Unexpected Development

One thing led to another and I'm finding myself in completely new creative territory. It started when I realized I wanted more life, more spark, in my paintings.

I decided I needed to do loads of sketches, learn about perspective in depth, and find a fluency with drawing rapidly, to capture those values that hide in the subconscious so I could successfully accentuate and emphasize what I find important in an image. I've learned that too much premeditation or too great an accuracy in portraying many details can dampen the spirit of a drawing, painting, or whatever form of creative expression it is.

I've been doing sketches with pencil on paper. A week or so ago, just before I created the sketches in the last blog post, "A Couple of Sketches In A New Vein", I decided to try drawing in Adobe Photoshop. I drew a simple doodle cartoon, and it was such a pleasant experience I decided to try painting and sketching in Photoshop. The Jura mountains with snow on them, in the last post, was my first result. And I enjoyed doing it more than anything I'd done so far, and I have enjoyed my artwork before that too!

So I decided I'd do my sketching using Photoshop. What was most freeing about it was the fact that I wasn't using valuable paper or paint (which can be quite costly and I hate using valuable earth resources when there is an alternative). This allowed me to start whatever I wanted, not caring what would happen if it failed or wasn't useful as a result. This was extremely liberating. It seemed a great way to experiment and learn the fluency in drawing and styles of painting that I'm looking for.

My second sketch in Photoshop was the portrait of Virginia Woolfe. It's just like working with pencil and paper, except that the paper is replaced with a smooth Wacom tablet. I'm enjoying it so very much that I've decided to continue working in Photoshop to do my painting. I have tonnes to learn of course.

I've learned that tracing an image and then painting it in makes the resulting painting lifeless; painting really does require emphasis of elements that the artist finds interesting and charming. So, even though the computer does provide a perfect medium for producing quick art through tracing and manipulating, I prefer to continue to learn and develop the fundamentals of producing art the 'traditional' way, but to apply these in digital painting using the computer as my medium.

This is my third exploration in digital painting. For reference I used a photo that we took on a walk with Jasmine, our beautiful african grey parrot, one evening up in the mountains. If you'd like to see photos of that walk: see previous post, "An Evening Walk At La Col De La Faucille, Jura, France".


Tony and I have called this painting "Jazzy Jura Sunset". You can click on it to see it larger.

The real advantage to using Photoshop is that I can explore all sorts of ways of painting. I have asthma and so I experience difficulties breathing if I use many of the art mediums traditionally available. But I love brilliant colors and soft colors, and well, just colors. I chose egg tempera because it was brighter than watercolor and didn't cause any breathing difficulties when I used it. All of those considerations vanish with digital painting because it's so versatile.

I'm very much a beginner, but experimenting further with it this, here is the next one I painted.


The photo I used for reference was taken on one of our trips to the market on a Saturday (yes, of course, Jasmine was with us). This little jaunt is described in the post "Sugar Cube Cartoon".

This is one area of experimentation I'm involved in right now and there are a number of other areas I'm branching out in at the same time. I'll talk about those in other posts. My hope is to put them all together and make something of them. I have no idea if I'll succeed in that, and it sure is scary even discussing it here, in case I don't... but then, when life presents the possiblity of chasing a dream it's a very precious opportunity... so here goes.

Hopefully everyone gets a chance at some point to follow their magic. I hope you do too. I'd love to hear about the things that bring the beauty of life to you.