Chris Newman is an American painter who creates digital paintings in software art programs like Adobe Photoshop and Corel Painter. Even though his paintings are created on a computer, the finished art works have a watercolor painting effect. Watercolor effects suit Newman’s paintings perfectly, allowing the artist to fade elements of the scene to create a sense of depth within the painting. Blurring out some areas and giving other areas sharp brush strokes adds to the dramatic feeling within Chris Newman’s paintings.
Most of Chris Newman’s paintings feature a character in a style that is obviously influenced by anime, a form of Japanese animation. Newman’s characters have the same power in their movements as anime characters, and pose with the same stealthy grace as their animated counterparts. Each of Newman’s characters is a caricature, reminiscent of a human being, but with added elements that make them more than human. This digital artist prefers characters with long, slender limbs and sexy, arched spines. His Photoshop figures are taut as bow strings, either curved and poised to spring or snapping through an arc of controlled movement.
Newman uses color to create an emotional effect within each painting. The majority of his computer art is colorized, giving each painting an overall color, often a grey-green or blue-grey color. Sometimes the painter uses opposing colors such as a peach pink and a cyan blue to create contrast within the painting. Contrasting colors are often used in art to create a sense of duality and balance between the two colors and the symbolism that each color represents.
Many of Chris Newman’s paintings use repetitive shapes to create a sense of movement within the painting. This was a technique that was popular with artist of the futurist movement. Giacomo Balla’s Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash (1912) is an excellent example of the constant motion of the world that futurist artists attempted to portray through inanimate paintings. In Newman’s art, the illusion of movement is not a reflection of the liveliness of the real world, but a way to give life and soul to his fantasy characters.
See more computer art works from digital painter Chris Newman.
