There are some amazing painters out there in the world of digital art, all of which combine superb traditional art skills with a computer of some sort, a graphics tablet and a good piece of software. In this post we present you with some beautiful digital paintings, followed by a selection of options when it comes to buying suitable software and your first graphics tablet!
Superb Digital Paintings
Impossible LOV3
This amazing digital painting by Bluefley is an on-going project by =Bluefley – the detail put into this painting can be seen in more detail here. It’s one of the most popular digital pieces on deviantART of all time.
La Rochelle
La Rochelle is a digital painting by *Radojavor was produced for the hit game Empire: Total War. It’s immense detail down to every single pixel was the reason this piece took 40 hours to complete.
Three Kingdoms
This detailed illustrative piece of art was completed by `Artgerm for Generals Order, a trading card game based on the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. This particular piece is of the character named Xiao Qiao, one of the beauties of ancient China.
Gia
This soft, subtle painting is a great piece of work by *WarrenLouw as a personal project. It was a lengthy project completed in Photoshop CS3 using an Intuos 3 graphics tablet.
Time to Fly
This great piece of work by *Risachantag has a real dreamy perspective – the artist wanted the painting to suggest that the only way you can find out if you can fly is to jump.
Moon Field
This peaceful painting by ~Ugly-Baka-Girl is a new piece, released earlier this month. It has an incredible textured look to it, which really adds to the final image – it wouldn’t be the same without it!
Biomimicry
This unusual abstract piece of mechanical flowers by *Risachantag was produced during a period of dreaded artists block. The artist tried a different approach to work, starting with shapes and textures, to produce this pretty awesome digital art.
Harvest Time
Harvest Time is a Halloween inspired painting by *Radojavor. The painting is based on a group of Colonists in the middle of harvest celebration when the monster comes… I’m a huge fan of the lighting effects in this painting – incredible!
Waterfall
This ‘speed-painting’ by ~Ani-R really is something to ‘wow’ about. It’s great color scheme and simple strokes make this painting a superb abstract piece, that I personally think would look great as a canvas print in my office.
Perl
When it comes to digital painting, space art is one of the most popular forms. The abstract colors and styles used in producing pieces like this, if pulled off, can almost always become an instant hit. The detail in this piece by ~ChrisCold is immense!
Just Space
Another space painting, this time by =JoeJesus. This piece is so good it’s one of the most popular space paintings on deviantART. With the combination of texture, color, planets and stars, this piece really is something you’d expect to see in a multi-million dollar blockbuster movie.
The Biting Pear of Salamanca
You’re right – there is a giant pear with teeth on your monitor! This surreal painting by `ursulav has over three hundred and twenty thousand hits on deviantART for obvious reasons – it’s amazing! Be sure to check out the full-size version otherwise you’ll miss the photographer!
Bienvenue
Another surreal piece, this time by ~ashiong. This busy, detailed piece is based on a Birthday celebration, with several (or more) cats! The lighting in this piece is superb.
Let’s Rock
A tremendous, very detailed digital painting by artist *Noah-KH. The painting took about 15 hours to complete in Photoshop CS2, not a single reference was used. The Coca-Cola cans and the tattoo on the guys torso and arm is incredibly realistic!
Country Charger Colour
This incredible anime style painting by =Omar-Dogan is one of the artists favourite pieces of work in their entire life – you should see the portfolio! The realistic detail of the tread on the tyres in this piece really suggests how long this painting must have taken!
Pepper Morning
This Photoshop painting by *Wraithdt makes great use of pop-ish and bright colors to really make the lighting in this piece seem real – just incredible!
Alice and Co
This great piece of artwork by `Loish was created for Virtual Fairground, for the development of an Alice in Wonderland MMO. I love the disco-like colors used in this painting – it was produced in Photoshop CS3 with an Intuos 3 graphics tablet.
Heavyhearted…
Heavyhearted… is a great digital painting by `AquaSixio. I love the traditional charcoal and pastel look it has to it, and the sci-fi looking lines used in the background of the piece. This piece took about 30 hours to complete in Photoshop 7! Proves you don’t need the latest to be a good digital artist!
Fantasy World
This lovely colorful Asian-inspired piece by ~Hiliuyun proves that not all digital paintings need to be dark and gloomy. The color combinations used in these piece are enough to brighten up anybodys day!
Still Life
I hear you ask why am I featuring a photograph for the last piece? Well, it’s not, it is in actual fact a digital painting by very talented *Janaschi. Need I say more than absolutely incredible?
Resources: Software & Tablets
Digital Paintings (sometimes referred to as airbrushing) provides endless oppurtunities. It really is the best way to turn your ideas into reality – but it’s not an easy task. You need lots (and lots) of time, patience, the right software and the right tools. It’d be pretty helpful if you can draw, too, as well as understanding shading and how to create realistic light effects. If you need some help with sketching, take a look at this awesome collection of free tutorials on advanced drawing techniques by Chris Spooner.
Your Software Choices:
Lets get started with the most common choices when it comes to purchasing software specifically for digital painting.
Adobe Photoshop CS4 Extended
Well, I’m pretty sure this one all you Circlebox Blog readers are familar with, at least I hope so! Photoshop has great built in feautures, making it one of the best applications to use when it comes to digital paintings. Nevermind photo-editing, Photoshop is powerful enough to do much, much more! Don’t worry, Photoshop 7.0 and up will do the job!
Corel Painter 11
If it’s digital painting you’re purchasing software for, you’ll be better of with Corel Painter, as it’s designed to do one thing: paint! It’s a much cheaper solution to Photoshop, but as most users who paint also design, Photoshop doubles up for the two tasks.
Autodesk SketchBook Pro
Autodesk SketchBook Pro is another application dedicated to digital painting and sketching. It’s a natural-to-use tool for all creative professionals, and is the cheapest out of the three featured products here!
Your Tablet Choices:
With a few great applications to choose from, the next tool you’ll need is a graphics tablet – as you can probably imagine, painting with a standard desktop mouse or trackpad is virtually impossible. When it comes to choosing your tablet, I really do recommend a Wacom, no other tablet can even compare to it, and the price does suggest this. Although, there have been many rumours it is something Apple have been discussing, so watch out Wacom!
You pretty much have three choices with Wacom, and it all depends on your experience, how much you’re going to use it, and of course how many bucks you have to spend!
Wacom Bamboo
The Wacom Bamboo is the ultimate beginners graphics tablet. It comes with a pressure-sensitive pen, perfect for editing photographs and creating digital artwork. It’s sold at a great $99, although if you adapt to it and find yourself using it a lot, you’ll soon be wanting to upgrade as it has a pretty small working area.
Wacom Intuos
The Intuos tablet is what most designers go for – it comes in four sizes: S, M, L & XL. XL has 218.4 square inches of working area. The Intuos4, which is pictured to your left, will cost you between $229-789 depending on what size you go for.
Wacom Cintiq
The Wacom Cintiq, this is what we all dream of! It has a built-in screen, meaning you’re actually drawing on a live surface, not having to go by your hand-eye co-ordination – it makes things much easier, trust me! The version to your left is the 21UX (it’s 21.3″) and costs a whopping $1999. There is however a cheaper model, the 12WX, costing $999.
What more can I say other than I hope you enjoyed this post, and good luck with your purchases! Happy painting!
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Great list! I think this is the first roundup that include resource, software and tools.
I’m obsessed with digital paintings and many of these I haven’t seen before. Great collection. I want a certain HP laptop, once I can afford it of course, that has the tablet as a flip-around screen. If that doesn’t happen though, I’ll definitely be wanting another digital tablet, and these sort of reviews and roundups are always helpful!
To Crystal:
I don’t know which laptop you mean, but pretty much all laptops i know with a tablet screen aren’t ment for painting. They only have 1 pressure level, and they’re only ment for using the mouse.
I’d love to know which laptop you mean, because i’ve never seen that before