First digital painting, tried to emulate my physical painting style - feedback?

[edzstudios]

So I'm primarily a physical painter - I do a lot of thick impasto landscapes, some painting entirely with painting knives, some with brush+knife. I've tried to pick up digital painting in the past, but could never get past the strangeness/unfamiliarity of photoshop's layers & strange tools. Then I discovered ArtRage, and found the tools and workflow very familiar as a "wet" painter. I did this piece as kind of an experiment, really just "feeling out" the tools and how the paint flows/mixes/lays down with the oil brush, paint tube, and pallette knife. I painted it much as I would a physical painting - single layer, wet into wet, using the "dirty brush" setting do lay down paint and draw colors together, "rinsing" manually.

anyway - where should I go from here? critiques? tips to get my brushwork/blending more distinct? I haven't even started exploring layers yet - good tips for incorporating them into this style of painting? would love any feedback/tips/tricks/techniques from more experienced digital painters!

85915

[scribbledsoul]

Gorgeous! I think you did an exceptional job, especially since this is your first digital work! The texture that can be achieved in this program is a lot of fun, and you obviously have a good grasp of how to use it already! Would love to see some of your traditional work too. How are you liking the feel of the digital paints so far?

~Scribbles :)

[vandra]

I love your style and the way you have used artrage. If this is your first attempt I can't wait to see your future works with artrage!

[edzstudios]

Thanks! you can see some of my physical landscapes here: edzfineart.com/landscapes. I'm really liking artrage so far, it's the first digital drawing/painting program that I "get" - the tools make sense, and behave more or less the way I would expect them too. I love the fact that brushstrokes actually have texture and "mass". I mostly just use the oil brush and pallette knife so far, but as I get more comfortable I'm going to start exploring the other tools.

[Drskmishra]

Thanks! you can see some of my physical landscapes here: edzfineart.com/landscapes. I'm really liking artrage so far, it's the first digital drawing/painting program that I "get" - the tools make sense, and behave more or less the way I would expect them too. I love the fact that brushstrokes actually have texture and "mass". I mostly just use the oil brush and pallette knife so far, but as I get more comfortable I'm going to start exploring the other tools.
Brilliant, you said you need suggestions? Just go on, explore and you will find something new everyday in ArtRage.

[elainep]

I think you are doing great. Your art rage piece is not as loose as your oil painting, but that will come as you relax and experiment more.
As far as layers, I often use layers for a variety of reasons:
• If colors start mixing funny, I don't want them to mix in a certain area, or maybe I want to be able to paint behind something. When painting still life, you can paint the still life first and the background later.
• If I'm not sure of something, and I think I might want to get rid of it later, you can always undo, but it's quicker to just delete a layer
• I often put things on different layers if I think I might move them around or change the size. I do a lot of florals, and it's kinda like floral arranging, I can move a flower over, or make it a little larger so it looks like it's closer. I can rearrange layers so that a flower that was in the background, suddenly is in front of something else.

Have fun and let us know of your progress.

[BushcraftOnFire]

Terrific! I love the use of colors and texture.. You captured the techniques very well

[Delofasht]

Your use of color variety and energy in your strokes astounds me, I hope to have as much stroke economy someday. As for digital techniques that could be applied, you could try putting a layer on top and setting it to saturation and desaturating the areas that are furthest away from us to increase the feeling of aerial perspective. There are an unlimited number of digital techniques for doing a number of things you might do traditionally in other ways (I'd glaze with a thinned out grey traditionally to mute some of the background and wipe outwards from the edges of the glaze to get it to fade outward and blend seamlessly).

I think your first digital painting turned out extremely well, I'm working on my first in ArtRage currently and feeling almost done (about to enter my glazing phase now where all my paint will be dry and I'll start glazing everything in to adjust hue variation, saturation and a number of things (traditionally I'd limit myself to doing this no more than 4 or 5 times maximum before it starts compromising the integrity and longevity of the painting). Really impressed with your painting here though, it's simply stunning.

I haven't seen your traditional work though so I don't know if there are any things you do traditionally that you'd like to do digitally (like maybe softening the strokes in the sky or anything like that or how far you like to take your paintings). I've found that pretty much anything I can do traditionally can be emulated with this software though, and as such you can take your paintings as far as you like or leave them as sketchy as you want.

Great job once again!

- Delo

[Wolfie67]

I love the atmospheric feel of the peice, something I've been trying to achieve over the last year. Especially the moody sky and the forest which has a real spontaneous feel about it. Looking forward to seeing more

[jmac]

This is a very nice first effort...or 3rd, or fourth, or fifth...You have already got a very good grasp of the oil brush and I expect you will just get better. I'm envious. I can't quite seem to figure it out.

[Caesar]

It looks great! To guess what would be useful for You to know to emulate Your physical painting style, apart from Your own testing, it would be possibly useful to see a couple of pictures of your real paintings maybe ...
Anyway welcome and good mastery indeed!