First release of Photoshop, 1990

In the early 1990s I worked for several years at an architectural presentation company whose lifeblood was perspective renderings. There were two artists who produced stunning renderings using gouache paint, a medium similar to watercolor. I would go back to their studio and admire their work as often as possible. I thought, “I would love to do that someday…”

I bought paint, an airbrush, a compressor, and other supplies, which I played around with over the ensuing months. But I quickly gained a new appreciation for the talent and many years of practice and experience it takes to produce such beautiful, artistic renderings with paint.

It was about that time I began experimenting with this newfangled program called Adobe Photoshop, and immediately fell in love with it! I quickly realized that painting with gouache and a brush would not be necessary to fulfill my dream. I could ‘paint’ architectural renderings and other graphics digitally, on the computer.

Photoshop CS5, 20 years later

The greatest advantages of digital graphics, of course, include being able to use multiple layers to control and edit various elements in the illustration, and–my favorite–being able to UNDO! With gouache, an artist can change his or her mind or paint over a mistake a few times, but on the computer, a mistake can be undone with a simple keystroke. Using today’s technology, the digital artist now finds himself or herself in a whole new world of experimentation and creativity, where the only limits are one’s imagination.