Perhaps the best part of running a site about digital art is getting to highlight the work of outstanding digital artists. So I’m thrilled to kick off the “Inspirations” section with an article about UK artist David Cole.

David Cole was a traditional watercolorist before making the switch to digital, and he’s very successful at creating images with a traditional look to them. I’ve rarely seen digital paintings that do such a good job of capturing the look of watercolor. David uses a variety of digital tools, including the now-extinct buzzPro toolset. (The company that made buzzPro, Fo2Pix, went under in November 2007.) There are quite a number of works on display at David’s website, www.davidcolepictures.co.uk, and many of them show the original, source image that David started with. For beginners (and not-so-beginners!) this is very helpful. Here is the image David began with for the painting shown above:

I am very grateful to David Cole for allowing me to reproduce some of his work here. He’s been an inspiration to me, and it’s wonderful to be able to share his work with others. David has tutorials in issues 10, 13, and 16 of the Corel Painter Magazine.

(Painting, top, copyright 2006 by David Cole. Reference photo used courtesy of Henrietta Cole.)

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