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Digitally created artwork that emulates the appearance of traditional art media, or feature visual elements that appear to be traditionally created.
Most commonly, this involves simulation of of pencil drawn lines, and the brush texture and paint layering of traditional paintings. Simulated traditional artwork almost always involves the use of specialized textured brushes to aid in emulating the look of traditional work.

Distinguishing Simulated Traditional Media from Traditional Media

In many cases, a simulated traditional image is clearly digital in nature, while in other cases, without a close inspection, such artwork may be hard to tell from actually traditionally created images. Below are some suggestions for signs that an image is created digitally. Note that some of the suggestions below, especially when applied individually, do not automatically indicate an image is digitally created.

General

• No subtle "ghosting" of guide lines
• Clearly artificial looking textured backgrounds/canvases
• Consistent textures in brushes
• Mix of clearly digital, and simulated traditional elements

Line Art

• extremely clean and smoothly drawn "pencil" lines, made with the use of a stabilizer (software that smooths and corrects the shakiness of the artist's hand when drawing long lines)
• consistent line width and texture
• lines that vary in width without an apparent change in tool (e.g. much wider pencil lines with no change in texture)
• No subtle bleed of ink in "pen" lines
• Clean tapering of line art at the end of strokes

Paint

• Uniform and consistent brush texture patterns that would be unlikely with a physical brush
• Digital "banding" in areas of paint from brush strokes

Related tags

• digital_painting_(artwork)
• digital_watercolor_(artwork)

See also

• mixed_media