Today, the whole world is constantly moving towards digitalization, and art is no exception.
Art at the intersection of creativity and technology has evolved gradually over the past seventy years and really exploded with the onset of the pandemic when galleries and other art institutions were forced to close their doors to visitors and move online.
Against the backdrop of growing interest in digital art, let’s figure out what kind of industry it is and how it became what we know today.
What is digital art?
The term “digital art” is used to refer to works of art created using digital technologies or presented in a digital space.
The concept of digital art is quite broad because it combines dozens of styles (net art, NFT art, pixel art, generative art) and products (animations, illustrations, digital sculpture, digital paintings, videos, visual effects).
Digital art is usually divided into computer-generated, scanned, or digitalized and created directly by the artist using a special program.
There is object-oriented digital art, that is, one where digital tools act only as a means to an end, and process-oriented art, which brings the digital tool to the fore. And if the first type concerns things more familiar to most things such as digital painting or sculpture, the second one has appeared recently.
Process-oriented art includes, for example, AI art, in which a person and an algorithm are equally responsible for creating the final image, or VR art, which is created in a special headset in a three-dimensional environment.
A brief history of digital art
The first examples of digital art are usually attributed to the works of mathematician Ben F. Laposky – in the early 20th century, he created digital art using an oscilloscope, that is, a device for displaying the shape of an electrical signal.
His photographs of electronic waves, which he called “oscillons”, were initially in black and white, although Laposky later created a series of color works using filters.
Ben Laposky, ‘Oscillon 40’
Ben F. Laposky launched a wave of experiments on the verge of art and technology. However, only those who had access to still very expensive and rare computers, that is, engineers, mathematicians, and employees of research laboratories, were engaged in them.
Among them was Georg Nees, who first showed the world computer-generated art.
Among the most significant events of this time is the first exhibition of digital art Cybernetic Serendipity in 1968, which attracted several tens of thousands of visitors and gave impetus to many artists who later became the main figures of digital art.
Ten years later, the Ars Electronica digital art festival appeared, which is still one of the most important events in this field.
Ars Electronica Festival 2017
The actual term “digital art” appeared in the early 1980s, when computer engineers created the AARON digital painting program. It was a robotic machine that created large drawings on sheets of paper.
The boom of digital art, which took place in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, is associated with the advent of the personal computer and the Internet.
These events not only gave a much larger number of people the opportunity to experiment with digital art but also an impetus to the development of new genres and tools.
How to get started with digital art?
Most digital artists use a fairly modest and affordable set of tools – a gadget and drawing software that offers brushes, canvases, palettes, and other things that make digital painting possible.
So, first of all, you need to decide on which device you will create digital art. It can be a computer or tablet. In the first case, it is important that the computer is high-powered, because the more high-powered your gadget, the faster your drawing software will work.
Also, pay attention to the monitor – it is desirable that it has a diagonal of 27″, 4K or 8K resolution, and an IPS matrix. If you prefer a more compact device that is convenient to take with you on the road, we advise you to opt for an A4 or A5 graphics tablet.
The next step is choosing the software you will be working with. The digital drawing software market is developing very quickly so almost every month there are new applications in this market that empower digital artists.
If you’re just getting started with digital art, we recommend Clip Studio Paint, Painter 2020, and Adobe Creative Cloud.