This tutorial is for beginners or anyone willing to explore using digital art. Digital art, in comparison to many of the various art mediums including oils, pastels, watercolors, inks, etc., can be seen as all kinds of media rolled into one. With new technology and software, barriers and limitations can be broken more easily and efficiently. It’s a great way to get your work done with quick and easy editing, without worrying about smudges, finger marks, or other minor blemishes that many artists encounter. I have worked with many mediums all my life and have found digital art, in my opinion, to be one of the easiest mediums, if not the easiest, to work with.
Software:
First of all, you will need some kind of digital art software to work with. This may sound like the expensive part of the process. However, the net is full of all kinds of opportunities for everyone. The most common software used for digital art is Adobe Photoshop. Titled as the standard software for graphics and digital art, it comes in unique versions. I prefer to use the older versions just because I’m already comfortable with them, but I would recommend the newer and more recent versions to keep up with new apps and capabilities. The most recent version of Photoshop is currently Adobe Photoshop CS4, which is somewhat powerful with new 3D and video capabilities. You can buy the software at an electronics store or order it online. If you’re not willing to buy software for some reason, or want to try digital art before you buy anything, there are some free image manipulation programs out there. The best I’ve found is GIMP, the GNU Image Manipulation Program. Its capabilities for manipulating images and simple designs are similar to those of Photoshop. If you’re really lazy to download software, try MS Paint (Microsoft Windows). It’s not the best or the easiest to use, but it’s the simplest of basics. These are just a few suggestions that can help beginning artists. Ultimately, finding the right show is important because it’s essential that you feel comfortable with the show for your ideas to flourish on screen. Also, it would help if you bought a graphics tablet, which is a touchpad that allows you to move the cursor as if it were the tip of your pen. However, this is not required. I’ve been using a mouse to make images for years before I bought my modbook. A mouse can be more difficult to control, however it is not impossible.
From:
So, let’s get into the actual use and creation of digital art. For this little tutorial, I’ll be basing the software on GIMP, for general purposes only. Most, if not all, of the programs work very similarly and have the same simple abilities, so if you’re using a single program, it shouldn’t be too difficult to follow. As a file on the computer, start with “File” and “New”. You should ask for the size of the image you want to use. The standard image size you would use is 640x400px, or a slightly larger size of 800x600px. Now if you are a beginner in art in general, it is very important to know the simple concepts and gestalt of art. Art varies between unique minds; however, the simple mentality is from the general to the details. You always want to think about the simple shapes and lines of the image before going into the small details.
General tools:
Tools that help with these simple shapes would be the paths tool. This tool helps you make straight lines and perfectly curved lines with the use of anchor points. You can also use the unique selection tools, including the rectangle selection tool and the ellipse selection tool. With these selection tools, you can select a region in which you want to work. By selecting this, you can add color or designs in the selected region without having to worry about “coloring outside the lines”. Another tool that is useful for overall colors and tones is the Blend Tool, which creates seamless gradients and blends. The Airbrush tool allows for a softer, more blended look than the Brush tool, which offers a harder-edged line. The Smudge tool allows for light editing of your work. Dragging it along lines and colors blurs and blends them. All of these can be used in various ways. To master them, you need experience and experimentation. Get comfortable with the tools and learn their capabilities and you will be able to understand each element of each tool. There are a lot of tools and abilities that these programs provide. Experiment with them and see how each one works.
Items:
Now I will explain the elements of the tools. Each tool has unique ones, but I’ll go over similar features. You will notice the Opacity options below each tool. Opacity is the ability to see the object. Therefore, the higher the opacity, the better it can be seen; and the lower the opacity, the more transparent it is. Also, most tools include a scaling option. This allows you to change the size of the “pen tip” or its tool. You can also change the color by clicking on the color box and choosing the desired shade.
Layers:
Just like other mediums, it’s very important to keep layering in mind. With digital art, you can extend the use of layers from the many layers of colors to organizing and labeling parts of your work. By adding new layers, you can work on existing layers without changing the old layers. You can also change the transparency of the layers by changing the opacity, which is the same for the tools.
Once you’ve read this article and set up your development environment, continue to the next tutorial.