Tim Anderson Digital Painting

Tim Anderson walks it off - from the first ever Field of Dreams game 2021.

Back when I was at the Illinois Institute of Art (Chicago) circa 2001, digital speed painting started to be taken as a more serious form of art, so I thought I'd try it. Photoshop was something I was getting into pretty seriously as I just recently got my first Graphic Design gig. Popularized by people like Burt Monroy (his Damen Blue Line stop drawing is my favorite), digital painting was something I couldn't stop thinking about.

The popular programs to draw in at that time were Painter and Photoshop, both still relevant today. They were pretty simple to draw with; Layers, custom brushes, and a color pallet. Immediately, I realized that even though it was not called real "art", I found the experience to be a great escape from everything else. The world seemed to stop until I put the stylus down. The only care I had was to focus on zooming in/out and making a pixel perfect-ish image in order to make it the photo realistic as possible. That feeling I got was exactly the same when working on a real painting or sketch. An extremely relaxing experience. So, at that point I realized that digital painting is indeed an art, and not an "art".

Back in the day, I broke the bank on a Wacom 6x8 tablet (my daughter now Hailey now has sole ownership of it), but for this drawing, I bought a Huion Kamvas 16 inch tablet. What a difference 20 years makes. Drawing directly on a screen that has 8k levels of pressure sensitivity was an absolutely mind blowing experience. I will be drawing more again.

As a White Sox fan, armed with a brand new tablet, drawing the hottest player on the team in the middle of a corn field wasan epic moment to test out.