THIS is the digital art review.

Okay, this is the digital art review.

This, obviously, is a picture. A photograph. Taken with a digital camera. It could use some brightness/contrast editing and some color re-balance.

Nah.

I used it as a base for a piece of digital art.

I would just like to say that getting this from the above picture was much more difficult than it looks. I feel like we appreciate the product more when we have an idea of the process that produced it. I'm not walking you through it, so just take my word for it: it was not a simple selection to make.

Also, the original was black on white. I inverted the colors so it would look better on the black blog background.

This looks cool, I love it. Something that I can do digitally that I have a hard time with in traditional mediums is simplicity. Two colors. One object. Stark. Simple. Efficient.

Working in the digital realm opens new possibilities for me. I've started experimenting with this stark style in photography and ink, which I doubt I would have done if not for being able to produce it in digital art.

The text inside the tree are the lyrics to a song called The Autumn Effect, by 10 Years. It complements the picture, although that information would have to be given to you as the lyrics cannot be read.

Again, you'll appreciate this image more if you know a bit about Photoshop and the layering here.

That seems to be a theme in digital art. It is as if using a computer is cheating... but as a photographer, traditional artist, and digital artist, I can say that Photoshop is just another tool. Learning to use it is like learning to use a wood burner or dremel for putting art into wood. Or learning to use a paint brush (clumsy, unwieldy things) when you're use to pencils.

I believe the art community as a whole has made a shift toward incorporating and accepting digital art. I have recently seen many works and instalations that are either entirly digital, or have a digital component. There are also online, interactive pieces of digital art, such as Peter Luining's works at www.ctrlaltdel.org (go play with them, they're fun.)