10 Reasons Why You Should Become a Digital Artist

Posted on 25. Apr, 2010 by Ash in Articles

Creating art is all about self expression, that is why it’s important that an artist would find the appropriate medium that will help transfer his/her thoughts to reality. I receive many emails questioning how does digital art benefit artists and why would anyone rely on digital tools to create art. To help answer all these questions, I have decided to gather 10 reasons why you should consider becoming a digital artist.

1) Create Your Work on Layers.

Creating your work on layers is great practice to help you adjust various elements in your art separately. Each layer can be adjusted without harming other elements in your artwork. You can turn off layers that you are not working with to help lessen anything that distracts you. When creating an oil painting traditionally, if you wanted to readjust the background after the whole painting was done, you might be at risk at ruining figures and objects in the foreground. With digital layers, you can work on one layer at a time which helps you to focus and concentrate on the element you are working on.

2) Wide Range of Tools.

With traditional art, your skills are your limits but that’s not the case with digital art. The amount of tools, brushes, vectors and patterns that are available for use are tremendous in the digital world. You can choose from thousands and thousands of brushes that can create the specific effect you want. You can also personalize it with the way you want to. With the addition of touch sensitive tablets, you will be sure that every brush is used virtually by your own hands.

3) See the Progress of Your Work.

It’s a great learning experience when you see how your work was created. You can see where you are strong at and what other parts that needs improvement.  By activating an on screen recorder, you can time lapse hours of work and see them in minutes, that’s how speed paintings are created (See the article ‘What is Speed Painting All About?’ for more information).  This is great practice to be able to re-evaluate yourself and see where you went wrong. Sometimes its even fun to show your friends how your work was created.

4) Apply Glorious Effects.

Sometimes you want to apply a mood to your artwork but just want to experiment first. Moods and effects are great ways to see on your work even after your final product is finished. This application of mood can instantly apply the effect you want and if you don’t like it – just remove it

5) Alter Your Art Anytime, Anywhere.

It’s always good to edit your work  anytime and anywhere you go. Your art can now be with you even when you are traveling, without having the hassle of dragging behind you art tools kit. Whenever you feel like art, your art will be with you.  You can also save your work on different files so that if you feel like working from a previous stage, that would be done with a click of a button.

6) The Miracle of Undos.

How many times in your life did you wish to have an undo button in reality? Well, at least you can apply that with your art. Whenever you do a fatal mistake, that doesn’t mean your artwork is gone forever! You can instantly go back and get what you originally had done. So many times we throw away great artworks that had huge potential but got ruined because of a stupid mistake. With digital art, that is something you shouldn’t worry about.

7) Save Up Some Time.

Even though you might hear about digital artists working days on a piece, art is usually done faster with digital tools. The amount of time to create a finalized piece is generally done faster because of the hands-on tools and layers that are available that make life much easier and faster.

The Joy of Photo-Manipulations.

The art of photo-manipulations would have been very pale without digital technology. Now you can crop and attach images smoothly and very accurately together. Digital tools can help blend in hundred of photos together creating a final spotless piece that traditioanl methods could only have dreamed of doing. Photo-manipulation is one of the fields of digital art that really benefit from all the tools available. The amount of tools available encourage artists to interact together and share their art, which creates a better learning experience.

9) The Power of Renderings Engines.

Rendering 3D objects has changed the way we look at art. We can now create work that is SO real that many people cannot even spot as graphics. With rendering, digital artists have managed to create what they imagined EXACTLY. Rendering has even brought to us the beautiful world of movie animations and effects that changed the course of movie history.

10) Share Your Art Efficiently Between Group Members in a Project.

If you are working on an art project, sharing your art is much easier when its digital. You can send it to other group members who might live across the globe, who can re-edit it instantly. This power of accessibility and share can create art projects in a matter of hours. Many projects, especially in the commerical field, can be done while group members are not even together in one place.

Image by Nikita

Tags: digital artist, photoshop, portfolio, rendering