Digital Art Techniques and Tutorials

This inspiring gallery displays original digital art work created primarily using vector-based "drawing" programs like CorelDRAW, Xara, Expression Designer, or Adobe Illustrator.

This inspiring gallery displays original digital art work created primarily using a pixel-based "painting" program like Corel Painter, ArtRage, Alias Sketchbook, or Adobe Photoshop.

Bert Monroy has created what is very likely the largest Photoshop file ever. Photo-realistic in detail, his panorama of the Damen Station on the Blue Line of the Chicago Transit Authority took close to 2,000 hours to create over the course of a year. Bert used Adobe Illustrator to create the basic shapes and the buildings in the Chicago skyline, and the painting was finished in Photoshop.

This book can give direction to artists looking to enhance their work with digital tools.

About.com's Desktop Publishing Guide points you to some resources that will teach you how you can create your own original illustrations.

From About Painting, this tutorial is for traditional painting, but the concepts can be applied to digital painting all the same.

Sign up for a free 8 week email course on Drawing for Animation from About Animation Guide Tom Franks.

A four-part discussion on using a combination of programs for creating fantasy art. Includes chapters on Bryce, Poser, Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro, and mixing programs.

Ron Leman's offers rules and guidelines for constructing the human head.

Team Artonomy shares their way of creating vector and bitmap illustrations.

"The FARP is a free guide to Fantasy & SciFi art/story creation, history, techniques and much more." Includes articles, discussion boards, and more.

Tips and techniques for coloring flesh tones with Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro. These techniques work best when starting from shaded grayscale images.

A step-by-step guide to drawing a face. Gives the basic techniques that can be applied using any software.

Artist Mike takes you though the steps for making a logo no matter what software you use.

A terrific overview on creating a painting based on a portrait photo.

A discussion of light and shadow and 3D form, the fundamental skills of traditional art that every digital artist needs to understand.

"One of the difficulties with visual art is representing the three-dimensional world in two dimensions. The flat surfaces we use to communicate ideas... all present information in two dimensions. This article covers some effective techniques for representing the three-dimensional world using more limited two-dimensional media." by Andrew Kator

Martin Murphy explains the process of creating his elaborate composition using Painter, Bryce, Poser, Ray Dream Studio and KPT.

A lengthy, but thorough, overview on the entire process of creating realistic computer-generated art work. Includes lots of example images. Excellent!

These are the most popular brands and models of graphics tablets available in the US. The pressure-sensitive graphics tablets featured here are well-suited to both professional and home users who will be using the tablet for photo editing and digital art, or as a mouse replacement.