forays into digital art

So I got a Wacom tablet! It's pretty nifty, and I've been playing around with it. It's nice because I can sit on the couch and watch movies without fear of spilling anything. I've been using ArtRage, which is a terrible name, but it's a pretty good program for a beginner, and easy to figure out without much difficulty. The biggest challenge to learning the digital stuff is the disconnection between your had and the line being created. I'm more used to the directness of traditional media, so it took a bit of getting used to not actually touching the piece I was working on. I still have a few things to learn, and I may get some better software because while ArtRage is decent enough, I'd like some more options. So here's what I made!

This is tentatively titled Dome, and I was channeling '70s sci-fi novel covers. The geodesic dome was fun to do, and I got to appreciate layers to the fullest. This features some nice lurid colors and some kind of sexy android girl. I think she's an android; it doesn't really matter. Also triangles. 

The second one, Runaway, is named after a song of the same name by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. I was listening to it on the walk home and constructed a narrative. I'd like to do more with this concept, and was thinking of making some concept art for that video game I'm totally going to make with all that time and money I have. (Sarcasm!) The ruined city was fun to do, if time consuming, and I'd like to work more on this subject. Again, there's some retro sci-fi thing happening, and for the larger project, I was thinking of incorporating that with a sort of Arabian architecture theme. 












Finally, we have Wheat, which may or may not have been inspired by the Untappd. I'm happy with how the faces came out, and for some reason I gave it a vaguely Polaroid-like border, but I think it works here. 













So in all, I'm liking the digital art. People, especially non art people seem to have the idea that you can be in one of two camps on the subject of digital vs. traditional media, which is dumb, really, because there's no reason why liking something necessarily has to mean not liking something else. I'm still kind of getting my footing when it comes to digital media, figuring out how to best use the options and what styles work best with it. Personally, I don't think I'll be setting out to make digital paintings look like traditional oil ones--that never looks good. I kind of like keeping the digital stuff cleaner. I also like working with limited color palettes with digital and keeping things on the simpler side, and I'd like to do more with patterns. We'll see where it goes from here!