painting with computers: digital art

In our college days, computers were just coming into their own as essential art tools. The most in-depth classes we had were Intro to Mac and Web Design. Now there's a stunning range of techniques available for illustrators and animators, and we're teaching ourselves from scratch. Here are some of our favourite resources!

The Oatley Academy

The Oatley Academy is a teaching collective of industry professionals from Pixar, Disney, Dreamworks, and other animation greats. Founder Chris Oatley has been running his motivational podcasts, the Artcast and Paper Wings (with comic book writer and artist Lora Innes) for years, inspiring artists who want to get into concept art, animation or publishing. The Oatley Academy also has amazing classes on visual storytelling and digital painting.

Skillshare

Skillshare describes itself as a 'learning community' where you can take an unlimited number of classes in art, design, marketing and business for a monthly subscription. We were so pleased with our inking and watercolour lessons that we made the jump to digital illustration.

Sara Blake's class on creating digital art from hand-drawn elements.

Hardy Fowler teaches you how to paint landscapes from scratch on Photoshop.

If you want to go the budget-friendly way, follow concept and comic book artist Matt Kohr's free video tutorials on CTRL+PAINT - it's an amazing resource for total digital beginners like us. There are also loads of talented artists on Youtube, Tumblr and DeviantArt who create gorgeous art with easy-to-follow tutorials. Some of our favourites are Sara Tepes, WLOP, bludragongal, and Sydney Padua of Lovelace and Babbage fame.

Our own experiments have progressed from flat colour on ink drawings:

to playing with textures and brushes:

adding special effects:

...and finally painting from scratch:

It's great to get out of our comfort zone and make some new art.