Digitally Painting steampunk?

Steampunk has been all the rage lately. I have not covered much of it here because I havent really delved into it. As I am not an illustrator it is not an area that I felt the readers of this blog or the clients that commission me really had a passion for. I could be wrong. I personally find it fascinating.  That being said I appreciate art, any kind of art. So…

You have got to check out this keyboard!

Awesome Keyboard by Jake von Slatt

I am a motor head as many of you know so,  I really love the look of this crafted keyboard.  What makes this even more interesting is the artist breaks down the process of creating his masterpiece.  It is a far stretch from digital painting for sure.  It fits more into the industrial art category, but you have to admit it is cool.

You can see some videos, still images and a written explanation by clicking on the image or following this link to Steampunk Workshop.

What does a 425 year old business have to do with Digital Art?

As a digital art geek I still use fine art techniques and fine-art tools. Many digital artist use art software and combine digital paint with traditional media tools much like I do. How many companies worldwide get to celebrate a centennial anniversary?  In the business world since I was a kid over 90% of the businesses don’t reach their 5^th year. Very few families even can trace their own heritage back 300 years.  One of the papers I use for my digital art is Hahnemuhle’s Torchon. Hahnemuhle was founded in 1584! They are celebrating a birthday of 425 years. How cool is that?

Below are some historical facts about Hahnemuhle’s  fabulous history and heritage, this is referenced from there website and press release. If you love history or art history this is very cool.

425th Hahnemühle Anniversary – Historical Facts about the Papermill

Owner’s history

I know for me I am going to make sure I can get a tour when I am in Europe next. It would be well worth it.

Digital Paint Magazine September Issue is Available

Digital art, digital artist’s, Photoshop and Corel Painter tutorials as well as art software can all be found in this months issue. A tad late by our standards but well worth the wait. You can check it out at the Digital Paint Magazine page. Opt-in to the subscriber list if you haven’t already.

There are some fun things in this issue and John Derry is the feature interview. For those of you that don’t know John he is one of the three original co-writers of Corel Painter. He had been in this gig for a long time and his interview is really good. Then we have a tutorial from Jill Tovey, Interview and art from traditional media photo-realist Bruce Burkholder,a very nice interview from Mark Monciardini of Photoshop Top Secret fame, online class information from Digital Art Academy founder Karen Bonaker and some art marketing goodies from Sian Lindeman. Lots of reading, lots of art.

Do let us know how you like it. We love comments. Do you have must see digital art, ideas for a features of a digital artist you would like to see, art software you want to know about, other painters we should interview? Let us know about it. In fact, for this month I have a special free download I will send to everyone who posts a comment. It will be a surprise but I know you will like it. It has a value of 19.95.

Good reading!

Tim

A Virtual Paintout for Digital Artist’s

As an artist one has to choose a specific genre to even have a chance at getting a piece of the market.  At least that is my opinion, rarely does one find an artist equally talented with landscape paintings in oil and portraits in watercolor or pastel also. That doesn’t mean we turn our backs on other media or subject matter, it just means the bulk of our time is spent with the subject matter and media that we like best.

I love social media marketing and internet tools almost as much as I love being an artist that produces digital art. I came across Kentucky artist Bill Guffey several months ago and am just now getting back to writing about his awesome project that involves media tools.  Bill is a traditional media artist using some internet tools. Thanks goes out to Charlie Parker from lines and colors for his post a few days ago that reminded me of  Bill Guffey.

Bill came up with an awesome idea for a virtual paintout using google maps street views. We are mimicking the virtual paintout using digital art tools for our group project on digital paint magazine blog. So cudo’s to Bill for the inspiration and setting the stage. You can see a really nice article about it here at lines and colors as well as read about it on Bills blog.

Group Digital Art Project

I have been thinking about doing something for awhile with art from various social media properties. I have been inspired by various social media applications and the unique personal images people use for there profile pictures. Very cool.

If you are a people person this will be a fun exercise as you will have a chance to study some folks from a unique perspective. A few days ago I came across a blog post from a blog I had not been reading for awhile, lines and colors. In the article Charlie profiled artist Matt Held and his Facebook project as well as Bill Guffey’s Virtual Paintout. I will write and article on those fun projects in a few days.

So here is what we will do. The first month we will use Facebook. The exercise is to find and paint an image from a profile picture listed on Facebook. Image size at this point doesn’t matter although a small image is what we want sent to us (2×3 or so at 150 would be fine.)

The goal here is to continue to develop our digital chops and improve our digital art while getting to know the very useful and awesome marketing power and SEO chutzpah of some social media sites. You can use artrage or Corel Painter, even do a photoshop painting, the use of any art software or plugin is welcome.  Digitally paint or draw a portrait and send the image to tim@digitalpaintmagazine. Tell us your name and website or URL as well as the software and any plugins used. We will post some of them on the blog here.

For those who chose to participate I will send a special report specific to the social media site we are using. If you want to participate without publishing your image that is ok also, just let us know you dont want your creation published.

Ok so here is the schedule for a few months.

September 11-October 11 Facebook Profiles

October 11-November 11 Landscapes from Google Maps Street Views

November 11-December 15 Twitter Profiles

BTW-Mark K. made a comment on a different post about copyright infringement. He is  correct, I am certainly not advocating that you just snake someone’s image and paint it without permission. I made an assumption that people would use common sense and ask first. Bad to make assumptions. Make sure you have permission from the person who owns the profile. Don’t be a ding dong.