Product Description

Digital Collage and Painting proudly showcases the work of twenty-one talented digital artists. Each artist walks you through the creation of a piece of their art and lets you in on their secrets about equipment, software, favorite papers, and how their creative process begins. The artists included are:

Audrey Bernstein
Paul Biddle
Leslye Bloom
Stephen Burns
Luzette Donohue
Katrin Eismann
Paul Elson
Steven Friedman
Ileana Frómeta Grillo
Bill Hall
Julieanne Kost
Rick Lieder
Bobbi Doyle-Maher
Ciro Marchetti
Lou Oates
Cher Threinen-Pendarvis
James G. Respess
Fay Sirkis
Jeremy Sutton
Maggie Taylor
Pep Ventosa

* Discover how the computer can be used to paint on photographs, incorporating other visual materials into images
*Learn from step-by-step examples for painting, collage, and panoramics
* The associated website contains the art samples used in the book so that you can practice the different techiques

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #139883 in Books
• Published on: 2006-06-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 608 pages

Review
"Learn how to digitally paint on your photographs." - PC Photo, Oct. 2006

"Inspiration can be obtained not only from the author's own images but the third chapter which showcases twenty-one digital artists." - Apogee Photo Magazine, August 2006

"For anyone interested in digital painting or creating digital collages, this one is highly recommended." - Mario Georgiou, www.kickstartnews.com, Sept. 2006

"Digital Imaging and Painting is a meaty read with a website to complement it." Advanced Photoshop Magazine, Sept 06

About the Author
Susan Ruddick Bloom is a Professor of Art and Chair of the Department of Art and Art History at McDaniel College in Maryland. She has a BFA and an MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art and is well known for both her traditional wet darkroom alternative processes and her digital darkroom work. Sue has been teaching digital classes since the beginning of Photoshop and has used a Mac from the very first one on the market (128K, with a screen the size of an index card). Trained in drawing, painting, and printmaking, she was at one time a courtroom artist for television and newspapers. Her painterly skills enhance her photographic ones, and her images frequently combine techniques. Sues work has been exhibited and collected widely.

Customer Reviews

What type of book is this?
I feel that the author was torn between writing a step by step, "follow these directions to recreate this image" project book for beginners, and a book filled with art to inspire and spark the creativity of those a bit more advanced. For me, it does neither well.
There are about 600 pages in this book. The first 500 show you other artists finished work then give you detailed, step by step directions, complete with screen shots and settings, on how to recreate what the artist did. This makes it seem to me like a step by step project book. Problem is, you aren't supplied with the images so you can't duplicate the image (and why would I want to anyway?). I would guess that each piece of finished work you're shown gets at least 10 pages of directions on how it was done. If I was a beginner and wanted a step by step project to follow, it would have been great, but only if they supplied the images, which they don't, so it's not. As I'm not a beginner looking to replicate someone else's work, all those pages and screen shots were a complete waste of book space and my time, reading page after page after page of settings and screen shots bored me silly.
Sometimes, you get page after page of screen shots on how the artist fixed a bad photograph before he used it in his collage. Huh? So now this a basic "How To Use Photoshop" book? This is why I say the author wasn't clear on what type of book she was writing.
I feel the book misses the mark as one to inspire and spark my creativity simply because 500 of the 600 pages are filled with screen shots of how to replicate someone else's work. If I could have gotten 600 pages of art with a small blurb with the gist of how it was done I would have loved it.
The best part about this book for me was the quotes. There is a quote about art on almost every single page. The reason I didn't flip past section after section of screen shots was that I didn't want to miss the quotes.
So, unfortunately, this book will go on my shelf and probably never see the light of day again. If it supplied images to go with the steps, I'd pass it along to a beginner to use, but it doesn't so I won't. And all those pages of screen shots doesn't really spur my creativity, so I'll probably never open it again.

Most chapters are good...
Most chapters are very good. My interest is painting--I found that several chapters were just excellent instruction and tips-others were OK. Worth the purchase price to me...

Digital Collage and Painting: Using Photoshop and Painter to Create Fine Art
This book was like reading a great novel, I couldn't put it down! The inspiration was excellent. The incorrect assumption of some that "digital" means "computer generated" is debunked in this excellent work which has lots of beautiful examples of many kinds of digital art (not just collage). There are lots of step by step tutorials that are helpful and tips for using the tools of PS and Painter to their best advantage.

It is not a beginners book however as Bloom assumes that the reader is familiar with PS and Painter. Still this might be the work that makes one REALLY want to do the work needed to become proficient in these programs.

Loved it more than any other work on this subject and I already have a shelf full!!!

Suni R