The Advantage of Digital Vs Traditional Painting.

digitally painted candle

The advantage of digital painting gives quicker adjustments to your artwork.

Learn these digital advantages and discover new tools to help with painting.

General Explanation To Digital Painting.

This post will be a general explanation, the next post will be the specific how too of the advantage of digital painting. Usually I start with a line drawing when I paint on computer, but this time I thought I would approach it as I do my plein air painting with loose brush work then tighten it down as I get closer to the finish of the painting. This is a deviation from what I would normally do as far as computer painting.

  • Lay In Basic Structure

    I laying in the basic structure of this candle painting. By starting with the background, then I rough in the candle on it’s own separate layer.

digital candle painting roughly layed in

  • Building from The Basics

    It get it’s lights, darks, and medium tones or values. Which helps me build the structure of what I’m painting. The candle will have it’s dark area at the bottom and it’s light area at the top to give the glow and luminosity of the candle.

candle glow digitally painted

  • Making Adjustments

    I make computer changes which I will give how to explanation to on the next post. These are examples of the advantage of digital painting, which allow changes such as the size of the candle glow on the background.

computer painted candle background adjustment.

Adjusting the size of the candle base.

digitally painted candle holder base adjustment

Stretching the width of the candle stalk.

Digitally painted candle holder stalk adjustment

Adjusting the size and shape of the handle. These adjustments would require more time to make with traditional paint than when done on a computer.

computer painted candle holder handle adjustment

  • Approach to Adjustments

    The basic approach for me, is to duplicate the part of the artwork I want to adjust, then resize them to the look I want, and marry it the existing art. It will completely cover what does not work or you may need to remove parts of the unwanted elements that are not cover up by the duplicate areas. There are adjustment layers for altering values, colors, light exposure, vibrancy and a few other effects to work with.

  • Finalizing Visual Interest

    I slowly build more detail into the candle, making it more believable. I make sure I’m attentive to volume or roundness when building the values.

computer painted candle details added

Even as I apply reflectiveness into the candle holder. I must remember the principal of light direction. I add more light into the flame to increase the glow effect. I’ll also add a designed smoke effect and light speckles for visual interest then warp the image to a shape that work better visually.

Digital painted candle smoke effect design added

Another adjustment I could never do in traditional paint. It’s important put additional imagery on a separate layer which will allow for the adjustments without effecting the other parts of the art.

digital painted candle designed smoke effect warped.

The Advantage of Digital

The advantage of digital painting adds benefit to my traditional painting when I run into difficulties of thing not working as I want. I can make digital adjustment from a photo of my artwork to resolve painting issues. Even make digital changes to the images including color corrections before final prints are made of the art.

Here’s my final of this digital candle painting.

digital painting of candle

Catch my next post so you can take full advantage of digital painting adjustments to make your painting dreams a bit easier.

You can get additional insights on digital painting from the post, “How to Paint Digitally With Photoshop” and “Painting With Photoshop On Computer”.