Digital painting

technique 1980s-present United States Worldwide

Digital painting is the practice of painting directly on a computer, replacing canvas and oils with stylus, tablet, and software that simulates brushes, blending, and texture. Its ancestry runs through early graphics programs - MacPaint (1984) put a paint tool on every desktop - and the dedicated natural-media software of the 1990s, above all Fractal Design Painter, which mimicked watercolor and impasto well enough to make the screen a painter's surface. Where 3D rendering builds images from modeled geometry, digital painting is freehand: strokes are laid down and revised by hand, with layers and undo permitting endless reworking. The practice dominates concept art, illustration, and animation design, and has entered fine art through painters like David Hockney, whose iPad drawings of the Woldgate woods were painted on screen and printed large.

The digital painting Alice in Wonderland by David Revoy . It depicts the setting of, and several characters from, Lewis Carroll 's Alice in
The digital painting Alice in Wonderland by David Revoy . It depicts the setting of, and several characters from, Lewis Carroll 's Alice in CC BY 4.0 (credit: David Revoy) · source

Defining characteristics

  • Freehand strokes made with stylus and tablet rather than computer-modeled forms
  • Simulated natural media: oil, watercolor, airbrush, and chalk brushes
  • Layered composition - elements painted and repainted on transparent sheets
  • Perfect gradients and infinitely revocable marks (undo, resize, recolor)
  • Painterly edges over photographic sharpness; light rendered in screen RGB
  • Detail built at zoom levels invisible in the final viewing size

Key figures

  • David Hockney (b. 1937) — Major painter who adopted the iPad and printed his screen paintings large
  • Andy Warhol (1928-1987) — Painted digitally on an Amiga in 1985, among the first fine artists to do so
  • Beeple (b. 1981) — Digital painter whose daily Everydays project ran for thousands of works

Example works

  • The Arrival of Spring in Woldgate — David Hockney (2011)
  • Tales from the Loop — Simon Stålenhag (2015)

Sources

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