CONTINUOUS STORY

 Digital Art

Digital illustration is big business these days. A quick look at roadside billboards, club flyers or magazine covers should be enough to convince anyone that the art of the digital designer has never been in higher demand, and its popularity just keeps on growing.

But defining exactly what digital illustration is proves tricky. We all know what the words mean, yet the myriad of ways in which illustration can be applied makes it one of the most versatile of the creative arts and as such, it's pretty difficult to pin down.

With a strong creative vision and the right software, concepts can be articulated in limitless ways; each style opening new doors for expression. The one crucial skill that ties it all together is the need for some innate artistic ability. You don't need to be a virtuoso with a pencil to be good at computer art, but there's no doubt that most professional illustrators are proficient with traditional art techniques.

The basics of image structure are the same across mediums, after all, and with software increasingly able to mimic traditional drawing methods, the transition to digital has become almost seamless. Let's take a closer look at the main branches of digital illustration and discover a little more about how the experts put them together.

Vector art

It's no great accident that vector illustration is currently one of the trendiest and easily recognisable of the digital art disciplines. The signature flat colours and clean lines are easy to spot and quick to grab attention, which of course makes the style hugely popular with advertisers looking to catch the eye of potential consumers. In addition, their reduced colour palettes and scalable technology means they are perfect when it comes to artwork for the Web.

Mixing media

While vector art focuses on clean shapes, simple forms and bold chunks of colour, other digital illustration techniques take things in the opposite direction. Since the arrival of Photoshop in 1990, artists have been able to digitally manipulate photographic material and combine it with other visual ingredients, and when layers arrived with Photoshop 3.0 five years later, the stage was set for a new form of digital image. In 1995, digital photo illustration was born.

Based on the traditional method of using scissors and glue to cut and paste photos and artwork together in new arrangements, it's a technique that has always been popular with children but has now become the favoured strategy of many an adult illustrator. This is primarily due to Photoshop's specialised, yet accessible and intuitive, toolset, but also reflects the success the strategy can have when attempting to convey a complicated collection of ideas.

Sketching toons

While everyone knows that Photoshop is the king of detailed mixed media illustration, less well known is the fact that it's also astonishingly good at producing line and comic style artwork. Deftly sidestepping the need to use intricate filters and effects, the hand drawn, hand coloured look is gaining favour with artists and art directors alike.

Because of the time saving tools that Photoshop offers, professional comic book artists are beginning to use the software to colour their hand drawn sketches and are taking digital art into previously unexplored areas. Using a mixture of both hand drawn and digital painting, new styles are surfacing that are making a massive impact on the established illustration industry.

For best Digital Art Contact :

CONTINUOUS STORY

https://www.continuousstory.com/