Learn fine art in the Digital Medium

The trick to fine art is that it employs the artist's learned techniques to produce paintings and drawings that many people can associate with. These art techniques are very simple and rely on the artists to use the minimum set of tools of the traditional mediums. Taking many of the examples of fine arts in our history, for example the painting by John Constable, The Hay Wain 1821.

FIG. 1 The painting by J Constable (1821) depicts a rural scene on the River Stour between the English counties of Suffolk and Essex.

The above is one of the world renowned landscape paintings at that time and is considered one of the best examples of Fine Art. The mediums used were oil on canvas which were the main mediums of art at that time.

Around this time another aspiring fine arts painter was J. M. W. Turner (1775 - 1851) and his works also on oil on canvas broke the mould of Romanticism and Realism. He is known for his expressive colouring, imaginative landscapes and turbulent, often violent marine paintings. His artistic style developed over his lifetime, moving away from Romanticism—bypassing the following rising style of Realism. An example of his work is shown in FIG. 2, Dutch Boats in a Gale (1801), oil on canvas.

FIG. 2 J. M. W. Turner Dutch Boats in a Gale (1801)

The above examples of the two finest works of art known in history shows the incredible art techniques of the artists using the simple mediums of oil and a brush. Their art skills allowed them to stretch their imagination and depict the world at large on the canvas. It has spawned many generations of artists to this day to take up the medium oil on canvas and increasingly popular today, acrylics on canvas.

You would think that with the advancement of the digital mediums, we should be able to replicate some of these techniques to this medium. The reason why this has not been possible until today, is that the digital medium has been driven by an audience that is unrelated to real painting in the traditional mediums. The digital medium is still to this day driven by early digital applications that came on the scene four decades ago. The early digital applications were built on the demand for online graphics and web graphics fueled by the explosive growth of the PC industry and the world wide web. There was no real need for mature artists but users who were adept with the digital tools to get things done. Hence many of the digital applications were crammed with every possible tool under the sun. This naturally includes layers, auto blending, corrections, objects and object fill etc. It means the requirement for the core skills learnt in the traditional mediums were no longer required and anyone can bypass these learnt techniques and create graphics etc. Naturally, the many art products produced by these applications appear computer generated and too perfect to be considered as a valuable form of fine art.

Ferdouse Khaleque PhD who is a technologist and an experienced artist has demonstrated that 'traditional' art techniques can be translated to the digital medium with his collection of Paintology apps. You can see the full list of the Paintology app on the Google store below.

FIG. 3 Paintology apps to develop core art skills based on art styles and not applications focussed.

An example of the natural process of painting can be seen from FIG. 4. This shows a drawing made on the phone using the Paintology app but it would be difficult to distinguish this drawing from drawings made with traditional mediums. This is a consequence of the natural processes of painting and drawing taught with Paintology apps. Most users are unable to appreciate the techniques behind the artworks since they have been biased into thinking that the digital tools are the only approach to creating digital art. They inevitably judge the performance of a drawing application based on the number of tools it possesses and overlook the importance of acquiring art skills just like the traditional mediums.

FIG. 4 Digital photo realistic art painted on the phone using the Paintology drawing app.

A continuation of the 'traditional' methods and processes developed by the founder with the Paintology app has led to the development of a world first. This is the Digital Painting Canvas developed to take the traditional methods of painting to larger devices. FIG. 5 shows the world’s first digital painting canvas incorporating many of the features found in the app collections on Google play store.

A critical change to the new device includes the use of a real bristle brush that can be used to make paintings very similar to traditional mediums. FIG. 5 shows a 40 inch digital canvas and can be configured to include screen sizes from 32 to above 100 inches in size.

FIG. 5 Worlds first digital painting canvas using a real brush

To learn more about Paintology, please check out the links below.

Paintology main app:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.paintology.lite

Paintology app collections:

https://play.google.com/store/search?q=paintology

Paintology app links:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.paintology.lite.pencil.drawing

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.paintology.lite.paint.by.number

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.paintology.recorder

Website:

https://paintology.com/