The term digital painting sounds like a revolution. It can be compared with the term Open Access which is describing a new form of book publishing. The shared identity of both is the digital only idea. That means, it is a new technology which is grouped around computers and desktop publishing.
Before I want to explain digital painting, let us first define electronic publication. Electronic publication means simply to not print out a manuscript, instead it is a file on the computerscreen and is created, improved and read entirely on the screen. Instead of using mechanical typewriters and Linotype printing devices more modern technologies like the PDF fileformat and LaTeX is used to generate the output. The content itself, for example a manuscript about a scientific topic remains the same. That means, an electronic PDF paper has chapters, a bibliography index, and words written in English, like his offline ancestor.
Now, we can introduce “digital painting”. In contrast to electronic publication, digital painting is even more advanced. That means, that even progressive artists may never heard about the term. It means simply to not print out an artwork or use a traditional studio, but take advantage of modern computer technologies like a graphictablet, the JPEG fileformat and the GIMP software. Digital painting should not be confused with digital art. Digital art is a very traditional form of art, because the computer is the subject. A possible installation would be to use computer monitors in a art exhibition to explain to the public what technology is. Another example of digital art is the early homecomputer scene on the commodore C-64 which has programmed so called intros and demos. In both cases, the computer made a new form of expression possible.
Such digital art is not the subject here. It is something which doesn't contradicts the self-image of a painter who is producing an oil painting. That means, an installation which is using an arduino micocontroller can coexists to a normal 1x1 meter painting. This can be seen as a state-of-the art example and is widely excepted in the art system todey. The more radical form is to use computer technology to replace old kind of art.
An early form of this technique is called speed-painting and can be realized without using the GIMP software. The idea behind speedpainting is, that the artist is using normal materials like a pencil and colors but with a certain motivation. The aim is not only to produce a painting, but with the constraint of using not more then 10 minutes. So the artist is focussed on the output of his work. He is taken a stopwatch and he must be an expert for different painting strategies. He can't figure out how to draw while he is doing so.
Comparable to speed painting is digital painting. Here the pencil is replaced by a computerprogram and the idea is to produce a certain picture. Like in speed painting to, environment constraints like time, money and effort are very important. One example of GIMP and other tools is, that the artist has only a restricted amount of colors, for example 16.7 million of them and he can't use more of them. Also, the number of brushes is limited. If he need a certain type of the blue color which is not available in GIMP but only as a offline color he has a problem. Because the color is not available in the software and he must find an answer to the problem.
Let us investigate what Craig Mullins is doing. He doesn't program algorithms to generate a picture. This is called fractals. He doesn't scan in a picture with a scanner in 600 dpi and upload it to the internet, he doesn't use oil colors in the real world. On the same time he is painting pictures, but he is focussed on tools which are available on the computer. For example, he has a digital pencil and draws with it an artwork. Why he is doing so? Because he is not interested in the painting process itself, for example to work with oil colors, but what he want's is a result. The typical workflow of Craig Mullins is, that a customer needs a portrait and Mullins has to deliver in a certain amount of time. How exactly he is generating the image is not important. He is perhaps using photoshop, or he is using GIMP. That means, the aim is to generate a JPEG File which is 100 MB in size, and how exactly this image is produced is not important.