate (and do separate work) on their artwork and upload it to the web under the account 'Guzzardi'. I have followed these artists for a long time especially as their lives are so similar mine. They are twins wanting to get into video game industry, doing concept art and are now both studying at University doing a games design course which is the exact path I am now follwing with my twin.
There art style is how I would like to work, in many ways. It is drawn and painted in a realistic manner with a beautiful sense of colour. I especially like the ones where they overdo the lighting and the saturation is very high with the colours addng contrast. My favourite technique in their art is how they look hand painted as you can always see the brush marks - in some cases these are very rough to add depth. All their pieces are done in Photoshop and so they must utilise a brush with that paint brush effect. Even the sci fi pieces looking at the future have an older style effect and this along with the dark shadows is something that could create the effects that I want in the pirate works. It has a traditional feel to it, more like oil painting than formal acrylics.
IDEA 2
Sheridan Johns
Thinking about acheiving a very high detail/ photographic look for my portraits of these pirates I searched online to see how possible it was to ahceive such a high realism for digital paintings. Thats when I saw sheridans work who acheives a similar style to how I would want my portraits to be like. She focuses on trying to make her art as photo realistic as possible. All her art is done digitally and on photoshop and she even links the brushes she uses which is very handy as I can download them myself and use the same tools as her. Studing her artwork I can see the how she adds important details such as crinkles, freckles, pores and individual hair strands for facial hair and hairline which makes a huge difference in acheiving tht photo-graphic look. I also notice her use of lighting and how she adds white lines of strong light hitting the end of hairs or on the side of faces. I believe this is another very important detail in giving that realistic effect. Not only this but Johns even thinks abut focus, for example with the piece with Robert de Niro you an see how the gun and his hand blurred and appears out of focus whilst his face is in perfect detail. This adds to the realism of an actual camera lens taking the photo and how it would be in real life with a changin focal distance and foreshortening. If I decide to go along with this idea then I should definantly study more about Sheridan Johns work as she is incredibly talented and understands techniques needed to achieve realism.
Issues: These are copies of real things, in my work I have to come up with the face and the features - I can copy elements from diferent people to get features or structures but they will not just be replicas like these. Copying from 2D photos is easier than developing from imagination - I need to create portraits that have a certain life to them not flat, and 2Dimensional.
Abigail Diaz
Abigail Diaz is another artist who focuses on portraits this time of maily women. Her use of colour is really what made her stand out to me as sh es very good with her colour schemes andmaking them all contrast well together. He paintings as well are the first I've seen which acheive a very tradtional look to thhat of oil paintings in the 1700s with how the skin looks so smooth yet oddly paper textured. It's hard to undestand how she has done this in digital Photoshop, but it shows that t is possible. I think its not only the smoothness but Diaz also seems to understand the technique used in paintings of adding the strong yet subtle hughs of blues in the skin as you can see uder the eyes of many of her portraits, this adds that very realstic effect. However what lets Diaz's portraits down for me though is whow they all seem to have the same expression and although her character designs change in varierty but still oddly keep the flower theme which is niceit makes he portraits seem a bit of a merge into one and not individual pieces Ill remember alone. Its as though its the same girl in different outfits. This is something I really want to focus in on in myaking sure my portraits have very inque and dynamic expressions with a lot of emotion behind them. Because my pirates are so different from eachother its important to get across the personalities and how much of a varierty pirates where and that they are not just the same lot.
Loran De Sore
Wow I absoloutly love De Sores's work, their style is actually quite unique and what makes me so intrugues by them is their use of symbolsm which is somehting I really want to do in my own portraits. All of her portraits seem to be of fanart though which is a shame as I'm sure they could create their own original charaters and ass symbolsm in their portraits to tell their story, that would be very interesting. What I love most about their style though is firstly the brush strokes, when I look at their art especiall in the Hannibal serise ones, I can see the brush marks and its a reall nice efefct and one I think I need to trye as its not like a simply brushe stoke, the strokes look straight and harsh. Also De sore's use of lighting and colours work so well together and is another technique of theirs I admire most. My favourite example of this is the one in the middle below of the character Hannibal Lecter played byMads Milkensen. The green, blue and red are colours at first I would see as just too bright and colourful but how they are used here, they work so well together and look how shiney that tie is with that highlight its really beautiful to me how they work so well together. The red tie as well highlights the eyes which is a key thing for the character hannibal as he is often symbolised to have red eyes due to him being a "predator" I mustself have watched the hannibal tv show so I understand the symbolsm behind it. The horns percing through his skin represent that of a wendigo and a wendigo is a canabbilistic creature, and hannibal is a cannibal. Its really cleverly done and I hope to acheive such powerful symbolsm myself.
Trying out Illustration
