Digital painting

Digital painting is a method of creating an art object (painting) digitally and/or a technique for making digital art in the computer. As a method of creating an art object, it adapts traditional painting medium such as acrylic paint, oils, ink, watercolor, etc. and applies the pigment to traditional carriers, such as woven canvas cloth, paper, polyester etc. by means of computer software driving industrial robotic or office machinery (printers). As a technique, it refers to a computer graphics software program that uses a virtual canvas and virtual painting box of brushes, colors and other supplies. The virtual box contains many instruments that do not exist outside the computer, and which give a digital artwork a different look and feel from an artwork that is made the traditional way.

The specific visual characteristics of a digital painting can be traced back to the software. They include transparency, symmetry, distortion, repetition, texture, embossing (creating 3D illusions), mathematically perfect circles, ellipses, squares and other forms, and a flat surface due to the (up to now) technical impossibility to make the brush stroke visible. The option to undo without a trace up to twenty or more brush strokes or other actions, permits a more spontaneous, intuitive way of working than is possible in traditional painting. The choice of program (or specific feature within a program) determines the output to have the characteristics of a watercolor, lino cut, screen print, oil painting etc. Thus, digital painting is not so much a new medium as a new appearance of the whole range of existing mediums, supplemented with some new features.

Painting is one of at least five directions that can be distinguished in early digital art: (1) 'Computer generated art' springs directly from artificial intelligence and programming. The image is the result of a string of zeros and ones, much the same as music notes on a score are not music themselves, but symbols that determine how the music will sound. (2) 'Digital photo-art' starts with a photo which is manipulated and transformed into a new image with the help of digital tools; (3) 'Digital animation' is a series of paintings or drawings, not necessarily made on a computer, manipulated and put into motion with the help of a computer program. (4) 'Video art' likewise relies on the manipulation of moving images. (5) 'Traditional digital painting' creates an image in a stroke-by-stroke, brush-in-hand fashion, but the canvas and painting tools are digital.

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