OUR PURSUIT OF ART : WE HAVE A NEW WEBSITE: What is art : Concept artists?

Meltem

I'm going to explain you why - in my vision - digital art has an important impact on art history.

In the first place there are many different digital art movements and a few weeks ago I wrote about algorithmic art, the one I want to speak in this post is about the concept artists in games and movies.

I don't know what you guys think about concept artists, but some of them have a really bright and big imagination which leads to incredible artworks. Don't forget that imagination is a copy of the reality, what we see or what we experience are the elements to create an imagination. Our brain mixes those things up and creates an object and that is why children have a bright imagination. They learn and retain stuff really quickly.

First of all, a concept artists is someone that creates a yet unexisting place, character, universe, etc. A concept artist is not only related to games or movies, but can also be defined as an illustration artist. These kind of drawings are a part of art and made a further step from the traditional technique. These kind of techniques which are digital media (like algorithmic art), give people another vision of art, what makes 'everything' art. Well, this is ofcourse a big discussion in the art world, because when I say 'everything' it is a bad interpretation for the art history. For me it's not necessary to divide or to categorize everything.

An illustration/concept artist has the same value as an old master painter. That is ofcourse up to the artist him/herself if he/she want to be recognized as an artist and not as a craftsman. We know that most of the stories behind the paintings from the old masters are stories of Greek mythology or facts in their own interpretation. Some concept artists may do the same or mixes it up with old folk stories (bible) or others like novels for example. So I don't really see any difference here, the only difference is time and the use of materials (techniques). The examples I'm going to show you down here are not exact the same compositions or from the same art movements. It's just to give an idea about the visual design.

Frederick Leighton - Captive Andromache (1886)

Kimberley Pope - GOT I&II (From series of Games Of Thrones)

So why is an concept artist not just an artist, I mean these artists makes the same things like what masters did in the past, in the matter of 'context'. The time has changed, the technology changed and that affects the art. That means that those categories that are made to define a painting or a drawing are actually fading away from the art history. Everything becomes “art” in a matter of time. The time has changed and these kind of artists needs to be recognized because they made a big change in the art history or world. From 2D to 3D, from games to movies, from illustration to graphic novels, etc.

Some of these artists use both traditional and digital media. Digital media makes most of the drawings perfect because you can undo your mistakes and that's what makes it easy. I'm going to show you in the next indention a few artworks from the “world” of concept artists. Their art and where they've worked.