This year's Featured Artists list has been enriched by many outstanding digital painters. Today we are happy to get to know Carlos Herrera, a fine arts instructor and mechanical engineer in one who studied Landscape art specializing in the traditional painting techniques of the Dusseldorf School of Art. It was his precisely and elegantly captured landscape paintings that caught our attention and secured him a place among the Rebelle Featured Artists.
Originally from El Salvador, even though inclined to painting since an early age, influenced and guided by various artists, you have decided to pursue studies of Mechanical Engineering as your college studies. What led you to this field of interest, or maybe better say, what stopped you before fully pursuing an art career?
My father was a mechanical engineer also, so as far as I remember I was always interested in science and math. At the same time, I remember painting with gouache since I was six or seven years old. I decided to prioritize my engineering studies but never stopped painting at least once a week. To me, it was never engineering or art. Why not both?
After moving to join your parents in the United States, you studied landscape art specializing in traditional painting techniques of the Dusseldorf School of Art. Which painting principles do you value and adapt to your work the most?
For realistic landscape art color mixing is the main principle and skill to master. This means not only controlling the values of light to dark but maintaining a consistent set of chromatic grays that unify the midtones of the painting. This produces correct tonality and color variability. The technique requires pre-mixing batches of paint holding saturation and hue while controlling the values. I should add that color mixing with simulated pigments is the area where I find Rebelle 6 Pro to be particularly useful.
Another principle is to acquire a mental model of rendering the light using pigments. This is as important as developing a basic sense of good composition, drawing skills, and design. This applies to digital painting also.
Lastly, know your tools of the trade. Painting color gradients, soft and hard edges, and brush textures are skills specific to the properties and limitations of the particular media you use.
Besides working with artists for years in the book publishing industry, you have also plenty of experience as an art instructor, teaching traditional watercolors, oils, and acrylics. Which painting medium is the most popular among your students and on contrary, which technique do they tend to struggle the most with? And why do you think it is?
From my experience, the most popular is watercolor, followed by oil, acrylics, and only a few use gouache paint. I have noticed that mastering watercolor techniques is the most difficult for realistic painters. One particularly difficult process with traditional watercolor is the wet-on-wet technique, which requires controlling watercolor spreading behavior on paper, drying time, drawing, color mixing, and rendering the form all at once.
In your opinion, is it still important to explore traditional mediums for a young starting artist in this digital, and most recently AI age? Or is it enough to just dive into the digital art tools and kind of figure things out as they go?
An artist has to learn the same general principles of composition, color theory and color mixing, design, and light modeling of the form no matter the path taken. The tools can be traditional or digital but the skill sets for painting depend on the tools chosen. I think traditional media continues to be a solid foundation for an artistic career or a hobby. On the other hand, digital apps like Rebelle 6 Pro, offer an extended set of tools and color-mixing capabilities unmatched by traditional media.
I am not very familiar with Generative AI "art", but I would say that to be a presentational artist requires being skillful in many areas: knowing and applying the right concepts of rendering the light using specific tools. Having said that, I think AI-generated images could be useful in some stages of the creative process, especially by coming up with multiple iterations in composition color and mood. I think we'll adapt and use it to our advantage to create more beautiful art.
Being a traditional artist yourself, did you feel pressured to try digital painting or was it a natural transition of pure curiousness? What is the time ratio between working with traditional tools and painting digitally in your life right now?
Not at all. I feel that traditional and digital tools work well together to make better artists. Digital tools can accelerate one's understanding of how light renders forms. I have been painting digitally for about 5 years and with oil, acrylics, and gouache for close to 50 years.
According to user feedback, Rebelle is considered to be one of the most realistic digital painting software on the market. How did you come across our software and what stood out to you about it?
I had been looking for apps that render traditional media for a long time. I have used a lot of different software, but about a year ago I started painting with Rebelle and there is no comparison! For now, there is no other application that gives you the level of color mixing and textural interaction that is possible in Rebelle 6 Pro. The results are amazing!
Recently, you have become a Rebelle Featured Artist. Looking at your landscapes in the Escape Motions Gallery, we are sure many will say, they would love to learn a technique or two from you. Can we expect any tutorials or maybe even a painting course in Rebelle from you?
Yes, I would like to release some tutorials on my painting process in Rebelle and my preferred brushes in the near future. With Rebelle I can reproduce the look and feel of oil and acrylic media using the same steps I use for my traditional painting sessions. I love how versatile Rebelle's brush engine is and the intricacy of colors in NanoPixel mode.
Thank you, Carlos, for taking a moment to introduce yourself and your creative work to our audience. We are looking forward to more of your Rebelle landscapes!
Escape Motions Team
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Learn more about Carlos Herrera:
https://www.escapemotions.com/featured-artists/carlos-herrera
https://www.instagram.com/carlosherrera700
https://artharmonics.blogspot.com