Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Blog 14 Become a master of the computer's MANY tricks!

The computer  has many MANY tricks to learn, not just those we'd find in art programs. Here is a photo that I felt sent a strong message about Arizona's heritage, the "Wild West".This is the final product portrayed on an easel.
      This painting has one thing deliberately missing.  Paint!
 It begs for sharp edges; it has great texture.  Also, paintings are a bit unbelievable...cleaner and more beautiful than reality could be in a capture. .. and this image is unbelievable enough!  The only paint brush work I did was to eliminate some background clutter, clean the eye sockets,  and relocated some of the elements (Ex: the little blue mask).  I punched the color and used Photoshop's Filter\Artistic\Dry Brush 2  8  2.  That's it.  No more. 
      My Point:  When a photographer goes from "Photo to Canvas", I think the aim is a bit different than a liquid media painter who goes from blank canvas to creation.  In the "Skulls", an incredibly hard outline communicates the harshness of the environment better than a soft brush ever could.
      I want you to FEEL the prickly red cactus.
      It's not what TOOL you use to get your message across, it's that you DO get your message across. 
      I was one to immediately embrace the digital age back in the 80's when many of my photographer friends were using the words "isn't using the computer cheating?"  Nonsense !  Art is about communication and learning the language of the computer is quite like learning how to express yourself with liquid paints.  It's just different.
     Here is a gallery I made in the late 80's.  It was one of the first I put on the web in 1997.  It was made long before I could admit that images like this were painterly...  so I called it "two view". (Far away it looked like a photo; up close it looked like a painting)
 http://www.strengthinperspective.com/Pictures-ComputerArt/WoodlandPhotos-7/WoodlandPhotos.html

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