Lines and Colors art blog

Daniel Xiao
Daniel Xiao is a concept and matte painting artist who has worked for Pixar Animation Studios, Dreamworks Universal and Fantasy Flight Games, among others.

Xiao paints digitally in Photoshop, as well as working with 3-D applications like Maya and Sketchup Pro.

His fantastical landscapes have a wonderful sense of scale and atmospheric perspective, the qualities of which don’t really come through in the small images I’m showing above. The visual appeal of his work is much more evident on his on site, and even more so on some larger selections you can see in this post on Concept Ships.

Xiao also has a blog that features additional images and work in progress.

On his website you will also find images of digitlally rendered naturalistic landscapes, still lifes and studies from artists like John Singer Sargent.


Comments

3 responses to “Daniel Xiao”

  1. ceparie Avatar
    ceparie

    While I appreciate and admire digitally created art, I just can’t shake a prejudice that it’s somehow cheating. Irrational, I know, but I just can’t help it.

    1. Not an uncommon feeling. While there are certainly many things you can do with digital painting that you can’t do with traditional media (the magnifier tool and undo command come to mind), most digital painters make the same motions with their pressure sensitive stylus that they might with their brush or pen.

  2. @ceparie

    To add onto Charley’s comment, you still need artistic skill to make digital art come alive. I’ve found that many artists who have beautiful digital work can work just as well traditionally–a painter can paint with whatever tools they have.