My Art Studio

     While most artists have a dedicated art studio or at least a dedicated portion of a room devoted to their art, I don't. Another reason I love digital art. When I used to work traditionally, I used to take over the kitchen table with all my colored pencils. I had a whole closet dedicated to art supplies like pencils, papers and a portfolio to store completed works. Living in smaller apartments, and wanting to go even smaller, this storage and accumulation of art supplies is not appealing. In fact, I would go weeks without drawing or painting because I hated lugging the supplies out and putting them away when done.
   
     Well now my art studio is small and portable and can be set up and put away in less than 3 minutes. It only takes up one laptop bag to store everything I need. The ultimate in portability! Another major plus is I never run out of supplies which is huge when there are no art store nearby.

     So what do I use and where do I set up? I mostly set up at either the kitchen table or my computer desk, but the key is being able to put everything away so quickly so it is out of the way when I am done.

     My main device, and where most of the work occurs is my iPad Air 2. I got it last year in June so it is a little less than a year old. I really want a, iPad Pro, but will wait until I get a little more use out of this one. I have the iPad in a slim case so it fits nicely in my purse or laptop bag. This allows me to paint and draw anywhere.

     My main program that I use on my iPad is Procreate. I use it 95% of the time, even though I have several other art programs loaded as well. Procreate is very intuitive unlike Photoshop. It is also a steal at only $5.99. in the app store. I will do a more in depth review on it as well as other art programs in the future.
   
     As for styluses, I've tried many. I have settled for a "dumb" stylus over the bluetooth ones as I've never really liked any of those. The one I use is a Wacom Bamboo stylus. You can replace the nibs when they are worn and it is very solidly built. It has a great feel that I haven't found in any other stylus. It is $14.99 on Amazon. It also comes in different colors but I just have the basic black one. I also have a Sensu Brush, but I don't use it nearly as much as the bamboo stylus.

     Last but not least, I use a Macbook Air 13 inch laptop. I came from a huge 17 inch PC laptop that was really a desktop replacement and not very portable. This new laptop is great. It is small but still has a decent sized screen. Since it is a Mac it works more naturally with all my other idevices. I love the amazing battery life and it does everything I need it to. I use the Mac to do final color corrections to my paintings. I use a program called Photoscape that is $30.00 in the Mac app store. I also use it to show my reference photos so I can zoom in to the details when needed. I store all my completed paintings on the Mac and on an external drive. I recommend the 13 inch Macbook Air to the smaller 11 inch one because of the SD card slot that the 13 incher has. I use a jetbook lite SD card to expand the storage of my Macbook by an extra 256 gigs, which is awesome, especially in the more limited harddrive space of these smaller laptops. This macbook starts up blazingly quick due to the SSD drive. It starts up as fast as my iPad. This machine completes my art flow as I will upload my completed paintings to my various online stores, color correct as needed and add any final touches that may be necessary.

     All in all, this is my art studio. It works great, is extremely portable, and I never run out of supplies. I still have all my traditional art supplies stored in that closet, but maybe I will one day free up that space by getting rid of the supplies I no longer use.

     What are your digital art studio setups? Feel free to comment below!

--Becky Herrera
www.beckysdigitalart.com
www.pixelpaintcreations.blogspot.com

What is Digital Art?

Digital Art

Work in Progress of Oscar

Painting of my cat Oscar

 So what is digital art really? According to wikipedia, Digital Art can be defined as any art that is made with the help of a computer. Drawings made on paper that are scanned in and changed in any way on the computer, photographs that are modified, 3D characters created using a computer are all examples of digital art. There are so many misunderstandings surrounding digital art, that in most circles, it isn’t even really taken seriously. This is a really sad situation. Most people think of photoshop filters when they think of digital art. They think of photo manipulation or that  someone puts a few photo color filters on and they are done. This isn’t true and even good photo manipulation can be an art form. There are many great artists on Fine Art America that use photo manipulation to a great end. They are usually photographers, but not always. 

     Then there is digital painting. Digital painting is basically painting using a stylus or mouse and creating the brush strokes on either a tablet or in the computer. There are even tablets to plug into the computer to make the painting process a little easier and more intuitive. Don’t get me wrong though, there is a learning curve when painting digitally, even when the artist may be an accomplished painter in traditional media.

Digital painting is an amazing art form and many effects can be achieved through it. Unlike in photo manipulation, digital painting starts out with a blank, digital canvas just as a traditional painter would. The digital artist builds up layers of color and digital paint to achieve the same thing any traditional painter would, a work of art. It may take less time to create, which is an argument of many traditional painters, but that is just because the digital painter doesn’t have any drying  or wait times. Most of my paintings take 10-15 hours to complete and sometimes more. I notice the better I get, the longer a painting takes. The following painting of "The Duel" took about 15 hours.

The Duel

 

 A digital artist and traditional artist are very similar. While an oil painter uses canvas and oil paints to make their art, a digital artist uses a digital canvas and pixels for paint to create theirs. Not one is better than the other, they are just different forms of art and each takes a unique set of knowledge and talent to achieve the end result, a work of art.

In closing, digital art is just the latest art form of the 21st century, it is stigmatized because it is new, just like watercolor was when it was new and colored pencils were 20 years ago. Even photography was stigmatized when the first cameras came out. 

Digital art is just art. The computer and the program are the tools, like brushes, pencils and paper,  but the artist is the one that uses those tools to create the masterpiece.

Example of fractal art

Example of fractal art

-Becky Herrera

www.beckysdigitalart.com