Michelangelo Copy

The digitalium today is a copy of a hand study by Michelangelo. Only a small remnant of the master's many drawings still exist because he destroyed them. This hand was probably drawn from life by Michelangelo, attesting to his supreme mastery of drawing.

On the Truck

The digitalium of the day is a digital painting of a refuse worker riding the side of his truck. "On the Truck" was done in Sketchbook.

Joe

Today's digitalium is "Joe," a digital sketch portrait of J.C. Leyendecker, the great Golden Age illustrator. Unlike the majority of these digitalia, this one was done using Corel Painter rather than Sketchbook.

Manga

This digitalium is an emulation of a page from Hokusai's Manga, showing various figures and heads in a similar way to the master's published works in 19th century Japan. These digital sketches are copies from the great selections made by James Michener.

Winter Woe

The daily digitalium is a sketch from last fall, decrying the coming winter. It was the man's expression of emotional distress that interested me in sketching him, from a photo I saw someplace.

Embarrassed

A digitalium entitled "Shame," showing an exaggerated, slight caricatured middle-aged man. This is an caricatured version of an expression seen in an online news photo.

Sphinx

Today's digitalium is a drawing of a restored 1950 Ford F-1 pickup truck I once owned. It was a thing of beauty besides being an antique. Metal-flake forest green, an oak bed, and chrome rims.

Quilted

The digitalium of the day is a sketch of a woman who took off her jacket and wrapped it around her waist. The shiny, quilted fabric was interesting to capture.

Survivor

Digitalium of the day. A Syrian child who somehow has survived war, internment camps, and refugee status. "Survivor" is from a news story a few weeks back.

Fingering

The daily digitalium today is a copy of a drawing by Leonardo da Vinci, "Study of Hands" was done, it seems, to study how the fingers would be placed when playing a flute of some kind. The flute was only indicated and not drawn.

In the Park

Today's digitalium is a study for an oil that hasn't been painted yet. "In the Park" depicts a young, possibly homeless couple on a park bench in winter.

Closed for the Season

The digitalium for today shows one of the fairways on a wintry golf course. "End of the Season" was made after the trees were bare and weak sunlight slanting in low from the south.

Neil

About fifty years ago, a U.S. astronaut was walking on the moon. Today's digitalium is a portrait of that great and humble man. "Neil Armstrong at 78." RIP

Mugshot

Another head and shoulders is today's digitalium. The source was a police mugshot seen online. Trying to capture the look on this man's face was the main reason for this study. Is it anger? Is it defiance? Again I used a toned background with two overlying values.

Venetian Blinds

This figure was drawn from a personal photo reference. The software can emulate rough paper, which helped make this one look as if the illumination was through a set of window blinds.

Dowager

The digitalium of the day is a detailed line drawing of a Victorian house in a hilly old neighborhood not far from my studio. It's based on a graphite drawing scanned into the computer and rendered to emulate traditional pen and ink.

Monday

A digital painting of a friend's morning pick-me-up, from his snapshot. Thanks, Mike Metts.

Shadows

A digital portrait of an old, departed friend. Instead of a traditional portrait, this has a more graphical look intended to represent the effect of strong light and streaming shadows."Beth."

Moonlight

The digitalium for today is a fanciful nocturne of a group of trees in Joshua Tree National Park. I painted this one digitally on my Wacom Cintiq, exploring my painting program. The dusk and full moon are imagined.

Homburg

Add caption

It is worthwhile to do portrait drawings even if only for practice. They differ from sketches in being more finished and intended to depict a specific person. This digitalium is a portrait of the famous British statesman, Winston Churchill, with his trademark cigar and hat.

Margaritaville

A digitalium for today. "Parrothead" is for all of the Jimmy Buffett fans out there in Netland. This is one of those guys who wears loud Hawaiian shirts and knows all the lyrics.

Street Guitar

This figurative digitalium is based on a freeze-frame from an amateur video I saw online. The guitarist was set up on a city street, but since my interest was only the musician and his guitar I eliminated everything else. This was done simply to study the position of the body.

Barbarossa

The digitalium for today is a head study of one of my favorite people. "Willie" is a contemporary likeness that was done from an online reference I came across. He has such a "lived-in" face.

Polar Vortex

"Polar Vortex"

The digitalium for today is a sketch from last winter. When complaining about the heat it's good to remember how it felt during last winter's worst cold, when a plume of Arctic air came roaring down on North America. This particular very quick digital sketch was based on a news photo I saw online.

Windblown

"Windblown"

Today's digitalium is a drawing derived from a paparrazo photo of Jackie Onassis. I was interested in the motion of the figure and how to capture her windblown hair. As in many of these sketches, I drew on a colored background using a dark value for the main drawing and highlighted with white.

Hokusai

"Saisoro" (after Hokusai)

This is a digital copy of one of the works of the great Japanese master, Hokusai. He is probably best known for his famous Great Wave Off Kanagawa which dates to 1831. The image was enormously popular in its own time and has been the subject of many parodies over the ensuring years.  The Great Wave is a woodblock print. Printing blocks were made by artisans in those years, from Hokusai's drawings. I copied this particular image from a book by James Michener, Hokusai Sketchbooks, Selections from the Manga. The Manga were several collections of works by Hokusai dealing with various subjects that were issued during Hokusai's lifetime and afterward and sold popularly. This came from one of those selections, which were printed and colored.

Duke

The digitalium for today is from a photo of Duke Ellington, the famous jazz musician, band leader, and composer. His early works are now almost a century old, but have the timeless quality of all great music. Ellington famously said about music, "If it sounds good, it is good.

July Fourth

"Uncle Sam" (after Flagg)

Today is Independence Day in the United States, celebrated on July 4. Uncle Sam is an unofficial symbol of the U.S. government, dating into the 19th century. Our most popular and recognized version is by James Montogmery Flagg and was used as a recruiting poster during World War I. In those posters and this copy Sam looked irritated or perhaps angry, which seems an apt expression, given our current political climate.

Despair

"Despair"

A digital figure drawing, done from an online reference photo. The actual figure is a sculpture. The technique emulates the use of a warm pencil or charcoal drawing enhanced with white and drawn on blue-grey paper. This drawing was done as always using Sketchbook and my Cintiq tablet.

Mr. Coon

Today's digitalium is a digital rendering of a raccoon. All of us have seen these guys. They have  interesting markings and a real glint of intelligence in those eyes. This is more drawing than painting, or perhaps a digital amalgam.

"Mr Coon"

A Digital Drawing Diary

During the past several years I've been working to learn digital art. Specifically I've been learning digital drawing and painting using Sketchbook and Painter, although I only just adopted the latter. On my other art blog, The Studio Journal my focus has been mostly on traditional materials, but about three years ago a gift of a Wacom tablet set me onto the digital pathway. Before the Wacom I had tried pressure-sensitive tablets and had made a few rudimentary stabs at drawing with a stylus on my iPad too. But none felt satisfactory and by no means did those first efforts feel creatively useful. So progress toward the digital age was eluding me until I started using the Wacom Cintiq. A Cintiq is actually both a display and a pressure-sensitive tablet. So the image appears under your hand as you're drawing or painting it and the pressure response makes it feel much more traditional. Digital artists are already making wonderful pictures using various programs; commonly Photoshop and Painter seem most frequently used, but other programs are also useful. Sketchbook, which is the program I use most, has the virtue of being free.

Anyway, my plan with this blog is to post a digitally-made image daily, partly as a personal daily digital diary, partly as a stimulus to be diligent in my practice; and partly to aid in learning to use Sketchbook and Painter more adeptly. The intent of this site is not to produce art for sale but to practice and by sharing that practice to help any interested party along the same path. The famous quote from Michelangelo Buonarotti to one of his assistants: "Draw Antonio, draw and don't waste time," applies.

These images are based on various sources but most commonly they will be based on an image stumbled across on the Internet. Sometimes it may be a life sketch, or perhaps a sketch from scrap in the studio.

A digitalium, by the way, is a something digital or binary, so a digital drawing fits the definition.

After Menzel, "Portrait of an Old Woman"

The digital drawing above was made using Sketchbook and a Wacom Cintiq tablet. I was most interested in 1)making the initial drawing as accurately as I could, 2)emulating dimensionality by using the chiaroscuro method. The original is by Adolph Menzel, a much neglected German artist of the 19th century.