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Digital Wildlife Paintings (1 Viewer)

matthewlissimore

wildlife illustration & photography
Hi Guys hope everyone is well. I thought i'd share some of my digital work, i normally work traditionally but I have done some painting in photoshop using a drawing tablet. See what you think.
 

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I'm a bit of a traditionalist myself so I was expecting to not like these when I opened the thread but I must say these are really nice.
 
Nice work. Are these created 'from scratch' or are they based on photos? The background in the Long-tailed Tit at least looks to be a photo over which you have painted the bird, is that correct? How do you find PS to paint with given that it's main function is photographic manipulation? The difficulty of finding traditional drawing media such as scraperboard and lineboard these days has led me into digital artwork over the past few years. I use Artrage which has to be the best value drawing/painting software package available - examples of work produced using Artrage attached. A trial version can be downloaded here:

http://www.artrage.com/artrage-demos.html

It's so intuitive to use and the tools are responsive and easily customisable, especially when using a tablet. It's just like 'real' painting only without all the mess!

LL
 

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They can take a few days with the pass I paint them. The backgrounds are photographs that I have taken that are blurred using a tool in Photoshop. The birds are painted from scratch and so are the branches and the tree. Great digital paintings, the sparrow is my favourite.
 
I have just got a sketching app for my ops and started to play with doing some birds pictures (basing them on photos) I was pleased with my results until I found this thread! I clearly have a long way to go yet, but at least it is fun and like you say much less messy than painting. I can sit and do this with the kids buzzing around with no fear of paint being sent flying,
 
These are better than some that I've seen, and certainly nicer than I was expecting. The traditionalist in me still thinks of this as an image rather than a painting though. Maybe it shows that I'm now too old. Kind of like when you think Police men are too young lol The sad thing is I'm only 41!

Do you have a touch screen brush/pen for these, or are you using a mouse and keyboard?

Suzanne
 
Do you have a touch screen brush/pen for these, or are you using a mouse and keyboard?

Suzanne

Hi Suzanne,

Like Matthew, my pieces are drawn from scratch and are not simply manipulated photographs; neither are my backgrounds. Unless you are using a tablet computer such as an iPad (other brands available!), a Wacom tablet or similar is far superior to mouse and keyboard used with your desktop computer. Using a digital 'pen' and tablet gives greater control and accuracy and makes it feel more like using traditional tools. With the digital art packages available today, their capabilities and 'feel', you should be able to produce very painterly pieces which, when printed on a good quality printer should be every bit as much a 'piece of art' as a painting produced with traditional media. Packages such as Artrage and Corel Painter also give you the opportunity to emulate many different media such as oils, watercolors, pencil, coloured pencil, pen and ink etc in your artworks and can be made to mix, apply, layer and blend in very similar ways to the real thing - without the mess, as I said previously.

LL
 
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