Can you paint in a traditional way digitally?

Well I've been having a good go at it over the past couple days. I've photographed half finished works of art and am now working on them digitally. Below are the fruits of my labour so far. they're not finished, but you can see where I'm going with these. It will take a lot of work to finish these pieces, but it's much easier than using real paints. I feel really motivated and am keen to see the finished results.

I'm still using Gimp2 at the moment, even though I have quite a few other free graphics programs that I could use. The main reason for this is that I don't want to waste time learning new software when I've been using Gimp2 for years. Having said that, I am only recently painting digitally with Gimp2, before I would edit scanned pieces of work before uploading to Redbubble.com

How do you become a digital artist?

Expanding on my Carbon Paper Trace Monotype methods, I’ve now started to continue artworks using digital painting techniques for the first time.

I am very surprised at the results I’ve achieved so far and will most likely use this method with most subsequent CPTMs.

Workload productivity can be increased as a result because there is no need to set up paints and other art materials, plus a large area of space is no longer required; just the room for a laptop, mouse and graphic tablet, which could be used on a kitchen/dinning room table or at a library for example.

The example below was pinned to my kitchen wall and photographed as the scanner was out of action (because the printer part was out of ink!).

My copy is after Carl Reichert’s painting – Head of a German Short Haired Pointer.

Carl Reichert. (Austrian 1836-1918).

Once I had the Carbon Paper Trace Monotype copy in Gimp2 I began copying the original image – which I had open next to mine in a separate window.

My copy is not complete yet, but look out for the finished work of art on Redbubble.com

Tracing using a graphic tablet.

The Art of Tracing.

Normally I trace using carbon paper and get really good results, however I recently thought of securing an inkjet image on top of my small graphic tablet with masking tape to see if I could trace that way.

My first ever attempt at doing this is below. I wouldn’t say it’s easy to do, but it is possible. The main problem I encountered was when I needed to move the paper a bit to start tracing a new section. I found I had to move the image around on the screen until it corresponded with the position of the pen hovering over the graphic tablet. With practice it is a viable option for tracing, but I think it works best for images of people or animals rather than objects like cars or motorcycles. I haven’t tried to trace a landscape yet, but I can’t see a problem and it might be possible to produce a convincing charcoal type drawing.