Space Invaders, Mario and Pacman on a pixelated playground. The black cat is pretty sweet, too.

Space battles, Super Robot Wars style. Roberson has his own style in the pixel artwork.

The word art itself means ‘the quality, production and expression in according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful and appealing, or of more than ordinary significance’. With this in mind art can be related to a many number of genres from drawing and painting through to dance and sculpture. As beauty is in the eye of the beholder so is art, one man’s idea of art may not be another’s so to rigidly define what is art is near enough impossible.

The main areas of art that most people think of include drawing, painting, illustrations, fine art, collages, mosaics and sculptures. However dance is a form of art and so is photography, whether it is digital or traditional. Films are also another more modern form of art as is cosmetics. Tapestry, embroidery and various other textile forms are also are encompassed within the field of art, so it is easy to see why defining art is not a simple process.
Earliest forms of art came from the Stone Age and were rock carvings known as petroglyphs. Subsequent developments include engraving, sculpture and cave paintings. While the earliest artists would have lived somewhere between 300,000 and 1 million BCE and would have been descendants of Homo erectus. The later Stone Age artists would have lived around 100,000 to 400,000 BCE and were types of Homo sapiens such as Neanderthals.

From there on in the realm of art has grown and expanded to what we have today. To some when they are asked what is art they think mainly of famous painting such as Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa and Vincent Van Gough’s Starry Night or Sunflowers. While others may immediately think of sculptures such as Auguste Rodin’s The Thinker Statue or the stunning Venus de Milo re-created by Canova. There again a mother may well claim that her child’s first finger painting qualifies.

Through varying art forms people have the chance to express themselves, whether it is generally considerd in good or bad taste it is neither here nor there. Art is a visual form of internal expression and allows people to convey messages, ideas and places in a way that works for them.

We’ve two helpings of Computer Arts desktop wallpaper for you this month, due to the fact that issue 121 – the Money Issue – sports two very different covers. We’ll bring you Scott Gursky’s extra-special artwork for the subscriber edition in a week or two, but for now here’s a big helping of Ian Keltie.

Ian has won plenty of admiration for his distinctive and colourful illustrative style and is constructing an impressive client list that includes The New York Times, BBC Worldwide, Nissan and Time Out magazine. Ian is influenced by a range of diverse elements, including graffiti, 1970s photographs and the paintings of Egon Schiele, but it was the area where he grew up that provided the inspiration for this cover illustration.

“I thought about a personal journey and how making money reflects the journeys we take,” says Ian. “From the three tower blocks that watched over the estate I grew up on to dreams of one day living and working in a country where it doesn’t rain quite so much.”

Art Brut – Art Brut Vs. Satan

Market news: graffiti art