Digital Prints

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Mastering Digital Printing
NaturePainter: The new Windows-only NaturePainter Digitas Canvas (NaturePainter.net)
is a moderately priced, entry- to mid-level painting program. It’s designed to be more for
learning how to paint, and you can paint in any style with tools like brushes, palette knife,
and the ability to mix paint to experiment with color. “NaturePainter is a brilliant, userfriendly
program,” says UK amateur artist Malcolm Randall. “It has a very short learning
curve, but it can suit the most seasoned digital artist, as well as the beginner. The end result
can look just like an oil painting.”
Machine Art
I learned the term “machine art” from digital printmaker and New Mexico-based artist
JD Jarvis, although let’s be clear that the machine doesn’t make the art. As Jarvis explains,
“machine art is the imagery of the computer’s soul. What is truly ‘digital art’ is the work
that begins in the mind of the artist with the notion of synthesis. Using all the software
tools and all the traditional processes together to make something that we have not yet
seen—this is the power and the challenge of working digitally to make Art.”
Machine art includes three-dimensional modeling where 3D artists who use programs
such as Maya (Alias), Bryce (Corel/DAZ), Poser (Curious Labs), and LightWave 3D
(NewTek) to create entire universes that only exist at the interface of the computer software
and their imaginations. And, this is also the world of fractal mathematics and algorithmic
art. Using filters, texture and pattern generators, commercial or free software,
custom computer coding, scripts, or pure mathematical equations, digital artists spend
hours, days, and weeks with precise calculations that are performed by the computer and
ultimately rendered into print or other 2D or 3D forms.
Digital artist Renata Spiazzi has been using
the computer to create art since 1991.
Trained in traditional techniques, Spiazzi
didn’t want to imitate other media but
wanted to see what the computer could
really do (Figure 3.17). When she discovered
the original Kai’s Power Tools (KPT)
filters, she was hooked. “I’m frequently
asked ‘which 3D program are you using?’
The illusion of 3D is very powerful and
very expressive in the results I get from KPT
(she uses all the versions including the older
ones). However, even though I keep thinking
that I should learn a 3D program, I still
use Photoshop and filters, and occasionally
Painter and a few other 2D programs. I also
experiment with fractals, which are fascinating,
but most of the time a fractal gives
an object but not a complete image. In
order to make a painting of it, I feel I have
to transfer it to Photoshop and work on it
to have what I call ‘a symphony.’”
Figure 3.17 Renata Spiazzi’s My
Golden Eagle, from her series
Impossible: Works I Wish I Could Sculpt,
which was created mainly with KPT5
Frax 4D.
Courtesy of Renata Spiazzi
www.spiazzi.com