The art of Digital Painting has many different aspects.
I choose to use it for turning photo pictures into portraits and landscapes looking as close as possible to traditional art. In the example above you can see how a photo becomes a painted portrait. What is the difference between my work and a work of a traditional artist? Well, an artist needs a studio in a penthouse with a lot of natural light. He puts many layers of colors on a canvas until the work is done which takes a lot of time, usually months. Models have to pose in the studio for many tiring hours. After all that hard work a painter creates a single unique piece of art. That's why traditional painting is so expensive.

Digital painting also takes time and requires many skills, experience and talent to create beautiful pictures. But all digital artist needs is a powerful computer, a few pieces of sophisticated software, and some gadgets. It takes much less time to create a picture on computer and it's easy to print it as many times as needed. It explains why I can keep lower prices.

Yet my work is still a professional hand made painting. My brush is a cursor, my canvas is a photo and every single stroke I put on a canvas by my hand as does a traditional artist. I don't use any autopainting tools. You know, they just don't produce result I need. I have a huge choice of different digital brushes to use ones best suited for a particular image. I can keep colors from the original photo or pick different colors from digital pallets. I choose what style will be right for that particular image: watercolor, oil, acrylic, etc., impasto effect or a mix of different styles using my imagination and my taste.

As the result I create a unique image. When printed on an artistic paper and framed it looks almost like a traditional work of art but doesn't cost that much. In other words, I make artistic painting affordable to almost everybody.

How is my work different from similar services offered on the internet? Most of the web sites I visited promise to create a painting from a photo and do exactly that. They make a painted copy of the original photo and nothing more. In contrast, my main idea is to create not just a painting but a beautiful piece of art. Take a look at my Gallery and I hope you will see the difference. The original photos were not taken by me.

I'm very grateful to my dear teacher Jane Conner-Ziser who generously shares her magic techniques of digital painting and portrait retouching in her wonderful classes. It was the most exiting time in my life I will never forget.