Digital Art: April and May’s Charcoal Drawings, Oil Paintings, and Oil Pastel Drawings

In April and May, I transformed public domain or CC photos into charcoal drawings, oil paintings, and oil pastel drawings using a variety of specialized Photoshop plug-ins. Full-size download images and descriptions of the processing steps involved are freely available on Flickr. The images are available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License.

Digital Oil Pastel Drawing of an Olympic Peninsula Sunset

Digital Oil Pastel Drawing of Beaver Creek

Digital Oil Painting of Denali

Digital Charcoal Drawing of the Rocky Mountains in Montana

Digital Oil Pastel Drawing of Mountains in Alberta

Digital Oil Pastel Drawing of Great Blue Heron Eating a Fish

Charles W. Bailey, Jr., Digital Artist | List of All Artworks

Digital Art: February and March’s Charcoal and Oil Pastel Drawings

In February and March, I transformed public domain or CC photos into charcoal and oil pastel drawings using a variety of specialized Photoshop plug-ins. Full-size download images and descriptions of the processing steps involved are freely available on Flickr. The images are available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License.

Digital Oil Pastel Drawing of a Joshua Tree in the Mojave Desert

Digital Oil Pastel Drawing of Mount Everts

Digital Oil Pastel Drawing of Mitre Peak

Digital Oil Pastel Drawing of Great Blue Heron Eating a Fish

Digital Oil Pastel Drawing of Mountains in Alberta

Digital Charcoal Drawing of the Rocky Mountains in Montana

Charles W. Bailey, Jr., Digital Artist | List of All Artworks

Digital Art: Digital Oil Paintings, Oil Pastel Drawings, and Pastel Drawings from January

In January, I continued to transform photos into digital artworks, such as oil paintings, oil pastel drawings, and pastel drawings using a variety of specialized Photoshop plug-ins. Here is a selection of artworks. Full-size download images and descriptions of the processing steps involved are freely available on Flickr. The images are available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License.

Digital Oil Painting of Fifty Mountain

Digital Oil Pastel Drawing of Lake McDonald

Digital Pastel Drawing of the Flathead River

Digital Oil Pastel Drawing of a Joshua Tree in the Mojave Desert

Charles W. Bailey, Jr., Digital Artist | List of All Artworks

Digital Art: Selected Artworks from 2021

In 2021, I continued to transform photos into digital artworks, such as oil paintings and oil pastel drawings, using a variety of specialized Photoshop plug-ins. Here is a selection of artworks. Full-size download images and descriptions of the processing steps involved are freely available on Flickr. The images are available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License.

Digital Oil Painting of the Flathead River

Digital Oil Painting of the Delicate Arch

Digital Oil Painting of the Stepping Stones Lighthouse

Digital Oil Pastel Drawing of a Mountain Near Yakutat

Digital Oil Painting of a Canyonlands Rain Storm

Charles W. Bailey, Jr., Digital Artist | List of All Artworks

Digital Art: September’s Oil Paintings and Oil Pastel Drawings

In September, I transformed photos into oil paintings and oil pastel drawings using a variety of specialized Photoshop plug-ins. Full-size download images and descriptions of the processing steps involved are freely available on Flickr. The images are available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License.

Digital Oil Pastel Drawing of a Venice Canal

Digital Oil Pastel Drawing of Yellowstone River

Digital Oil Painting of the Clackamas River

Digital Oil Pastel Drawing of Sandhill Cranes in Colorado

Digital Oil Pastel Drawing of Sycamore Canyon

Digital Colored Pencil Drawing of Mangawhai Heads Beach

Charles W. Bailey, Jr., Digital Artist | List of All Artworks

The Best Software for Creating Digital Art from Photographs, Version 12

Interested in turning photographs into works of digital art, such as cartoons, charcoal drawings, ink drawings, oil paintings, pastel drawings, and watercolors? Here are brief descriptions of some key software tools for desktop computers. Unless otherwise noted they work in Photoshop as plug-ins.

FotoSketcher

FotoSketcher is a versatile standalone Windows program that allows you to create drawings, paintings, and a few other effects. It can transform photos into cartoons, oil paintings, oil pastel drawings, pen and ink drawings, pencil drawings, watercolor paintings. and other types of artworks. It is standalone freeware.

Sliders and other controls for each effect allow you modify image rendition. For example, for the oil pastel sketch effect you can control minimum stroke size, maximum stroke size, number of iterations, edge intensity, and filter precision. You can also soften edges, add a frame, add texture, add text, and use a retouch brush. There is a small preview window in the floating control panel.

This program is especially useful for oil paintings, oil pastel drawings, and watercolors.

Snap Art by Exposure

Snap Art is a full-featured Windows/Mac plug-in/standalone program that allows you to easily create charcoal drawings, color pencil drawings, comics, crayon drawings. impasto paintings, oil paintings, pastel drawings (including hard, oil, and soft pastel), pen and ink drawings, pencil sketches, Pointillism paintings, stylized illustrations, and watercolor paintings.

There are a variety of presets for each effect, and slider controls for background (e.g,, for oil paint: brush size, photorealism, coverage, stroke length, and color variation), detail masking (similar controls as background), colors (e.g., brightness, contrast, and saturation), lighting (e.g., angle, direction, and highlight characteristics as well as vignette effect), and canvas effects (e.g, pastel paper). You can create your own presets. The ability to close side-panel controls permits a large preview space.

This program is especially useful for charcoal drawings, colored pencil drawings, oil paintings, and pencil drawings. It has good canvas and paper texture effects.

Dynamic Auto-Painter by MediaChance

Dynamic Auto-Painter, a Windows/Mac stand-alone program, allows you to paint in the style of famous painters, such as Paul Cézanne, Claude Monet, and Vincent van Gogh. It allows you to create a wide variety of types of artworks.

There are a variety of controls for each preset, such as brush strokes, canvas, detail brushes, faithfulness, realism, palette, and quality. It supports advanced (e.g, color shift), retouch, outline, canvas, material, color, and layer adjustments. It is highly customizable. Artwork rendering occurs in stages, with further user fine-tuning possible during some stages. It typically renders vivid, saturated images, but image saturation can be adjusted.

While the presets can be used to easily create artworks, the real power of this program is not revealed until you start using the advanced controls and directing brush strokes during the creation process.

This standalone program is especially useful for aquarelle/watercolor paintings and oil paintings.

Other Digital Art Software to Consider

Depending on your artistic requirements and style, the following software may also be of interest.

Useful Photo Editing Software

The following software is recommended for editing artistic works:

  • Exposure (standalone and plug-in; very powerful full-featured photo editor with numerous useful presets; highly recommended)
  • Exposure Blow Up (high quality image enlargement; highly recommended)
  • Luminar (standalone and plug-in; powerful full-featured photo editor; highly recommended)
  • ON1 Photo RAW (standalone and plug-in; powerful full-featured photo editor with numerous useful presets)
  • Topaz Denoise AI (very effective noise reduction)

Purchase Advice

It is highly recommended that you download and test digital art software demos prior to purchase. Try all the presets. A software company's idea of what a good art effect is may not match your own, so experiment with changing the settings of unsatisfactory effects before concluding that the program cannot do what you want.

Some programs do not have a variety of presets. It is more difficult to create your own presets from scratch rather modifying presets.

It is especially important to test the limits of a program and to determine what features can be disabled. For example, see how much detail you can get in a painting and check whether it is possible to turn off the texture effect (i.e, canvas).

In some cases, it is worth buying a program for one or two unique effects even though the rest may not be satisfactory or may duplicate effects you already have in other programs.

If possible, save older versions of software. New versions may drop or significantly change features you rely on.

Software Licensing and Sales Policies

AKVIS has separate home, home deluxe, and business licenses. Only business licenses allow commercial use. Dynamic Auto Painter has home and pro versions.

Companies may offer one or more software bundles, which reduce the prices of included products.

Some companies, such as Exposure, offer their products at substantial discounts during sales, which typically occur during major US holidays. These are especially good times to buy software bundles.

About the Author

Digital artist Charles W. Bailey, Jr. transforms photographs into noncommercial digital artworks using specialized Photoshop plug-ins and art programs. He has made over 600 digital artworks freely available under versions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial licenses, providing detailed information about how each artwork was created.

Digital Art: January through August’s Oil Paintings, Oil Pastel Drawings, and Pastel Drawings

From January through August, I transformed photos into oil paintings, oil pastel drawings, and pastel drawings using a variety of specialized Photoshop plug-ins. Full-size download images and descriptions of the processing steps involved are freely available on Flickr. The images are available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License.

Digital Oil Painting of Lavender Valley

Digital Pastel Drawing of a Sunset Near Moab

Digital Oil Painting of Fog on an Alaskan Valley

Digital Pastel Drawing of a Valley Near Denali

Digital Oil Pastel Drawing of Roaring Mountain

Digital Oil Pastel Drawing of a Coyote in the Mojave Desert

Digital Oil Painting of Mammoth Hot Springs

Digital Oil Pastel Drawing of a Trail in Red Rock Country

p>

Digital Oil Pastel Drawing of Logan Glacier

Digital Pastel Drawing of Mount Edgecombe

Digital Oil Painting of the San Francisco Peaks

Charles W. Bailey, Jr., Digital Artist | List of All Artworks

Digital Art: August and September’s Oil Paintings, Oil Pastel Drawings, Oil Sticks Paintings, and Pastel Drawings

In August and September, I transformed photos into oil paintings, oil pastel drawings, oil sticks paintings, and pastel drawings using a variety of specialized Photoshop plug-ins. Full-size download images and descriptions of the processing steps involved are freely available on Flickr. The images are available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License.

Digital Oil Painting of Logan Pass

Digital Pastel Drawing of the Middle Fork of the Flathead River

Digital Oil Painting of Fog on the Flathead River

Digital Oil Painting of Joshua Trees in the Mojave Desert

Digital Oil Painting of the Regal Glacier

Digital Pastel Drawing of Walter Peak

Digital Pastel Drawing of Mist on Mountains in Xiding

Digital Oil Sticks Painting of Mountains Near Banff

Charles W. Bailey, Jr., Digital Artist | List of All Artworks

Digital Art: July’s Oil Paintings, Oil Pastel Drawings, and Pastel Drawings

In July, I transformed photos into oil paintings, oil pastel drawings, and pastel drawings using a variety of specialized Photoshop plug-ins. Full-size download images and descriptions of the processing steps involved are freely available on Flickr. The images are available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License.

Digital Oil Painting of Shadows on the Chugach Mountains

Digital Pastel Drawing of South Jetty Beach

Digital Oil Pastel Drawing of a Ruakaka Beach

Digital Oil Pastel Drawing of Denali

Digital Oil Painting of a Stormy Day in the Wrangell Mountains

Digital Pastel Drawing of the Square Tower Group

Charles W. Bailey, Jr., Digital Artist | List of All Artworks

Digital Art: April through June’s Oil Paintings, Oil Pastel Drawings, and Pastel Drawings

In April through June, I transformed photos into oil paintings, oil pastel drawings, and pastel drawings using a variety of specialized Photoshop plug-ins. Full-size download images and descriptions of the processing steps involved are freely available on Flickr. The images are available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License.

Digital Pastel Drawing of Joshua Trees in the Mojave Desert

Digital Oil Painting of an Arizona Desert Sunrise

Digital Oil Pastel Drawing of an Alaska Landscape

Digital Oil Painting of Medano Creek

Digital Oil Pastel Drawing of a Merrit Island Wetland

Digital Oil Painting of Crescent Lake

Charles W. Bailey, Jr., Digital Artist | List of All Artworks

The Best Software for Creating Digital Art from Photographs, Version 8

Previously a separate product, Impression has just been merged with Topaz Studio 2, a powerful full-featured photo editor. It is a very powerful and highly customizable tool for transforming photos and other images into a wide variety of digital artworks, such as drawings and paintings. Topaz Studio 2 can be run as a stand-alone product or as a Photoshop plug-in. Topaz Studio 2 is resource intensive and it has minimum hardware and OpenGL requirements. Topaz Studio 2 is frequently updated, and the below description may not reflect the state of the product when you read this. It is important to download and test this program prior to purchase.

Impression has a number of presets (called looks), including chalk, charcoal, colored pencil, da Vinci drawing, Degas, Edward Hooper, Impressionist, palette knife, Pointillism, Renoir, pencil, sketch, van Gough, watercolor, and other effects. Studio 2 uses layers, and the selected Impression look name appears in the upper right. Below the name is the Impression layer where the look controls are.

Impression has a cornucopia of controls, and each control can be customized by applying the look, selecting the Impression layer, and then clicking on the down arrow. The real power of impression is not evident until you start using these controls. Here are some key adjustments:

  • Bush: There are currently 17 different bush options.
  • Number of strokes: High, medium, and low.
  • Brush size.
  • Paint volume: How thick does the paint look.
  • Paint opacity: How transparent is the paint.
  • Stroke rotation: If enabled, rotation variation can also be controlled.
  • Stroke color variation: Increasing this value makes strokes have a wider range of color.
  • Stroke width.
  • Stroke length.
  • Spill: Strokes "spill" out over their normal edges.
  • Smudge: Strokes are blurred and stylized, losing detail.
  • Coverage: How fully does the paint cover the canvas.
  • Color: Each major color can be varied by hue, saturation, and lightness. Where the color is present in the image can be previewed. Hue, saturation, and lightness of the entire image can also be controlled.
  • Lighting: Brightness, contrast, highlight, shadow, can be altered. Light position can be set.
  • Vignette: Vignette size, strength, transition, roundness, color, and center position can be determined.
  • Texture: Background material and background strength and solidity can be set.

You should experiment with modifying the looks. After tweaking your look settings, you can save them as a custom look.

Impression is especially useful for charcoal drawings, colored pencil drawings, da Vinci drawings, oil paintings, and pastel drawings.

Overall, Impression is a powerful, full-featured digital art tool, and Studio 2 has a very reasonable price.

Snap Art by Alien Skin Software

Snap Art is a full-featured Windows/Mac plug-in/standalone program that allows you to easily create charcoal drawings, color pencil drawings, comics, crayon drawings. impasto paintings, oil paintings, pastel drawings (including hard, oil, and soft pastel), pen and ink drawings, pencil sketches, Pointillism paintings, stylized illustrations, and watercolor paintings.

There are a variety of presets for each effect, and slider controls for background (e.g,, for oil paint: brush size, photorealism, coverage, stroke length, and color variation), detail masking (similar controls as background), colors (e.g., brightness, contrast, and saturation), lighting (e.g., angle, direction, and highlight characteristics as well as vignette effect), and canvas effects (e.g, pastel paper). You can create your own presets. The ability to close side-panel controls permits a large preview space.

This program is especially useful for oil paintings (try the detailed, dry brush, and thick paint settings). It has good canvas and paper texture effects.

FotoSketcher

FotoSketcher is a versatile standalone Windows program that allows you to create drawings, paintings, and a few other effects. It can transform photos into cartoons, oil paintings, oil pastel drawings, pen and ink drawings, pencil drawings, watercolor paintings. and other types of artworks. It is freeware.

Sliders and other controls for each effect allow you modify image rendition. For example, for the oil pastel sketch effect you can control minimum stroke size, maximum stroke size, number of iterations, edge intensity, and filter precision. You can also soften edges, add a frame, add texture, add text, and use a retouch brush. There is a small preview window in the floating control panel.

This program is especially useful for oil pastel drawings.

AKVIS Sketch

AKVIS Sketch is a Windows/Mac plug-in/standalone program that allows you to create drawings and watercolors. It offers a very wide variety of effects, such as charcoal, color pencil, lead pencil, pastel, and watercolor. The effects are organized into two groups: classic and artistic.

Sliders allow you to fine-tune these effects. For example, using the detailed sketch effect and the strokes panel, you can adjust pencil color and background color; alter stroke angle, thickness, and length; and control midtones hatching and intensity. Using the edges panel, you can alter sensitivity, edge width, and zone of influence. With the effects panel, you can adjust panel, shadows, noise, and contrast.

This program is especially useful for pencil drawings.

AKVIS OilPaint

AKVIS OilPaint is a Windows/Mac plug-in/standalone program that allows you to create oil paintings and oil pastel drawings You can alter simplicity, saturation, maximum stroke length, stroke thickness, stroke intensity, stroke curvature, wide background strokes, and random strokes. It offers a number of presets, including some unique ones (e.g., palette knife), and a number of different stroke types (e.g., flat and rounded). Additional controls allow you to control canvas, frame, and text effects.

If you like a fairly realistic painting style, try the high details or fine lines presets.

Dynamic Auto-Painter by MediaChance

Dynamic Auto-Painter, a Windows/Mac stand-alone program, allows you to paint in the style of famous painters, such as Paul Cézanne, Claude Monet, and Vincent van Gogh. It allows you to create a wide variety of types of artworks.

There are a variety of controls for each preset, such as brush strokes, canvas, detail brushes, faithfulness, realism, palette, and quality. It supports advanced (e.g, color shift), retouch, outline, canvas, material, color, and layer adjustments. Artwork rendering occurs in stages, with further user fine-tuning possible during some stages. It is possible to change the color palate of the original image by having the program use a second image as a color source. Some presets significantly change image coloration.

While the presets can be used to easily create artworks, the real power of this program is not revealed until you start using the advanced controls and directing brush strokes during the creation process.

This program is especially useful for Aquarelle paintings and oil paintings.

JixiPix Programs

JixiPix offers a wide variety of low-cost Windows/Mac plug-in/standalone programs. They are categorized as professional software or hobbyists and enthusiasts apps. The professional software programs provide greater control over effects and can be used as Photoshop plug-ins. They can be purchased individually or as part of a bundle.

Especially useful JixiPix programs include:

Other Digital Art Software to Consider

Depending on your artistic requirements and style, the following software may also be of interest.

First-Line Recommendations by Type of Artwork

  • Aquarelle/Watercolor: AKVIS Watercolor, Aquarella, Dynamic Auto-Painter, and FotoSketcher
  • Cartoon: Arttoon, Topaz Clean, and ToonIt!
  • Charcoal Drawing: Impression and Snap Art
  • Colored Pencil Drawing: Impression and Snap Art
  • Gouache: AKVIS ArtWork
  • Oil Painting: AKVIS OilPaint, Dynamic Auto-Painter, FotoSketcher, Impression, and Snap Art
  • Oil Pastel Painting: FotoSketcher
  • Pastel Drawing: Impression
  • Pencil Drawing/Sketch: AKVIS Sketch and Snap Art
  • Woodcuts: ToonIt!

Useful Photo Editing Software

The following software is recommended for editing artistic works:

  • Alien Skin Exposure (very powerful full-featured photo editor with numerous useful presets; highly recommended)
  • Luminar and Luminar Flex (powerful full-featured photo editors, especially useful for light ray effects)
  • ON1 Photo RAW (powerful full-featured photo editor with numerous useful presets)
  • Topaz DeNoise AI (best way to remove noise from your photos; resource intensive)
  • Topaz ReStyle (a very powerful tool for changing image colors; highly recommended)
  • Topaz Sharpen AI (sharpens images without distorting them; resource intensive)

Purchase Advice

It is highly recommended that you download and test digital art software demos prior to purchase. Try all the presets. A software company's idea of what a good art effect is may not match your own, so experiment with changing the settings of unsatisfactory effects before concluding that the program cannot do what you want.

It is especially important to test the limits of a program and to determine what features can be disabled. For example, see how much detail you can get in a painting and check whether it is possible to turn off the texture effect (i.e, canvas).

In some cases, it is worth buying a program for one or two unique effects even though the rest may not be satisfactory or may duplicate effects you already have in other programs.

A detailed user manual—ideally in the PDF format—can be of great help in using advanced program features. Check to see if a manual is available. Looking at a product's video tutorials is also helpful in making a purchasing decision.

If possible, save older versions of software. New versions may drop or significantly change features you rely on.

Software Licensing and Sales Policies

Topaz Labs plug-in upgrades are currently free for life. Other software companies may charge you for upgrades, usually major version changes.

AKVIS has separate home, home deluxe, and business licenses. Only business licenses allow commercial use.

JixiPix licenses have this clause: "Output from SOFTWARE PRODUCT can be sold, shared, distributed, printed, etc. in any amounts without limitation as long as bulk of design is provided by you. This means you cannot take output from SOFTWARE PRODUCT that does not contain large portions of your image."

Companies typically offer one or more software bundles, which reduce the prices of included products.

Some companies, such as Alien Skin and Topaz Labs, offer their products at substantial discounts during sales, which typically occur during major US holidays. These are especially good times to buy software bundles.

Digital Art: March’s Oil Paintings and Oil Pastel Drawings

In March, I transformed photos into oil paintings and oil pastel drawings using specialized Photoshop plug-ins and art programs. Full-size download images and descriptions of the processing steps involved are freely available on Flickr. The images are available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License.

Digital Oil Painting of an Alaskan River

Digital Oil Pastel Drawing of the Kaikoura Shoreline

Digital Oil Painting of Rangitata Gorge

Digital Oil Painting of Chesler Park

Charles W. Bailey, Jr., Digital Artist | List of All Artworks

Digital Art: February’s Chalk and Charcoal Drawings, Oil Paintings, and Oil Pastel Drawings

In February, I transformed photos into chalk and charcoal drawings, oil paintings, and oil pastel drawings using a variety of specialized Photoshop plug-ins. Full-size download images and descriptions of the processing steps involved are freely available on Flickr. The images are available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License. A comprehensive list of my digital artworks is available.

Digital Oil Painting of a River in the Ozarks

Digital Oil Pastel Drawing of a Mill in Newcastle-on-Tyne

Digital Chalk and Charcoal Drawing of Mount Redoubt

Charles W. Bailey, Jr., Digital Artist | List of All Artworks

Digital Art: January’s Chalk and Charcoal Drawings, Oil Paintings, Oil Pastel Drawings, and Pastel Drawings

In January, I transformed photos into chalk and charcoal drawings, oil paintings, oil pastel drawings, and pastel drawings using a variety of specialized Photoshop plug-ins. Full-size download images and descriptions of the processing steps involved are freely available on Flickr. The images are available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License.

Digital Oil Painting of the North Window Arch

Digital Pastel Drawing of the Piazza San Marco

Digital Chalk and Charcoal Drawing of a Metaki Waterfall

Digital Oil Painting of the Madison River

Digital Pastel Drawing of Fossil Springs

Digital Oil Pastel Drawing of a View of San Giorgio Maggiore

Digital Oil Painting of Going-to-the-Sun Road

Charles W. Bailey, Jr., Digital Artist | List of All Artworks

Digital Art: November and December’s Cartoons, Oil Paintings, Oil Pastel Drawings, Pastel Drawings, and Watercolor Paintings

In November and December, I transformed photos into cartoons, oil paintings, oil pastel drawings, pastel drawings, and watercolor paintings using a variety of specialized Photoshop plug-ins. Full-size download images (typically 8 x 10 in. to 19 x 13 in.) and descriptions of the processing steps involved are freely available on Flickr. The images are available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License.

Digital Oil Pastel Drawing of Staubbach Falls

Digital Oil Pastel Drawing of the Blacktail Deer Plateau

Digital Watercolor Painting of El Capitan

Digital Oil Pastel Drawing of the Yellowstone River Valley

Digital Pastel Drawing of Logan Pass

Digital Oil Painting of the Mammoth Hot Springs

Digital Cartoon of a Blue-and-Yellow Macaw

Digital Pastel Drawing of Lake McDonald

Digital Oil Painting of Storm Clouds in Montana

Charles W. Bailey, Jr., Digital Artist | List of All Artworks

Digital Art: October’s Oil Paintings, Oil Pastel Drawings, Pastel Drawings, and Pen and Ink Drawings

In October, I transformed photos into oil paintings, oil pastel drawings, pastel drawings, and pen and ink drawings using a variety of Photoshop plug-ins and Topaz Impression. Full-size download images (typically 8 x 10 in. or 8 x 12 in.) and descriptions of the processing steps involved are freely available on Flickr. The images are available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License.

Digital Oil Painting of a Rose Floating in Water

Digital Pastel Drawing of Sandhill Cranes

Digital Pen and Ink Drawing of an Astronomer

Digital Oil Pastel Drawing of Arrow Lake

Digital Oil Pastel Drawing of White Sands

Charles W. Bailey, Jr., Digital Artist | List of All Artworks

Digital Art: September’s Colored Pencil Drawings, Oil Paintings, and Pastel Drawings

In September, I transformed photos into colored pencil drawings, oil paintings, and pastel drawings using a variety of Photoshop plug-ins and Topaz Impression. Full-size download images (typically 8 x 10 in. or 8 x 12 in.) and descriptions of the processing steps involved are freely available on Flickr. The images are available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License.

Digital Colored Pencil Drawing of the Firehole River

Digital Pastel Drawing of the Sierra Ancha Range

Digital Oil Painting of the Midway Geyser Basin

Digital Pastel Drawing of Monitor Peak

Digital Oil Painting of a Storm over the Washburn Range

Digital Pastel Drawing of Aoraki/Mount Cook

Digital Oil Painting of the La Sal Mountains Viewpoint

Digital Oil Painting of Lake Clark

Charles W. Bailey, Jr., Digital Artist | List of All Artworks

Digital Art: July and August’s Oil Paintings and Pastel Drawings

In July and August, I transformed photos into oil paintings and pastel drawings using a variety of Photoshop plug-ins and Topaz Impression. Full-size download images (typically 8 x 10 in. or 8 x 12 in.) and descriptions of the processing steps involved are freely available on Flickr. The images are available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License.

Digital Oil Painting of the Arrow River

Digital Pastel Drawing of the Yukon River

Digital Pastel Drawing of Rain at Sunset in Coconino National Forest

Digital Oil Painting of the Corbiere Lighthouse in Moonlight

Digital Oil Painting of Echo Cliffs

Charles W. Bailey, Jr., Digital Artist | List of All Artworks

Digital Art: June’s Chalk and Charcoal Drawings, Oil Paintings, Pencil Drawings, and Pastel Drawings

In June, I transformed photos into chalk and charcoal drawings, oil paintings, pencil drawings, and pastel drawings using a variety of Photoshop plug-ins and Topaz Impression. Full-size download images (typically 8 x 10 in. or 8 x 12 in.) and descriptions of the processing steps involved are freely available on Flickr. The images are available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License.

Digital Pastel Drawing of South Cheyenne Canyon, Colorado

Digital Pencil Drawing of an English Farm

Digital Oil Painting of Lake San Cristobal

Digital Chalk and Charcoal Drawing of a Helmsman

Digital Oil Painting of Bullay

Charles W. Bailey, Jr., Digital Artist | List of All Artworks

"The Best Software for Creating Digital Art from Photographs, Version 7"

Charles W. Bailey, Jr. has released "The Best Software for Creating Digital Art from Photographs, Version 7."

This guide identifies and briefly describes key Mac and Windows desktop software that can be used to turn photographs into works of digital art, such as cartoons, charcoal drawings, ink drawings, oil paintings, pastel drawings, and watercolors. It recommends specific software for creating different types of artworks. It lists useful photo editing software that can be used in conjunction with digital art software. It provides purchasing advice, and it describes specific companies' software licensing and sales policies.

Charles W. Bailey, Jr., Digital Artist | List of All Artworks

Digital Art: May’s Gouache Paintings, Ink Drawings, and Pastel Drawings

In May, I transformed photos into pastel drawings, pen and ink drawings, and oil paintings using a variety of Photoshop plug-ins and Topaz Impression. Full-size download images (typically 8 x 10 in. or 8 x 12 in.) and descriptions of the processing steps involved are freely available on Flickr. The images are available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License.

Digital Pastel Drawing of the Grand Grocery in Lincoln

Digital Gouache Painting of a Streetlight Being Lit in Parvis Notre-Dame

Digital Ink Drawing of the Grands Magasins de la Bourse in Brussels

Digital Pastel Drawing of the Chicago and North Western Railway Roundhouse

Digital Ink Drawing of a Bar in Melrose

Charles W. Bailey, Jr., Digital Artist | List of All Artworks

Digital Art: April’s Pastel Drawings, Pen and Ink Drawings, and Oil Paintings

In April, I continued to transform public domain photos into pastel drawings, pen and ink drawings, and oil paintings using a variety of Photoshop plug-ins and Topaz Impression. Full-size download images (8 x 10 in. or 8 x 12 in.) and descriptions of the processing steps involved are freely available on Flickr. The images are available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License.

Digital Pastel Drawing of a Grocery Store in Lincoln

Digital Oil Painting of the Rjecina River Valley

Digital Pen and Ink Drawing of Saint Mark's Basilica

Digital Pen and Ink Drawing of the Devil's Bridge in Schollenen Gorge

Digital Oil Painting of Red Rock Country

Charles W. Bailey, Jr., Digital Artist | List of All Artworks