Collaborator’s Features

Digital Art for Art Lovers and Collectors

by Ileana Collazo

“At my studio, I am the mainframe that creates imaginary landscapes.” What makes an art lover or collector fall in love with an artwork? Is it the surface it is created on, the medium employed, or the heart prints and the essence of the artist that rendered it?

As a multifaceted artist, I have worked on canvas, paper, Yupo paper, Mylar, and Plexiglass using acrylics, pencils, color pencils, and pens as my painting mediums; as well as concocted some unusual traditional collages; some of which have been sold and others that I foster in my studio while they wait for their forever homes.

But, for several years now, I have focused on creating digital art employing a similar host of tools that include brushes, color palettes, and photographed images of my traditional and digital artworks used to develop some interesting paintings and collages. And I can assure art lovers and collectors that digital art is every bit as creative and complex as working with traditional mediums.

Artists create with colors, shapes, movement, and ideas we envision in our minds, which we then transfer to whatever surface, tactile or on the screen, to render the finished works others admire, fall in love with, and acquire.

As for displaying and exhibiting digital art, there is a wide spectrum of possibilities spanning from prints on canvas, paper, metal, and Plexiglass to digital frames, monitors, and television and computer screens. While purchasing options range from open and limited editions to purchasing the rights to digitally display a work/works or acquiring exclusive rights to a particular piece.

Even though NFTs have become one of the ways to buy digital art, most sales are made directly by the artists from their websites’ shopping carts, via online galleries and marketplaces, or through a gallery or artist representative. Depending on where the artwork is bought, it may be already printed or be ordered, printed, and sent directly to the buyer.

Another option for purchasing digital art is to commission an artist to create a slide or video of several pieces with our without background music, which can be played continuously for periods of time in digital frames or monitors; a wonderful meditating experience and conversation piece for any environment; especially if it includes 3-D art.

Digital art is one more step in the long journey human beings undertook when our ancestors filled the walls of countless caves with the images that now mesmerize us because their heart prints and essence are still as vibrant as the day they created their art.

The image of my virtual studio hardly depicts what goes on when I turn on the mainframe and screen and creativity meets technology.

How Light and Dark affect how Artists Create by

Sini Kunnas

The internet enables lightning-fast image sharing, opening the windows to the world for young to the old from all walks of life. This technological advance is a powerful revolutionary tool for artists, as we can share our work globally at the push of a button. But, while this mode of communication is especially advantageous for creatives, it also challenges copyright and privacy laws.

While each artist creates from their specific location, the world wide web allows us to visually travel to sunny places during dark winter days and artificially enhance the surroundings that have a profound impact on the art we create, exponentially expanding our boundaries; even if these new opportunities reduce the cultural boundaries that once earmarked our work.

The effect can be seen in the artists’ nuances and visual choices, our current environment and creative mindset. Our color palettes, the way we employ light and shadow and choose our subject matter and themes are currently influenced by the global images we see as much as by our immediate surroundings.

In Lapland, Finland, where I live with my family, we are now experiencing the shortest daylight hours of the Twilight Time. The reduced natural light strongly influences our thoughts and the way we see and feel about our surroundings. Many people experience depression during this time of the year, others feel that way when it is time to re-adjust to longer sunlight hours as spring approaches.

While long hours of natural light are the norm in many places around the world, the northern hemisphere’s long, dark winters challenge the creative mind’s tendency to rely on light as part of the process of rendering our work. Artists like me eagerly await June’s long midsummer daylight hours, filing light in our memories to help infuse our art with it during the long winter months.

When I look at an artist’s color palette and their use of light and shadows, I can immediately tell how much sunlight they are exposed to while working. Looking at their works, I can easily deduce how light influenced their work’s color and mood.

I wrote this article right before New Year’s Eve 2023. Soon spring will once again flood the Arctic with sunlight. As an artist, I eagerly await the pink, purple, orange, green, blue, and yellow tones that will once again shine on the snow as purple shadows dance with the pastel hues over the alluring shapes of trees covered with spring snow; the trees posing like marble statues as they bravely withstand the zero Fahrenheit temperatures.

My regards to all our readers. Wishing everyone a prosperous 2023. Sini

How colors affect one another, the same shade was applied on both surfaces.

Interpreting Light and Shadow with Digital and Traditional Art

by Miguel Collazo

Regardless of the medium, surface, or technique artists employ for creating art, the process revolves around interpreting light and shadows by applying paint to a variety of surfaces. These visual effects are accomplished by the proximity of certain colors to others, as they diminish or enhance the play of light and shadow on the depicted subject and set the artwork’s mood and tone.

In traditional painting, artists observe these effects from natural settings, create it artificially by lighting forms and objects, or imitate them from visual references of photographs taken on scene and visual references like magazines and internet websites. Other times, they opt for working from memory or creating light and shadow patterns that deviate from reality.

In essence, artists employ paints to capture, translate, and make permanent a setting that in our physical world constantly changes; be it natural light and shadows or artificial adjusted light trained on subjects from different angles.

Plein-air painters are challenged with the urgency of capturing scenes before the light changes by creating sketches to use as templates to continue developing in their studios, or repeatedly returning to the same spot and re-interpreting the effects of light and shadow as they change in subsequent visits.

Digital artists work directly with the light that emanates from computer screens, employing the same tools as traditional artist such as digital brushes, color swatches, and digital surfaces.

Direct Print on Aluminum Dibond by Ileana Collazo

Traditional artists have several choices for presenting their work, displaying their original paintings, or photographing and loading them onto their computers to display them on digital monitors, which translates into turning them into light. Digital artists do the same in reverse by digitally displaying their work or creating prints that once again capture light by employing the printer’s ink to transfer them to the same surfaces traditional artists use, which translate them into paint that interprets light.

Traditional and digital artists consistently bridge both art forms by manipulating physical works to color adjust, crop, and collage; as well as digital sketches of works they translate to traditional paintings.