July 20, 2009

• A New Art Endeavor

  

  One of the taglines for my personal website, AllThingsMike, is : “an electronic experiment in art.” In the “Yes, But Is It Art? Gallery section, I present commentary about the philosophy of fine art, plus exhibit  my own composite art, photography, and drawings. I’ve never been a “painter” but I used to draw quite a lot. Most of my drawings were pencil sketches done in the late 70s and early 80s. I’ve dabbled a bit in drawing on the computer, but for the most part, my “fine art” exhibit contains more composite pieces than anything else, and these most resemble collages, which are copy/paste endeavors, and not really “creating” something from nothing, which describes the classic “painting”. There are quite a few painters who blog on Xanga, and as I view the wonderful work of some of my favortie painters, like Miriam Clmenhaga (juneblue) and Ocean Starrr (oceanstarr), and the spot on illustrations of Kat (betrayed1959), I always feel inspired and somewhat jealous.    

  

  Ever since I began dabbling in artistic expression on the computer, I’ve had plans to “paint” some of my own photographs. The few beginnings I’ve attempted aren’t very good. Using the “oil paint” tool in the Micrografx Picture Publisher, my decade old photo manipulation program, I have done a few pieces, but never completed anything, and though I keep promising myself, I haven’t really created anything of note, nor have I “presented” too much in the way of  ”painting”. In April, I was struck by the photo above, which is of a late 1800s lighthouse called Cape Neddick, and was a calendar photo from one of my calendars at work. I ripped the photo out of the calendar, and took it home, in hopes of recreating it as a painting.

  

  Two weeks ago I began painting the piece in earnest (on the computer). The photo above, taken this past Saturday, shows how I “paint” on the computer. The program is akin to Adobe Illustrator, which is still the most professional painting program, but far too expensive for me. I have a free program called Gimp and another fine illustrating program, Fireworks, installed on my home computer, but I always go back to the Picture Publisher, because I know the tools real well, and am used to working with the program. I taped the actual calendar photo to the right of my workstation, and I took a photo of it, so I have a digital copy, which I can resize and scroll through as I create my own “painting” in a blank canvas. Above, you can see the detail of the house from the photo on the left of the computer screen, and on the right is my “painting” of the house. I’m using a Wacom art tablet to “paint” on the computer screen.

  

  Here is the full size painting as it looks so far. Compare it to the calendar photo at the top of this entry. There are programs on my computer which would allow me to “draw” architectural elements, such as the buildings and the lighthouse, as vector elements, (as in a CAD program, which I use at work). I wanted this to look more like a “painting” however so I’m creating this as a bitmapped instead of vector illustration. Sometimes, I’m actually editing down to the pixel. What you see here has taken me about two weeks to accomplish. I always think I can just “whip something together” but this is taking some time, and I’m pretty proud of what I’m able to do so far. I seem to prefer more photorealistic paintings, so if this works as it should, my “painting” should look more photographic than impressionistic. Bear in mind that this began as a blank sheet. I did use one ‘cheat’. In order to give myself a reference point from which to start, I masked the outline of the center house from the photograph, and positioned it in the exact place on the blank canvas as it sits in the photo. All other painting is being done purely by “eyeing” the photo, and then duplicating using the line, area, and oil paint brushes on the image editing program. I’ll post the finished piece when it’s done, and I fully expect to keep up these “computer paintings”, hopefully next by duplicating one of my own photos!

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