New Art, a Poem, and Digital Art Reflections

I just added new art to my Nature Gallery. Impression of Water Lily is a digital semi-abstract impression of a water lily. This is what I hope to be the first in a series of evolving impressions of similar botanic pieces. My objective is to experiment with different digital techniques of representing various flower-like structures found in nature.

Regarding computer art, here's a poem I've just written that in part reflects the intellectual challenges faced by the digital artist.

I really like computer art
Painting with pixels is sweet
But reading all those manuals
Is anything but a treat.

One advantage traditional artists have over their digital artist counterparts is that after all these years paintbrushes are still paintbrushes and pencils are still pencils. Given the static nature of their tools, traditional artists can focus on refining their mastery of their tools. The same is not so for the digital artist. It frequently happens that even before one can master a particular digital tool, or explore its full range of potentialities, a new version of that tool or another tool comes along to replace it and the learning process begins anew.

The tools I learned how to use when I was first exposed to digital art (computer art as it was then known) in the early 1980's are extinct today. In fact, today I'm only using one of the tools that I learned and was using in the 1990's. It is the one graphics software that I have used the longest. I started with Adobe Photoshop 5 circa 1999 but today's Photoshop CS4 bears little resemblance to that first version.

I fully expect this rate of change to continue. As operating systems progress and change; as old hardware dies; as graphics software packages cease to be supported and their owning companies go out of business; and as new graphics software offerings supercede in functionality capabilities of older software; we digital artists will remain on the upgrade treadmill with our noses buried in the manual of our newest digital tool.

| Return to the Blog Index | This entry was posted on Saturday, March 13th, 2010 at 1:33 pm and is filed under Art and Artists, computer art, Digital Art, Photoshop.