Imagined Worlds: Creating Art in 3D Virtual Reality - Exploring Immersive Digital Painting

XR Lab Workshop by Jacqueline Toal.

Imagined Worlds: Creating Art in 3D Virtual Reality - Exploring Immersive Digital Painting

This workshop introduces Google Tilt Brush/Open Brush as VR painting applications, covering installation, setup, and examples of 3D art that explore composition, perspective, colour, form, and lighting, including a demo of tools and features through screen mirroring and discussion of the pros and cons of 3D drawing.

The hands-on activity begins with creating a 2D illustration in an image editing software, generating an image with AI, or using a photograph as reference (with optional music for mood), then moving into VR for orientation before importing the illustration via Meta Quest link, learning VR tools including panels, brushes, and colour palette setup, progressing through 3D dimensional sketching for composition, blocking in colours and forms, developing detail and visual style, creating a final artwork with consideration for all visual elements, capturing video, sharing to Sketchfab, exploring file formats and options for 3D software integration, and concluding with sharing outcomes to a Miro Board for peer reflection.

This workshop is for XR Lab members. For details on how to participate, please email richard@digitalartsstudios.com.

Facilitator Bio:

Jackie Toal is a full-time educator and creative practitioner with a keen interest in both digital, immersive and traditional arts. She has a particular fascination with surface pattern, shapes and distinctive forms, as well as the heritage of Irish textiles and the linen industry. She sees both traditional tools and digital methods as means for expressing creativity and mark making. The diversity of work possible through these approaches particularly appeals to her. Jackie finds the interdisciplinary mix of immersive technologies (XR) combined with traditional approaches intriguing and enjoys exploring computational creativity and has an interest in creating art in an immersive space.

She is deeply inspired by the colour of nature, particularly flowers and organic shapes, which feature predominantly in her painting work. The main genre of Jackie's work is floral and nature-oriented, though she has also experimented with abstract geometrics, landscape and character illustration, as well as motion graphics and animation. She draws inspiration from artists such as Henri Matisse and his use of colour, Georgia O'Keeffe's huge florals, Frida Kahlo's use of colour and meaning, and pioneering textile designers including Jacqueline Groag and Lucienne Day. Contemporary inspiration comes from the work of Akiko Yamashita.

Building on her creative practice, Jackie has been a Lecturer in Immersive Technologies at Dundalk Institute of Technology since January 2023. She is a programme director for the MSc in Computer Animation and the MSc in Games and Extended Reality. Her main teaching disciplines include 2D animation, 3D character animation, UX for immersive technologies, and 2D/3D art. Prior to this role, she gained over twenty years' experience at Southern Regional College, teaching topics ranging from art fundamentals to virtual and augmented reality. She has also worked as a swimwear designer, printed textile designer and colourist.