Research on the web for the history of Digital Art proved fruitless. Every website I checked either defined what digital art is, listed current digital artists, or tried to categorize it under broader artistic terms. Although all of these sites had the “History of Digital Art” in their titles, none of them had any real historical information. So, instead of giving you some information on the history of digital art itself, I’ll tell you about my personal history with it.
The first experience with Digital Art was on AOL’s art forum. At that time, the forum was filled with Fractal Art. Fractal Art is usually in the form of geometric shapes in a rainbow of color possibilities. In it’s purist form, Fractal Art looks like what you see when you hold a kaleidoscope up to your eye. Very bright, very colorful, and filled with repeating patterns. Back in 1996 a lot of Fractal artists were creating these crystalline alien landscapes. They were beautiful, but very austere. You were very much the outsider looking into these landscapes, but you could never be a part of them.
The next wave of Digital Art that I experienced was hand-painted character pictures. Hand-painted in Photoshop, that is. I’m not sure if the artists created these images with a mouse or a pen and tablet, but either way, my hat goes off to them. The images were wonderfully detailed and featured bright, vivid colors contrasted with highlights and shadows in rich jewel tones. A lot of these pictures were created specifically for roleplayers. As they started popping up on AOL character pages everywhere, more and more people started looking for Digital Art to represent their characters a well, and most couldn’t afford to pay someone to make it for them.
The next phases were either cartoonish looking characters that looked like they stepped out of Saturday morning TV, or the outright theft of Fantasy Art masters like Boris Vallejo as well as the artists behind TSR’s Dragonlance series. People started scouring the Internet for the works of these fabulous Fantasy Artists, and in many cases actually got the permission to use their images on personal websites. It didn’t take long until several roleplayers were all using the same pictures for their characters. Those of us searching for uniqueness kept looking.
At that point I started buying CDs of clipart. You’ve seen them. 100,000 pieces of clipart on a four CD set. Once I found a likely piece of clipart, I dragged it into Adobe Illustrator to color it the way I liked. The result was unique, but clipart is still clipart, and it has that cartoony flavor I was trying to get away from. By that time, I used Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop as well as Corel Draw and Photo Paint both for personal use as well as for work. Although my skills with these programs grew, I still was not able to really draw or paint with them. Not with the detail that I needed.
Another program I came into contact with at work was Poser. My boss purchased a copy to help our brochure artists to quickly create more realistic people to illustrate our clients’ products. The results just weren’t good. While Poser did work quickly, the people all looked like Twilight Zone scary CPR dummy mannequin types. Not exactly the kind of art I was trying to create, so I never really considered using Poser for my own art. A few years later, a fellow roleplayer changed my mind. He wrote stories about his character and he used Poser to illustrate them. I was simply blown away by the quality of them. Then I was off to the Internet where I was even more amazed by what other artists were able to do with the program. I purchased my first copy of Poser 4 back in April of 2001 and I have been creating art with it ever since.
My personal history with Digital Art took me from admiring alien fractal landscapes all the way to creating my own Fantasy Art with Poser and Photoshop. Despite what critics say, Digital Art is a legitimate art form, and it takes both skill and talent to get it right. Poser and Photoshop are just tools, like a paintbrush and canvas. The biggest difference is that when I make a mistake, I can undo it without have to scrape off paint and begin again. The freedom to experiment with different techniques without destroying your overall image is a big advantage for the artist. You get all of the gain and none of the pain. The functionality of digital art tools also means that there’s always more to learn, and the history just keeps growing.
