My new book! "Digital Art: a complete guide to making your own computer artworks" by David Cousens

Digital Art Cover

Arcturus Publishing asked me to create a book all about digital artwork, that could be useful to beginners, intermediate and skilled professional alike.

The Digital Art book that I've written covers everything from the basics; like explaining File formats, colour selection and choosing which Digital Art program is right for you, then it explains the creative tools that you will use in digital art programs, and follows by looking at crucial design concepts like composition, leading the eye and establishing mood with colour.

It finishes with a chapter of tutorials that will talk you through things like how to successfully retouch a photo, how to achieve a number of traditional effects digitally, how to master glow effects, generate line art from photographs and creating retro pixel art.

Daddy's Things

Space Pirate Cap'n

Adventures in Pixel land 

The book also features how to use the awesome Watercolour Assistant in Photoshop CS6 (devised by Tim Shelbourne and Russell Brown) and photography by Tigz Rice and Marcus J Ranum and features some of the artwork that I provided for Digital Arts Magazine and character art from the upcoming Deseble Rising series by Mark Saint!

128 pages, full colour artwork.
You can buy the book now from Amazon:

You can Follow David:

Twitter - http://twitter.com/DavidCousens
Tumblr- http://CoolSurface.tumblr.com/
Behance - http://www.behance.net/coolsurface

Recommended Reading: "The Pirate Cruncher" by Jonny Duddle

Here at Cool Surface we're huge fans of the amazingly talented artist Jonny Duddle.    Jonny's painterly work exudes fun and is almost guaranteed to feature a monkey or two.  And lets face it, who doesn't love Monkeys?

We've just got our hands on a copy of Jonny's first ever storybook "The Pirate Cruncher" published by Templar and we're happy to say it's absolutely great.  The art is beautiful to look at and although we can't say anything about the story because we don't want to spoil its ending, it's very funny and well presented.  It's a great kids book and one a lot of adults will enjoy too so don't wait around, buy it now! 

Have fun,

David
www.twitter.com/DavidCousens

(Have an art book you'd like us to review?  Please get in touch and we'll see what we can do)

Hyde in the Shadows

This is an image that we produced for an upcoming book about all things monster related, which is due to be released in 2010. We can't really say much more on it, but once the book is released we'll be revealing more details!

For now, enjoy...

Sarah

"10 Explorers who Changed the World" sneak peek #2

It's Monday, so here's another taster from the upcoming book "10 Explorers who Changed the World".


Every Monday we'll treat you to another preview image from the series, so come back next week to see a unique method of shark repellent...

10 Explorers Who Changed the World
Publishing 4 August 2008
By Kingfisher, an imprint of Macmillan Children’s Books
www.panmacmillan.co.uk