Digital Art an introduction
I do not intend to make any attempt at a definition of Digital Art nor do I intend to teach you how to do Digital Art. You all have enough experience in your own medium to apply it to Digital Art. All I intend to do is open the door, just a little, and show you some of the things that are unique or idiosyncratic in digital art. Every picture on this page is linked back to it's source, so clicking on the image takes you to the original web site where the image is published.
A few words of warning, as ever, the WEB is a wild place and not everything is as it seems, so use your eyes, and be carefull. This Digital Art Image Search on Google for example, not all the images returned are digital, many are paintings that have been digitised!
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What is Digital Art?
For my purposes Digital Art is a form that is made with a Phone, Tablet or Computer and can therefore only have physical form by being printed. The boundaries between each of the sub-categories are often blurred and indistinct or one form may be used to make the base picture and others used to add more detail. I must therefore ask that you accept the boundaries I have used to separate the different forms of art as you might think of them in a different way.
What is Direct Human Digital Arts?
An unanswered question we will return to in a moment.
What is AI Art?
AI Art is made by telling the computer program what you want your image to illustrate. The program will then come up with an "interpretation" of your request. How successful that may be will depend upon the program and your ability to tell it what you want. Generally if you repeatedly feed the program with the same description you will get a different result. This is because AI is not deterministic.
https://openart.ai/home
https://www.gentube.app/
https://artlist.io/
What is Generative Art?
Generative Art is a process of algorithmically generating new ideas, forms, shapes, colors or patterns. First, you create rules that define the process. Then a computer follows those rules to produce new works on your behalf.
What forms can Digital Art have?
Here I will indirectly address the question from earlier as to "What is Direct Human Digital Art?", but beware both forms we are going to look at can equally be generated algorithmically.
Digital Art exists in two forms Pixel and Vector. Most programs used in digital art use one of these two techniques, however there are a few programs that can generate both.
I have also ignored the three dimentional, video and audio arts, although they can also be considered to require printing.
What is Pixel Art?
Pixel art is what most of us think of as being digital art. We as the artist set the colour of the individual pixel. We may be using a brush which is hundreds of pixels wide or we may be setting the individual pixels but we are setting it/them directly. The size of the image is fixed at x pixels wide by y pixels high when we first make it and is not easy to change.
What is Vector Art?
Vector Art removes the concept of a pixel from the process and we are drawing shapes, be they curves, straight lines, open shapes or closed shapes. So the actual process is nearer to drawing with a pencil or pen than painting with a brush. However, the big advantage of Vector Art is that it can scale to any size, no pixels will be visible on a sheet of A4 or on the side of a building. Therefore, this type of art has to be converted into a pixel form before viewing.
Concepts in Digital Art
What does Zoom mean?
All software tends to have a zoom function, it enables you to see the smallest detail in anything you are working on. Zooming in makes your image bigger and the excess drops off the screen. Zooming out makes your images smaller and so you can see the complete image.
What is a pixel?
A pixel is a rectangular space in an image file. It is the smallest space that can be filled with a colour in Pixel Art. When working on large images it may not be obvious that pixels exist but as you zoom in they will become visible. When you are painting you are effectively using pixel art with an infinite resolution.
What is a vector?
A vector is a line of some description which is drawn on your image but the software. Closed vectors generate objects with an internal space that is (generally) filled. Open vectors generate lines which can be straight or curved. There is no equivalence to a vector when painting in the real world.
What is a layer?
A layer is what you draw on, think of it as being a piece of glass. You can see through it unless it has an opaque background colour.
When you draw you do so in the foreground colour. So if you have a stack of layers, without backgrounds, you can see the parts of each layer that are not obscured by the layers above.
What is Transparency and Opacity?
If you use Watercolours you already understand transparency, it is why you can see the colour underneath when you paint on top, why they appear to mix! Equally, if you use gouache, you understand Opacity. It is why you cannot see the colour underneath. In digital art the Transparency or otherwise of a color can by adjusted on a layer by layer basis and/or on an individual stroke basis. Whereas when you are painting it is generally controlled by the type of paint being used and how thick it is.
What is available?
The following table is not complete, I have chosen only to display a useful list.
| Platform | Program Name | Type | Cost | Difficulty |
| Windows Linux macOS | GIMP | Pixel | Free | Middle, stills only |
| Windows Linux macOS | Kitra | Pixel | Free | Middle, Stills only |
| Windows Linux macOS Steam | Blender | Vector | Free | Difficult, complex, can make films |
| Windows Linux macOS | Inkscape | Vector | Free | Middle, Stills only |
| iPad iPhone | Procreate | Pixel | £12.99 | Middle, Interface obtuse |
| iPad Android | Infinite Painter | Pixel | Feemium - Unknown Fee | Don't know |
| Windows | Paint | Pixel | Free | Easy designed for mouse |
| And more look in your App Store. | ||||
1 Digital Art an introduction
I do not intend to make any attempt at a definition of Digital Art nor do I intend to teach you how to do Digital Art. You all have enough experience in your own medium to apply it to Digital Art. All I intend to do is open the door just a little and show you some of the things that are unique or idiosyncratic in digital art. Every picture on this page is linked back to it's source, so clicking on the image takes you to the original web site where the image is published.
A few words of warning, as ever, the WEB is a wild place and not everything is as it seems, so use your eyes, and be carefull. Digital Art Images on Google for example not all the images returned by the Google are digital many are paintings that have been digitised!
2 What is Digital Art?
For my purposes Digital Art is a form that is made with a Phone, Tablet or Computer and can therefore only have physical form by being printed. The boundaries between each of the sub-categories are often blurred and indistinct or one form may be used to make the base picture and others used to add more detail. I must therefore ask that you accept the boundaries I have used to separate the different forms of art as you might think of them in a different way.
3 What is Direct Human Digital Arts?
An unanswered question we will return to in a moment.
4 What is AI Art?
AI Art is made by telling the computer program what you want your image to illustrate. The program will then come up with an "interpretation" of your request. How successful that may be will depend upon the program and your ability to tell it what you want. Generally if you repeatedly feed the program with the same description you will get a different result. This is because AI is not deterministic.
Here are a few links for you to explore in your own time.
https://openart.ai/home
https://www.gentube.app/
https://artlist.io/
5 What is Generative Art?
Generative Art is a process of algorithmically generating new ideas, forms, shapes, colors or patterns. First, you create rules that provide boundaries for the creation process. Then a computer follows those rules to produce new works on your behalf. If the program does not use some form of randomization and you do not change any of the paramiters the image generated will be identical every time the program is run.
6 What forms can Digital Art have?
Here I will indirectly address the question from earlier as to "What is Direct Human Digital Art?", but beware both forms we are going to look at can equally be generated algorithmically.
Digital Art exists in two forms Pixel and Vector. Most programs used in digital art use one of these two techniques, however there are a few programs that can generate both.
7 What is Pixel Art?
Pixel art is what most of us think of as being digital art. We as the artist set the colour of the individual pixel. We may be using a brush which is hundreds of pixels wide or we may be setting the individual pixel but we are setting it/them directly. The size of the image is fixed at x pixels wide by y pixels high.
8 What is Vector Art?
Vector Art removes the concept of a pixel from the process and we are drawing shapes, be they curves, straight lines, open shapes or closed shapes. So the actual process is nearer to drawing with a pencil or pen than painting with a brush. However, the big advantage of Vector Art is that it can scale to any size, no pixels will be visible on a sheet of A4 or on the side of a building. Therefore, this type of art has to be converted into a that can be viewed before it can be viewed or reproduced, most frequently this is a pixel form.
9 Concepts in Digital Art
What does Zoom mean?
All software tends to have a zoom function, it enables you to see the smallest detail in anything you are working on. Zooming in makes your image bigger and the excess drops off the screen. Zooming out makes your images smaller and so you can see the complete image.
What is a pixel?
A pixel is a rectangular space in an image file. It is the smallest space that can be filled with a colour in Pixel Art. When working on large images it may not be obvious that pixels exist but as you zoom in they will become visible. When you are painting you are effectively using pixel art with an infinite resolution.
What is a vector?
A vector is a line of some description which is drawn on your image but the software. Closed vectors generate objects with an internal space that is (generally) filled. Open vectors generate lines which can be straight or curved. There is no equivalence to a vector when painting in the real world.
What is a layer?
A layer is what you draw on, think of it as being a piece of glass. You can see through it unless it has an opaque background colour. When you draw you do so in the foreground colour. So if you have a stack of layers, without backgrounds, you can see the parts of each layer that are not obscured by the layers above.
What is Transparency and Opacity?
If you use Watercolours you already understand transparency, it is why you can see the colour underneath when you paint on top, why they appear to mix! Equally, if you use gouache, you understand Opacity. It is why you cannot see the colour underneath. In digital art the Transparency or otherwise of a color can by adjusted on a layer by layer basis and/or on an individual stroke basis. Whereas when you are painting it is generally controlled by the type of paint being used and how thick it is.
10 What is available?
The following table is not complete, I have chosen only to display a useful list.
| Platform | Program Name | Type | Cost | Difficulty |
| Windows Linux macOS | GIMP | Pixel | Free | Middle, stills only |
| Windows Linux macOS | Kitra | Pixel | Free | Middle, Stills only |
| Windows Linux macOS Steam | Blender | Vector | Free | Difficult, complex, can make films |
| Windows Linux macOS | Inkscape | Vector | Free | Middle, Stills only |
| iPad iPhone | Procreate | Pixel | £12.99 | Middle, Interface obtuse |
| iPad Android | Infinite Painter | Pixel | Feemium - Unknown Fee | Don't know |
| Windows | Paint | Pixel | Free | Easy designed for mouse |
| And more look in your App Store. | ||||
