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Book Review Digital Art by David Cousens

 

If you are interested in digital art then you probably have at some point come across illustrations made by David Cousens of Cool Surface. His art work has appeared in books such as The Big Book of Contemporary Illustration and The Mighty Pencil volumes 1 & 2 as well as magazines such as Advanced Photoshop, SciFiNow and Imagine FX . His impressive client list spans from Adidas to BBC, Macmillan and Creative Boom to name a few.

His new book Digital Art – A complete guide to making your own computer artwork was released in May 2013. This can be purchased from Amazon Drawing-a-face

This guide to creating digital art mainly focuses on programs such as Adobe Photoshop and Corel Painter to achieve the desired results, although alternatives program are also discussed. As such this book is open to all who have a interest in digital art whether they have expensive art programs or not. David goes on to talk about the difference between RGB, CMYK and DPI as well as vectors vs pixels. The book also explores a selection of non-creative tools, colour selections and the different file types images can be saved as. The later chapter looks into the different types of tools available to us to create our illustrations as well as blending modes, blurs and layer masks.

Space-Pirate-capn-finalAs well as the technical aspects to the programs David informs the reader of other aspects of art such as Leading the eye, rule of thirds and perspective. The book leads into informing the reader how to drawing people such as drawing bodies, faces and poses.

The second half of the book deals with tutorials and teaches the reader how to achieve their desired results. These tutorials guide the user through their respective steps driving the reader to achieve the result they want using a mix of brush work, tools, blending modes and filters. A particular favourite of mine was Creating line art from a photo, David’s twist on an old idea makes for a very nice resulting picture but also an enjoyable tutorial to read and try. The book talks you through some of the fundamentals of creating a great illustration and although it does not take you by the hand and hold the “pen” for you it does give you the knowledge to let you do it yourself.

A very good book for all inspiring artists and well worth the £10 🙂

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About Simon Rudd (51 Articles)
Simon Rudd is a freelance writer and artist specialising in Photoshop tutorials as well as Horror, the Macabre and Fantasy themed pictures. He frequently writes for magazines and websites.

1 Comment on Book Review Digital Art by David Cousens

  1. amazing looking art work…

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