Chinese Style Digital Painting

Abstract

Digital painting, as a new medium, has adapted styles and skills from many traditional art forms. Traditional Chinese painting has thousands of years of history with unique aesthetic value and profound artistic achievement. These qualities could be utilized to enrich digital art with more choices about composition, outlining, coloring and perspective. However, at this time, there are no effective methods of adapting traditional Chinese painting into digital painting in the ways other art forms have been assimilated. Traditional Chinese art and digital art, which could benefit each other, are lacking the necessary bridge to unite them. This paper explores and discusses the reasons for this lack of bridge, and then introduces a methodology to adapt traditional Chinese painting into digital art by developing a new form of digital painting with Chinese influences. This is more than representing Chinese painting digitally, but rather creating a form of digital painting that can be applied to a variety of objects and themes - traditional and modern, eastern and western.This can create a new platform for traditional Chinese art. It can contribute to global cultural diversity, stimulate potential Chinese markets and inspire professional digital artists and students in the art and design disciplines.