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.)

Almost a digital art review.

This post is supposed to be a review of some piece of digital art.

It turned into a mini-essay. But it's good, so the actual blog post will be separate.

As an artist, I thought it would be good to discuss my own definitions of and the distinctions between traditional art and digital art.

Traditional art would be the hands-on media forms: drawing, painting, sculpting... acrylic, graphite, charcoal, crayon, oil. Particularly drawing/sketching and painting. I consider sculptors to be their own little sub culture, (though this is due largely to my dislike of sculpting and horrendous inability to produce anything decent.)

I feel that photography and filmography can be placed in a subcategory.

Digital art pretty much mean anything that was created using a computer, be it an interactive piece online, a rendering from Blender, or a picture created through photoshop. Digital art may also include computer generated music, as opposed to music directly from an instrument, which would be traditional.

But where does traditional stop and digital begin? especially when we consider photo-editing.

As a photographer, I say that changing a digital picture from color to black and white does not make it digital art. It simply makes it edited. Modifying the brightness and contrast or saturation does not make it digital art, it makes it retouched. The same applies for drawings that are scanned into the computer and have slight edits.

Taking elements from two different pictures and putting them into one however, that I consider digital art.

There is also the term "mixed-media," which can probably be applied to digital work that uses traditional art as it's base.

As a traditional artist (primarily graphite and ink drawings) I would ask "Is digital art actually art?"

The answer to that really depends on your answer to "what constitutes 'Art'?" Which is different question. Which I am not going to address.

Is photography art?

Well, to the grandmother who takes a hundred pictures a day of their first grandchild, no, it's not really art. It's more like archiving .

To the chick trying to take a sexy picture in their bathroom mirror with their camera phone for their profile picture... it's not art. I'm not sure what that is.

To the Best of Show winner of the City of Richardson's photography contest, it's definitely art.

Photography can be art... or not, (although I'm noticing the word itself has an artsy connotation.) The same can be said of other mediums as well. I.e. there is a distinguishable difference between a full blown graphite still life and a doodle in your notebook.

A non-photographer artist might think "psshh. Anyone can take a picture, what makes that art?" I did. Truth is, taking a balanced, well composed, aesthetically pleasing picture is a helluva lot harder than you'd think. Unless you've tried.

We tend to think the same way about digital art. As if using a computer program is cheating. But, that's how it goes with all the new stuff.

We stop thinking like that and appreciate the product much more once we have a glimpse of the process that produced it.

As an artist, I find that there is overlap in the primary skills. The over arching artistic ability is the ability to see. Being able to see the shapes and value changes in a still life. Being able to "crop with your eye" to take a well composed picture. Yes, a lot of it can be learned, but some people have a stronger inclination towards it... an instinct. Putting together a well balanced picture, using the colors (or lack thereof) to achieve a certain mood, the over-all ability to compose... is the same whether you are painting or photoshopping.

The fine-tuning comes with the medium and with knowing your tool. I've done some excellent graphite and ink work. My painting fails epically. Holding and swapping between three different pencils in one hand is a habit of mine. I'm clumsy as can be with a paint brush. Drawing with a homemade quill pen has a bit of learning curve compared to store bought metal pen tips.

Similarly, software is another tool and one has to learn to use it. Photoshop has a lot of buttons. Blender has A LOT of buttons. Learning to use either one was like learning to use the dremel, or the wood burner, or the airbrush...

The digital realm is just another medium for art.

CC

Use a creative commons image.

Well, this was really good for me. Now I am at least somewhat familiar with the Creative Commons licensing types, which puts me one step closer to putting some of my own work under creative commons.

I'm not a big fan of Flickr, but I was impressed with the system for sorting through CC images, and with the brief summaries provided on the side bar explaining the attribution, non-commercial, no derivative, and share alike.

As a photographer and sometimes artist, I can definitly appreciate what CC does. For example, take a look at this picture:

Water drop pictures have been done time and time again, but that doesn't make getting a clear, crisp, centered shot any less difficult. If I took this picture, I would not be pleased if someone else to the credit for it.

I've taken at least one contest-winning photograph myself - a one of a kind picture - and I am almost paranoid about someone reusing it, saying it was their own. Or selling it. A full fledged copyright for a handful of pictures that I am particularly proud of is unreasonable. Getting them under a attribution, non-commercial CC license seems far more manageable.

Using the internet and tools such as Flickr, any 'sometimes' artist or photographer can get their work out there... and CC can provide a copyright-like sense of security over the artist's ownership of the work and the credit due to their time and effort.

note

I was in bed sick most of the day on Friday, really the only time I got up was to take more NyQuil.

So, the blog post that should've been up yesterday will be posted sometime tonight.

Using the Social Netowrk

"Have you learned to play yet?" - Creative Motion.

I was introduced to Creative Motion a few years ago when it was barely a fledgling out of the concept stage, through a friend whom I met through MySpace when I first started spinning fire. Since the days of the monthly Spinfest at White Rock Lake, where I became a semi-regular, Creative Motion has grown into a much larger "skill toy enthusiast" community.

They now host a weekly get-together called Cirque Out, either by the Richardson Public Library/ Civic Center, or at their rainy day location, The Peace Pipe; and Spinfest once a month at Heights Park.

Two months ago, a few members formed the Creative Motion performing troupe: the Circus Freaks.

I recently reconnected with the Creative Motion main, which included the vanguard of the performing troop, and got to hear a bit about what they are trying to do and how they are going about it. In a nutshell, the idea is to bring "circus-styled variety performers" into the performance side of Dallas and create a network with and a community of performers across Dallas and DWF.

Most of this networking and rapport building is done IRL through words and works, but I've seen Creative Motion come a LONG way in developing their online identity and presence as well, especially with the emergence of the performance troupe. They now have a maintained website, Facebook page, twitter feed, and an in-the-works wiki page, all of which can be conveniently accessed from the main site: http://www.circusfreaks.org/index.html

While you probably won't find them on Google unless you specifically search "Creative Motion" and/or "Circus Freaks," the effort they have put into using the social networking tools goes hand-in-hand with the traditional networking means. As a not so active skill toy practitioner, I keep up with Creative Motion's events and any time changes/cancellations through Facebook and it is incredibly convenient since I don't see these people on a regular basis.

Even though the Circus Freaks have their little corner of the web, every gig they have gotten so far as been through word of mouth. Someone is looking for performers, and someone knows someone. Not only was I surprised by this bit of information, I was surprised that I was surprised. The web and the networking tools in it are great and should be utilized, but it is NOT the be-all end-all. Real life networking is the foundation, digital networking is a tool to further it - to communicate across the space/time limitations.

Duh. Apparently I need to get out in the real world more. Instead of blogging ;)