Art History; Digital Details

Digital art is an artistic practice that uses digital technology as part of the creative and/or presentation process. Digital art is generated, scanned or drawn using a tablet or mouse. Due to the improvements in digital technology, it's now possible to manipulate images, film and photographs. This has given artists huge creative freedoms that haven't been experienced previously. Along with the cut and paste tool, it allows creative freedom within moving images to create visual collages. With recent advances, digital art is now interactive which allows the audience a certain amount of control over the image or what they see in the image. A great example of this is virtual reality. Digital art isn't confined to galleries and museums and this allows it to be one of the most accessible forms of art in today's age even though the first use of digital art was coined in the early 1980s when computer engineers devised a paint program which was used by digital artist Harold Cohen. 

Although, since the 1960s various names have been used to describe the Digital Art process, including computer art and multimedia art. Digital art is itself placed under the larger umbrella of Media Art in the 1990s. Many have questioned if digital art is a real art form. The short answer is, Yes, digital art is a real art form.

Furthermore, most digital artists rely on the same techniques and training that traditional artists do it’s just digitalised. Many digital artists will have had specialist training to create Digital art. Digital art is created by a real artist and digital art is everywhere without most people realising it. Also no, it is not cheating, digital artist just makes it look easy because they have practised their technique. Digital art is considered to be part of the contemporary art movement.  If the art is made using software, computers or other electronic devices it is digital art. Digital art you may recognise in day to day is CGI (Computer-generated imagery), Graphics, NFT (non-fungible token),  illustrative works, book covers, And anything produced or made on digital media. This includes artworks such as animation, pixel art, photography, and videos and digital painting are classified as digital art. 

Digital art can seem daunting for the beginner however if you already own a technology device whether that be a computer a smartphone or even a tablet there is an app or program that can be used on your device.  And there are always tutorials on multiple platforms to help you start your journey as a digital artist. Digital art is meant to be enjoyed with the freedom the previous art movements have not allowed.