Digital Art History.. What is digital art? Thanks to Wikipedia, we know that digital art is the use of computers and other digital technology to create and edit traditional works such as drawing, film, literature, painting, photography, printing and sculpture. A recognized artistic practice, digital art can be electronic, interactive and virtual.

Various computer programs such as Photoshop Illustrator, Corel Painters, and Maya are just some of the software that digital artists would use to modify photos or create new illustrations from scratch or model 3D objects and turn them into full body animations. The different tools that these programs provide allow the artists more control to modify, add, and delete things as they please to achieve the level of quality that you see in art, on game covers and magazines and special effects that you see in animated or real life movies.

The history of digital art is a short one if you consider only the tools used to create the art. In truth, digital art’s history goes back to the very beginning of art itself. Software is simply the next generation of tools used by artists to express their art. Artists will seek perfection in the order of their art form no matter what it is. They will try to perfect what they do whether it’s painting, sculpture, dance or any art form you can name. There is much history to today’s digital preferences,  it goes far beyond the advent of digital art software.

Still learning about the history of digital art, I do know what I like to use to create my digital art. I use a free editor online called PicMonkey. I started out using a free editor called Picnik which is no longer online. Picnik was awesome, I do miss many of the overlays but have learned how to create my own. With PicMonkey, I can apply those overlays or layers right on top of my base image or starting point. I can manipulate the colors, translucency and texture until I have something that makes me go WOW.

The featured art above is called In A Day, by artist Mary Clanahan.

I’ve just started using a trial of Adobe Photoshop CS6 Extended which has the 3D options and I think it creates vector art as well. Let you know how it goes. I created my own logo with the CS6 and it looks so cool. I’m going to use the CS6 for website design.

Thanks for hanging out in the art blog. Everyone is welcome to comment and share!