Digital art is a broad term that can encompass anything from computer generated visual art, digital collage, photo manipulation and more. Digital art as a genre has been around almost as long as computers have. and in the early days of personal computing in the 1980s there were several examples of artists using the medium to create pieces. However it wasn’t until the introduction of the internet, and with it digital media sharing sites such as DeviantArt, Instagram and Flickr that digital art really started to take off as an independent art form. Today it is one of the most popular types of art to create and share online.
The history of digital art dates back to the early days of computerized art. Some of the earliest examples of rudimentary computer art date back to 1948 when scientist and inventor Charles Babbage created a mechanical automatic computer. From there, there were many different approaches to computer art, from artists using computers to generate mathematical patterns to create visual art, to programmers and scientists using computers to manipulate images to create it.
The first pieces of real digital art were created on mainframe computers in the 1950s and 1960s. These early examples were primarily experimental and mainly focused on the aesthetics of computer code.
In the 1970s and 1980s, many artists began experimenting with the use of computers to create art. However, the technical limitations of the time meant that very little of this work was ever shown publicly. Computers of the time were incredibly slow and unwieldy. They used very few colours, had very low resolution and could take hours to process even the simplest of images.
Collage has been around as long as visual art has, with popular examples dating back to the early 1900s. Collage is the act of cutting up and re-arranging pieces of pre-existing art to create a new work of art. The technique has been used by both printmaking and visual artists such as painters and photographers to create totally new pieces of art that can often be political, satirical or explorations of social issues.
Digital collage is a relatively new type of collage that involves taking pieces of pre-existing pre-digital visual art and re-arranging them to build a new piece of art. Artists who create digital collage use image editing software to cut up pieces of pre-existing art (often from magazines, newspapers, photos or the internet) and then re-arrange them to create a new work of art. Digital collage artists often use this technique to create satirical or political artwork.
Computer generated visual art, or computer generated imagery (or CGI) is visual art created by a computer program. Computer generated art can be generated using a range of tools and software, from simple image editing tools like MS Paint to more complex 3D modelling software. Most computer generated artwork is actually made up of many different images, often known as images tiles, or pixels, which are stitched together to create the final image. When viewed by the human eye the tiles create a smooth and seamless image. Many computer generated images are made up of hundreds of thousands of tiles, making them extremely intricate and detailed. Computer generated visual art is often made with the purpose of looking like a real-world medium such as a painting, photograph or drawing.
Photo manipulation is the process of altering or combining a single photo, or two or more photographs, images or digital visual arts in order to create a new image. This has been around as an art form for more than a century, but with the introduction of digital tools and the increasing availability of software that makes it easy for anyone to do, it really took off as an independent art form.
Photoshop is an essential tool for photo manipulation and has been used by almost every digital artist to date. It is a very versatile tool and can be used to create stunning visual art, stunning visual art that looks like a real photograph, or to add elements to existing images to create a new work.
3D digital art refers to visual art that has been created using a computer and 3D software. 2D images can be transformed into 3D visual art by using software to create a 3D model. Artists have been creating 3D visual art since the beginning of computer graphics and early examples of 3D visual art were often used in engineering and scientific research.
The first digital artists who started creating 3D art were mathematicians, computer scientists and engineers who were interested in creating visuals for scientific research and engineering design. In the 1990s, artists started using 3D software to create art that was purely visual – not used in engineering or scientific research.
3D computer models are made up of thousands of pixels that when brought together in a virtual environment form the whole model. 3D artists are able to manipulate these models, moving them, rotating them and changing their colour, shape and texture to create their visual art. 3D models can be created from scratch by an artist or can be created using a 3D scanner to replicate a real-world object. Great examples of 3D digital art include virtual reality experiences, video games, architectural visualisation, product design and medical or scientific visualisation.
There is no doubt that the advent of the internet and the digital revolution has been a great thing for artists. It has allowed them to connect with each other and the public like never before, sharing ideas, and learning new techniques.
There are many types of digital art out there, and one of the best things is that you don’t need a fancy computer or expensive software to create it. You can make digital art on just about anything with a screen, including your phone!
Digital art is an extremely broad art form, and as technology advances, will continue to evolve and grow, bringing new ideas and creative possibilities.