Photographers and digital artists have enjoyed a renaissance of sorts with the invention of - and improvements in - digital cameras and imaging software. For years, film, scanners, and six a.m. photoshoots were the only ways of achieving the correct light for a brilliant photo, considered to be a work of art.
Nothing has changed in that realm, but the advancements of the digital age have given both photographers and digital artists so much more to work with that, really, the two have truly merged into one title - artist of the digital medium.
Digital Art Revolution
A book written by digital media artist Scott Ligon called Digital Art Revolution not only teaches readers the ins and outs of the most popular (and expensive) version of imaging software in the world - Photoshop - it examines his professional transition into the digital renaissance and his hopes for artists of this medium in the future.
Classifications and scrutiny have been the biggest drawbacks to the medium's expressions of free-speech and limitless creative energy. Confronting disapproval from 'traditionalists' - mainly those whose paint brushes never touched a photograph nor were inspired by one - digital media artists were deemed lowly, disreputable creatures of the art world. To masters like Scott Ligon, the response was a sort of vividly impressive 'who cares', and the world moved toward the medium's explosion of excited old salts and half-cocked newbies skipping wildly into an imaginative realm sans paintbrush, wacom pad and mouse in hand.
As Ligon very eloquently explains on page 15 of his book, "Art-making, in any one of its forms, uses whatever tools are appropriate to make the creative process happen. Any attempt to categorize and separate discourages many of the intrinsic possibilities within the digital medium."
Marc Chagall, during the emergence of Modernistes or Avant Garde painters, also spoke about public categorization being too much of a box for artists to pay much attention to the public concern without inhibiting the creative process. Such attitudes, historically, have led to movements in art. The digital art 'revolution', as Scott has appropriately called it, is just another movement along with public scrutiny and gasps of 'wow!' at the gallery.
Photos Into Art With GNU Software
There are simple characteristics of art deemed 'good' art by the public which prove this revolution is not a move into left field. These basics are constant, even in a medium that is sometimes less 'hands-on' than traditional mediums of mixing paints, film developers, and film emulsions.
- First, composition is key - still! As much as an excited newbie might wish composition would go just away in importance, it never does. Get used to this being a key factor in a work of art - photo, digital, paint, clay, sticks, or stones.
- Second, the effects of depth or flatness must be determined by the artist as with the means to achieve this choice, In other words, light and shadow are also key elements. This choice is often reflected in an artist's personal style but is also deviated from depending on the artist.
- Third, the use of color is definately a key aspect. As inaction is sometimes as important as action, in life, decisions to black and white or limit color are included in 'use of color' and are so much a part of an art piece that these three elements can actually be considered the artwork and not separate elements from it.
GIMP, the GNU imaging software available free from charge online gives access to all creative beings on the planet who can get themselves to a computer the ability to involve themselves in this revolution of art into digital. Try it! Download or use one of the programs that may have been included with a digital camera to create digital photo art.
The Tools to Try First
- Crop Tool: The crop tool is every photographer and digital artist's golden key to good composition. Not even the most pro photo taker has in the field the same expert eye to judge just where the camera lens' borders reveal the best composition. There are also ways, with digital art to make numerous photos from one. An eye of a zebra for instance, and then the zebra drinking from a water puddle as may be in the original photo. Both can be interesting with good composition.
- Artistic Effects: The most fun part of this kind of art medium is the ease at which an artist can change a photo of grandmas on a bench to look like cartoon grandmas in a fictious world. Some to try include Paint Daubs, Paper Cut-outs, and a version of Rotoscoping.
- Contrast and Color: Hue and Saturation, Brightness and Contrast, Levels, and Layer Effects are also important to check and fun to manipulate. Saturation is the intensity or amount of color - the opposite of which is greyed and dulled color, or just grey. Hue is the color itself, but with imaging software can almost be used like a light filter might have been used in the field, and not many novice photographers bring with them a light kit and set of light filters - one of the many reasons even professional photographers could not resist the digital age of imaging with computer software.
- Textures and Backgrounds: Use textures within the software program and personally added or found textures. These create mood, depth, and interest to the subject matter. As in the digital photo art of the kitten, here. The original photo looks cute, soft filtered and rather muted in colors; but, the digitally created piece looks like a vividly colored painting with a texture added to the window to look like rain outside, creating a 'mood' and exploding the color in the little kitty's world inspiring imagination to the viewer.
- Personal Artistic Vision: This means to bring to the photo art piece, or creative digital 'painting' personal creative vision, artistic tastes, and a voice - part of the intrinsic value mentioned above. Most of all, have fun and consider the digital art piece worthy, because it is.
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