Digital Painting Techniques: Traditional Media Embellishment Workshop

Discover how to embellish your digital fine art paintings with Traditional Media.

Join us in North Platte! Friday September 10 and Saturday September 11.
We will have two days of immersion into digital print embellishment. We will use Oils, Acrylics, Pastels and charcoal to finish our digital prints. We will explore techniques geared towards fine art portraiture.

Down load the Digital Painting Techniques embellishment PDF.

Digital Print Embellishment

This Workshop is Limited to 15

There are only 15 seats available for this workshop. Small groups learn better and have more access to the presenter. The tuition for the Fall workshop is 327.00. We can break it into two payments of 167.50.

FAST ACTION BONUS, The first two fully paid tuitions will receive 25% off their tuition and another surprise bonus at the workshop.
Weather permitting we will have some time to capture a western model or two at Buffalo Bill’s Historic Ranch near our studio.

Day 1, Sealing and preparation, Oils and Acrylics
Day 2, Pastels, Watercolor, charcoal, gallery wraps

We will spend some time talking about presentation, whether to use a lab or print at home.

This workshop is designed for the beginner and intermediate painter. Bring your laptop with Photoshop and Corel Painter loaded and ready to roll.

Location

The location is my studio in North Platte, NE. The address is 2102 West 18th Street.
North Platte is a small community on the I-80 corridor. Lodging is in-expensive and the airport has three flights a day during the week arriving from Denver and two a day Saturday and Sunday.

This workshop is sponsored by Allied Photo Labs, Digital Art Academy and Digital Paint Magazine.

Digital Painting Embellishment Workshop

Down load the Digital Painting Techniques embellishment PDF.

Digital Art for Beginners

by Karen Bonaker

From a very young age, I enjoyed drawing and painting and was completely content with that until the day I found ®Corel Painter and realized I could create beautiful art on my computer. I turned a deaf ear to my colleagues that told me digital art was not art, something deep inside told me that this was a new frontier just waiting to be discovered.

The next question was where to begin? As I started my research, I found that there were many options for learning how to paint digitally; the hardest part was to find what worked for me and what will ultimately work for you.

For the beginner Painter student, this can be a difficult journey. From the experiences of my own journey, I would like to share some of the best resources for learning how to paint with pixels. Years have passed since I first picked up the stylus. Today, there is so much more available to us, offering the beginning digital artist the opportunity to really discern about how they want to learn to paint digitally and what works best for them.

Online Classroom Training

Digital Art Academy

Online classes vary from site to site but, what you can expect at Digital Art Academy is a personal experience with plenty of support along the way. Classes run six times a year and each session last four weeks. Generally, each week your instructor will give you a written lesson and a video which you can download to your computer and view at your convenience. Your classroom is accessible to you twenty-four hours a day and your instructor is there to support you and answer your questions in a forum venue.

DAA was founded in 2007 as a center of creative excellence; where art, passion and talent converge with some of the best digital artists, nurturing the finest digital artists of tomorrow. The mission is to empower students to realize their fullest potential in the fields of Digital Artistry, Content Creation and most of all, Creative Expression.

Classes are taught by highly qualified digital artists and software professionals. If you enjoy working with other students and a live instructor who offers help and guidance, then this is the place for you. Classes are very reasonably priced and DAA is a Corel Training Partner. Most classes include written lessons and video to enhance the learning experience.

LVS Online:

LVS Online is a pioneer for online training and offers a smorgasbord of opportunities to learn Painter as well as other software. Although not focused specifically on Digital Art; you will find affordable online training for Painter by Elaina Moore-Kelly as well as other creative applications.

Paint box J:

Jeremy Sutton recently launched this wonderful site where members can learn from his techniques and inspirations while obtaining advice from one of the foremost Painter Masters. The site offers video and in-depth articles all about digital art. Most recently, Jeremy added a new critique section where members can learn from each other as well as share. Jeremy takes this opportunity to offer practical in-depth analysis and advice that is relevant to all PaintboxJ members. Critiques are offered on a monthly basis.

Workshops and Webinars

For the student who enjoys a hand on approach to learning, the digital art community is full of wonderful artists who offer hands on workshops on a continual basis. Not only are many of these workshops onsite but, some are being offered over the internet using various webinar providers such as Go To Webinar. For those who have the means to travel, workshops are wonderful ways to learn for the beginner. Here are just a few of the many talented digital artists to help you get started on your journey.

Marilyn Sholin

Jeremy Sutton

John Derry

Scott Deardorff

Helen Yancy

Jill Garl

Ann Carter Hargrove

Karen Sperling

Heather Michelle Bjoershol

Fay Sirkis

Tim ONeill

Forums and Blog Sites

Forums offer a student support and a community which they can feel a part of. There are some excellent forums available to the beginner however, one word of advice – study the forum before you join, make sure it will be a good fit for you, a place where you can grow and not feel intimidated. Look for support from other members and, most of all, make sure that it is a place that offers guidance, knowledge and a little hand holding. This can go a long way to create a comfortable place to meet new friends and learn from the best. There are many excellent forums; here are a few choices which offer the beginning digital artist a great place to learn and to feel supported as they learn.

Painter Factory

Painter Factory is place for all things Painter. The forum is full of useful information and offers digital artists of all levels a high level of support. The forum is moderated by Jinny Brown.

Digital Painting Forum

A fee based forum primarily focused on Painter. The forum offers a wide variety of support for the professional and beginner digital artist as well as the armature and professional photographer. The forum founder is Painter Master Marilyn Sholin. Digital Painting forum offers gallery space to showcase your work.

Painter Talk

Painter Talk is a free forum dedicated to digital art. It is a special place for learning and growing in a supportive and friendly digital art community. Painter Talk offers a Gallery to showcase your work.

Concept Org
A web based community of artists who are focused on helping members learn about art and showcase their work.

John Derry Pixlblog

John Derry is a pioneer of digital painting and one of the original authors of Corel® Painter. John’s authors a wonderful blog to follow with helpful information and resources for the digital artist.

Pixel Alley

Founded by Jinny Brown, Pixel Alley is one of the primary educational forums on the web. Jinny offers support to users of Painter with many interesting and enlightening links.

Books and DVD Training

Perhaps you learn best by watching a video, DVD or reading a book. Artists tend to be visual learners so DVD’s and books are a great alternative to travel or going on the web. There are many wonderful training DVD’s available to you including those that come with the software such as Corel Painter and Painter Essentials.  These products offer a solid fundamental approach to learning the software. I have highlighted some of my favorites for learning Corel Painter.

Jeremy Sutton
Learning Corel Painter X with Jeremy Sutton
Painter X Creativity

Cher Threinen-Pendarvis
Painter Wow book series

John Derry

Painter 11 Essential Training

Tim ONeill

Artistic Impressions DVD’s

Digital Painting Techniques DVD Set

My final advice to the beginner digital artist is to take the time to find what works for you; look for instructors that encourage you to be the best you can be, instructors that challenge you and help you see your full potential. It has been a wonderful journey for me to see the growth in the digital art community and the generous support from many of the finest instructors and artists who give of their knowledge and talent so graciously.

Free Webinar with Master Digital Painter Darrell Chitty

Digital painting techniques revealed. Would you like to expand the products and services you promote to your clients?

Guest expert Darrell Chitty is going to teach us some techniques for painting like the Old Masters.
We’ll be meeting Tuesday night, December 29th at 8 p.m. Central for the webinar.

This is your opportunity to learn live from Darrell.

You will learn the styles of 3 Masters; Rembrandt, Monet and Turner.
Learn what the differences are in style and how to duplicate those style differences in your own paintings.

Discover how to create an eye-catching digital painting that demands attention…

Review how to utilize Darrell’s workflow so you can create faster and with less stress, even if you’re not an experienced digital artist.

To participate in this call, join us at 8 p.m. Central. You can pickup access to this NO COST webinar by clicking on the link below. There are only 50 seats. Please don’t register unless you have sincere interest and will be there.

Here is some of Darrell’s work

Artist Darrell Chitty's Rhapsody in Pink

SORRY THIS WEBINAR IS FULL.

Be sure to sign up for the notification list to the right if you missed this one. We have webinars on occasion and other free content as well. Filling out the opt-in at the right puts you on the subscription list for digital paint magazine.

Digital Painting with Camel Hair

Digital painting has always had less of the tactile feel that traditional media. What if you could grab the touch and feel of traditional brushes? Believe it or not there is a group working on this. I came across this info in the first part of November. It hit my google reader again today so I thought I would post about it.

Here is a video (with no sound) from you tube and the informational PDF is attached. The article in the PDF is fasinating, it does get into a little geek speek though. In some areas I was bored or got lost as I am an artist not an engineer, but….worth the read to see what is happening in the field. Additioanlly I have seen this referred to as “fluid paint” and “intu paint”. I am not sure which one is the current name.

http://didactiekinf.uhasselt.be/capita/lesmateriaal/02%20-%20DigitalPainting_slides.pdf

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.

Digital Art demonstration with free art software

We have been going on about SEO and Art marketing stuff for a while now. There is still much to come about keywords, backlinks, site structure and why a CMS (content management system) like WordPress or Joomla will out perform a website most of the time.  All of the time if, like me, you are a mere mortal and don’t want to take the time to be a webmaster and learn coding and all of that mess. Wrong side of the brain for me.

So, that being said here is a cool video from David Revoy. What I like is that this is produced from open source (read free) art software. We will be looking at some of these in the near future. The other thing I particularly like is the process in which David works. I learned digital painting from a variety of master painters and still am learning more chops each day. One of the things in my work-flow a bit different than some is I use what I call chaos, (Andrew Jones coined it…I think) Very similar to the “muck-up” phase of painting just a tic different. David Revoy employs chaos here as well. Don’t worry if you are not a free hand artist, you can still employ chaos in the workflow of painting from photo reference. Enjoy.

Digital painting time-lapse : Lezard from David REVOY on Vimeo.

Digital Painting SEO Keywords part two

Finding Keywords for your art business is really not hard now days. It is actually kind of fun. There are many free keyword research tools, here are a few you can use: Google’s Wonder Wheel, Keyword Tool, Google Insights, Wordtracker’s Lab tools; and my favorite Market Samurai.

If you are going the free route, check them out and compare the results. I use the paid version of Market Samurai and it the best software investment I have made, including the digital painting software and digital imaging software like Corel Painter, Photoshop (Adobe Master Collection), Paint Shop Pro…you get the idea.

Market Samurai cost 149.00 and I use it daily for all kinds of task’s related to running my online art and information businesses. You can get a free trial at the link listed above and once your trial expires you still can you the three tools specific to keyword research, those are; rank tracker, keyword research and SEO Competition.

The best bet to learn how to find your unique keywords for your digital paintings, portrait commissions, pet portraits or whatever, is to get your free trial from Market Samurai. After you download it go through their video’s on keyword research. I can tell you I have personally spent 1,000’s of dollars for courses to learn this. Many of those courses did not have as good of training as the video series.

One thing I will talk about here that is not in the videos is what is called Geo-targeting. Most artist and digital photographers especially want to dominate their local market first and then spread from there.

To do this is really not all that difficult with your blog. With your flash website…maybe impossible. Lets say one of your studio’s primary target markets is heirloom children’s portraiture. You find a few keywords that support that and one of them is “Childrens Photography”

You can see below that there are 325 searches daily for this keyword and there are 205,000 competing pages.

Now if you live in Arizona and used “Children’s Photography Phoenix” it will narrow the searches to …not many. The good news is also narrows the competition, usually to 0. So you will begin to capture the traffic from the “local” group of potential buyers looking for Children’s Photography.

Next up-what do we do with these crazy keywords anyway?

Here is a video on using wordtracker. NOTE!!! This has music, if you are at work turn down the volume first, he he he.

Digital Painting SEO tips-Keywords part one

We are going to take a quick peek at keywords.  First, what are keywords?

Keywords are the words or phrases that a potential client types in the search engine to find you. These keywords are what the search engine algorithm finds to deliver the desired content to the person seeking information.

So if you are a digital artist specializing in children’s portraituresome of your keywords might be, children’s portraiture, commission a portrait, children’s paintings ect. The idea here is to figure out what your client base would put in the search engine search box to find you.

Using keywords is critical. Search engine spiders rely on these words to find your site.  This is one of the big challenges to using a cool looking flash site. They sure are pretty but a very simple site with lots of content,  that is, copy that will answer your potential clients’ questions will smoke a pretty website in terms of traffic. As visual artist that is a challenge. We need a site that is representational of our work but still has lots of content. That is one reason you really have to have a blog. Dump the flash website and replace it with a site that you can add plenty of keyword rich copy. Hard to swallow I know.

Using the proper keywords is just as important. For example if you are an artist  I probably would not use artist as one of my keywords. Why? It is way to competitive and you really don’t stand a chance of anyone ever find you when they type in “artist” in the search engine box. It is way to competitive. A better way for you to do this would be to narrow it down. Use “Children’ s Portrait Artist, Denver” instead. You will have a much better shot at someone finding you with that keyword.

So ideally you want to use high traffic and low competition keywords.  And the only competition we should ever be concerned with are the websites in the Top 10 of the search engines. Outside of that is pretty much useless.

So how do we find keywords and where/how do we use them?  That will be the next post. Then we can get back to backlinks again. Bored?  Check out some of the tutorials or brushes on the resource pages.

Why do we want to learn SEO and optimize our blogs, images, videos or websites anyway? What does all of this have to do with my art?

Great question. If you just want to create awesome digital art or learn to use some of the best painting software, you don’t have to trouble yourself with any of this boring stuff. If you want people to see your latest digital masterpiece, fantasy art, children’s portraiture or to commission  more work using the internet, it becomes critical.  The good news is that many simple little steps can make a huge difference for you. Also in terms of the marketplace, you will have an advantage over those who you compete with.

So hang in there with these articles, they will be short and simple. They have to be as I am certainly NOT an SEO expert.

In the last post we addressed the question of backlinks, that is, what are they?  In the next few posts we can determine if they are important and why.

The question is; are backlinks necessary for a high search engine ranking?

An easy answer is, maybe. We haven’t really talked much about keywords yet but the backlink question is directly related to how competitive the keyword is that you are talking about ranking for. If you are trying to rank for a super competitive keyword, you will have to have a ton of backlinks for that keyword.  If, on the other hand you are trying to rank for a less competitive keyword, the backlinks in that case may not be as important. Learning to optimize your web-page properly could be enough to get you there. We will be talking about some ways to optimize your web pages and blogs down the road.

Also, don’t fret. We will definitely have much more in terms of digital painting tips and techniques, digital painting software uses and reviews as well as some digital painting video tutorials. Hang tight this stuff will be worth it.