How to make the transition from traditional to digital painting

During the last two years I am finally taking the challenge and embracing digital painting after fifteen years or more with traditional media.

My goal is to be able to have the same “organic” or “real” feel with the digital media compared to what I have been able to achieve with traditional oil paints, charcoal and drawing. Right now I am starting to feel more comfortable and the results are becoming more and more closer to my goal.

With traditional media every individual stroke has its own personality, the way the brush tips interacts with the paint, the liquid medium, the canvas surface, the fresh painting underneath, the texture… all this creates some sort of randomness, finally the result is the beauty of a myriad variables playing together. And the most interesting fact is that in many occasions this real look comes naturally, without effort, without any need to make something deliberately.

With digital painting the direct result is stiff, boring, predictable, almost an insult to a traditional painter. The only way to make better digital art is to use a totally different approach: to create personal tools, personal ways to counteract with the stiffness, to make beautiful variations of brush strokes, textures and blending.

This head study below is the most recent digital work and I have tried to apply more and more organic tools.

The painting of roses below is perhaps the one that I like the most, it took me long time to emulate so many strokes and broken edges, the texture and the way the paint drops on the digital canvas.

Digital Painting Software I use

I have tried many different software apps but the one that is far beyond the others is Photoshop. I can make the same results with Photoshop than with Corel Painter but Photoshop allows many other features and has a incredible brush engine.

Digital Painting tablets I use

I’ve had several tablets, and still the Wacom Intuos is the winner. Right now I use a Wacom Intuos Pro (2017 edition). Sensitivity to pressure is simply incredible and has been improved significantly with this new model.

I know it would have been nice to paint on the screen itself but my Wacom Cintiq requires a lot of cables and I do not have the feel of painting on a real surface, it is a piece of glass and there is a noticeable gap between the surface and the location of the paint underneath. Plus it has an offset with the pencil tip that makes an error as I come close to the tablet edges. This is a bad design error.