Digital Art

I'm here with Jeff discussing the impact of the Internet on the digital art industry and how it has allowed him to explore this new outlet of expression.

Photoshop

As an artist, photoshop has made things infinitely easier in respect to the creation of art. Traditional art, which becomes expensive when costs accumulate over time, is restricted by the fact that it exists on a finite medium that may very well be destroyed or ruined. However, digital art has eliminated this problem by becoming virtual. Photoshop, which allows you to employ the use of multiple layers when creating art, allows you to save, edit, and re-edit photos/digital paintings in ways that would otherwise be impossible in a real world setting. Unfortunately, like many other design programs, Photoshop requires time and effort in order to be used effectively. Mastering Photoshop, however, also requires experience in traditional media. This is because much of the technique involved in producing traditional works carries over to digital art. Hand-eye coordination, for example, is a skill that must be developed before realistic face painting in photoshop can be achieved.

Digital Art and its Internet Relationship

How has digital art become somewhat synonymous with the digital world? As people become more familiar with virtual communities, they begin to pick influences stemming from their fellow artists. Like scholars have said before, all art pulls from styles and techniques employed by previous artists, changes simply occurring through minute altercations in application/approach.

Art as a lifestyle

Art is in a way a therapeutic method of expression- it allows you to communicate feelings that would otherwise lack an outlet. For many individuals, art becomes a way of life- whether it be through cultural interactions or their own contributions. As such, digital art, which can be made with relative ease, has become increasingly popular within the past decade. Now, tablets, high resolution screens, and advanced photo editing programs allow for the proliferation of digital art.

Art: A Substantive, Cultural Phenomena

Without our collective recognition and practice of art, the world would be hard pressed to spread, let alone create, cultural influences among different societies. Art, the medium for which human emotion and thought can be thoroughly expressed outside of conventional means, is constantly evolving. It is well known that art promotes systems of perpetual inspiration and influence where artists gather ideas from other artists. With the advent of the Internet, specifically the World Wide Web, art from around the world became accesible to everyone. This free, online platform essentially revolutionized the influential role of art among cultures spanning different continents. With time, artists coagulated into specific art communities catering to different styles and schools of art. Today, sites like deviantart.com, flickr.com, and conceptart.org have become standard platforms among art communities. It is within these communities that many new and established artists become recognize, further developing art as a representative face of a timeless, human phenomenon.