Digital Art – Understanding the Basics

Digital art often presents lots of questions, and misconceptions. Today I’d like to help explain some of these myths and mysteries, and hopefully shine a light on digital creativity.

Not everyone will be familiar with what digital art actually entails. Some people might consider the process as a press of a couple of buttons and ta-da, you’ve created a masterpiece! Or worse yet (dare I utter the words!) that all digital art must use AI. But I’d like to take this opportunity to lift the lid on digital artwork, or at least what it means to me.

I’m resident artist and Crow, Mel Langton, and I work both traditionally and digitally.

With a background in graphic design and illustration, my artwork has always been very much based in the world of traditional art, creating my designs in acrylics, inks and mixed media, but over the years I’ve incorporated digital artwork into my portfolio in a way that feels very natural.

A Brief Background on Digital Art

Beginning with the basics, digital artwork usually falls into two categories. Vector based images or raster based.

Vectored artwork is often created in programmes like Illustrator, and is created using precise calculated lines that can be endlessly blown up in proportion, without losing quality. This is especially useful for graphic images such as logos and signage. This kind of digital artwork also lends itself well to product design and screen print.

Raster artwork, on the other hand, is made of pixels. This is the kind of digital imagery that you may be more familiar with if you use Photoshop. In fact, if you take a photograph of your own physical artwork, the file you create will be a raster image. Basically, if you blow it up out of proportion, it will become pixelated.

Both vector and raster artwork can be created using either a computer, tablet, iPad or any combination of these. Also, anyone can learn how to create simple digital images, however more complex artwork requires skill, knowledge and artistic vision.

A Brief Word on AI

A more controversial form of digital artwork, that I should touch on, is AI imagery. I will be honest upfront that I am not a fan of artificially generated imagery, and this is for a number of reasons. 

AI images are created using a series of prompts and, for the most part, imagery unethically scraped from online sources. Having discovered that my own copyrighted artwork has been scraped to train AI models, I find this unacceptable. 

On the contrary to this, some artists will use it to create new artwork concepts based on their own existing artwork. I feel that may be the exception to my rule of zero AI in art, however I will say that my artwork is created by my own human hands, endlessly drawing.

Digital Meets Traditional

Within my own art practice, I create the majority of my digital art using an app called Procreate, on the iPad.

This proves particularly useful for the commissioned work I produce, as it’s far easier to make edits to a digital artwork file than it is to a physical drawing or painting. This is especially so for large scale designs I produce, or artwork involving lots of elements (for example for community art projects).

Digital artwork also lends itself perfectly for using to create prints, including surface pattern design, such as cards, prints or even textiles.

Working digitally is also really useful for creating compositional pieces, such as sketching out the layout for a piece that will later become a physically hand-painted picture. 

In fact many of my hand painted pieces will begin life in my sketchbook, then become fleshed out using Procreate. This allows me to play with composition and colours, before beginning my physical painting. 

Do You Just Press a Button?

In the past, I’ve been asked this, or more accurately accused of this, more than once…

‘Surely you just press a button and it’s done?’. 

For this reason, let me shed a light on the process of how I created my own digital illustrations.

I hand draw all of my digital artwork on my iPad using an Apple Pencil. It’s identical to physically drawing on a piece of paper, accept that my pencil can act as a range of different pencil or brush types. 

This is particularly useful for me as I’m limited to working space and don’t often have the room (or time) to have all my materials to hand.

I can also work on the go, which is very handy!

Crazy Factoids time!

For those who may mistake my artwork as being created by the mere push of a button, here are some facts to chew on…

A small illustration can take me 4hrs plus to complete, depending on the complexity. For example, an 8.5hr illustration can take over 33,000 brushstrokes to produce.

A recent medium sized 34hr digital illustration took me over 55,000 brushstrokes to complete.

Some of my largest digital illustrations measure nearly a meter wide, as a digital file alone. In real life these are pieces that would be printed out at around 2 meters square. These pieces often take over 100hrs to hand draw, so imagine how many brushstrokes!

Long story short, no. My digital artwork is not created with just a click of a button.

Final Thoughts

I hope this post has helped you to understand a little more about digital artwork. Of course, the landscape is ever changing, thanks to developments in technology.

For me, at least, (and I know for many other artists), digital artwork processes will only ever be a tool in creating new artwork. My artwork has and always will be human made and with a whole lot of heart.

If you’d like to find out more about my art practice please check out my profile.

Are you new to digital art and maybe looking to venture into Procreate, or develop the skills you already have? Then you might like to check out my latest Procreate workshops.