For July I took my recent portrait study and decomposed it with poppies. This image was posted as 27 separate images to Instagram over the course of a week.
Digital art allows for recombination of pieces into new forms - here I blend in-process images of a portrait with the finished version and unrelated flowers. The act of making the painting becomes part of the subject - the artistic process becomes it's own subject.
Also poppies are pretty.
Another portrait study on the iPad - I'm starting to get a better grasp of color and value at the same time.
I've been experimenting with using my Epson printer as an artistic tool. Whenever I've tried just printing out a digital image onto quality paper the result has left me a bit flat. The results are good but something about the image seems to die in the process. Left as a string of pixels, digital images can be resized, recolored, remixed, and distributed endlessly. Digital images have are a metaphysical quandary. You can look at the screen of your device and recognize a photo. But you're not seeing the photo, you're seeing a copy at a different size. The matrix of numbers making up the pixel data is literally different from the "original" image housed on the cloud. But to us it's the "same" image. (If we're ever able to 3D print a person, philosophy of mind might have to become a required class in high school)
When a digital image (painting, photo, whatever) is straight printed out, some of that infinite potential is lost and the image becomes static. Also paper doesn't glow very much. Printing is a dull shadow of the digital image in most cases.
So what if we treat the printer like a paintbrush instead? I found an inexpensive roll of canvas designed for printers (not my printer, but some printers) and cut off sheets to the precise maximum size my printer will accept and started running off images. Then I run the same image back through the printer and print a second layer. Anything which is white is a "hole" in the image - the white of the page is intended to fill that role - and the ink itself is semi-transparent. Interesting layering effects occur as images are piled on top of one-another.
Now it gets interesting. Accidents can and do happen. My images become paint and the printer is the paint brush. It's still a fast way to work but there's not instant gratification as the printer must be allowed to do it's work.
I like the physicality of images printed in multiples onto a canvas. The process is different from drawing or painting digitally or from designing digitally so it scratches a different itch. The scale of 13“ × 19“ is big enough to feel substantial.
Portrait Study
Digital - 2700px x 3600px
Procreate for iPad Pro
This study became the basis for some printer-based works I've been experimenting with - digital artwork naturally becomes it's own raw material.
I found a publisher of artist model e-books to provide me with some study material for when I can't make it to a real drawing session - which seems to happen a lot lately. These e-books have nicely lit, high resolution photos which I can use as reference. Many of the poses are a bit cheesy (take my sword!) and they could use a better gender balance, but in all it's a good resource.
I really just need to make some vain friends with nothing to do on the weekends.
The latest edition of my newsletter project, 100 Doodles, where I reveal digital painting secrets.
The latest issue of 100 Doodles where we run into like-minded acquaintances and I make a quick sketch of the park.
This piece was composited from two 2700px × 3600px images posted as 24 individual square images to Instagram over the course of a week.
A while back I wrote about how I see Instagram as an artistic medium and I've been trying to use the social media platform exclusively as an artistic outlet since then. Last week I finished publishing the piece above as 24 individual square images over the course of a week.
I'm hoping that each fragment comes across as at least somewhat visually interesting - if not a composition on it's own, at least a compelling detail. I want each post to build dramatic tension for anyone who is following along. For anyone who sees a post randomly and taps over to my profile, I want them to find a nice surprise of a growing composition.
The imagery here is all inspired by my mornings leaving Tacoma for Seattle on the train. The train station, the view of the sound, the side of the train, the morning light on the building next door. The poppies - which may just be my favorite new motif - represent that painful yearning for spring that kicks in around January in the Pacific Northwest.
The total result of this image, to me feels a bit like a movie poster. I'm not sure I'm happy with it, but I do enjoy the process. I think that for the next one of these, I want to lean heavily into the graphical nature of these constructed pieces...if it feels like a movie poster, maybe it should really be a movie poster...
I’ve been experimenting with Micro.blog long enough to say I’m not really experimenting any longer. I post something almost every day and I regularly have really positive interactions with community members.
Although there’s a community around Micro.blog it’s not really a social network. Micro.blog is mostly a publishing platform. It’s paid - it’s not costly - but a nominal fee keeps bozos away better than a barbed wire fence. I suspect, also, that the community managers would quickly moderate a spammer right out of existence - as I’ve seen no evidence of any spammy or creepy marketing behavior.
Writing on Micro.blog is fast and low friction. I use it primarily to capture links to artists I find interesting. I post a photo, a link, and some quick thoughts. This way I can go back and look at inspiring work later - but I can also share it with a receptive community.
Micro.blog’s founders are champions of the Indie Web - so they support multiple ways to import and export your posts to and from their service. You can push your work out to Github (I do this to make an automatic permanent archive of my posts) or publish to a number of blogging platforms using a shared standard. You can also export your entire Micro.blog as Wordpress XML file - which is supported for import by Squarespace and others. All of these options are a nice, warm, fuzzy security blanket.
I don’t feel trapped using Micro.blog.
So, I think Micro.blog is great. I can heartily recommend it. It’s fun and helps me stay creative and engaged. But it has a side-effect that I find freeing.
Micro.blog supports cross-posting to both Twitter and Facebook. If your post is too long for Twitter, it will be truncated with a link to the post on your public Micro.blog site. Photos are included with cross-posts. Neither Facebook nor Twitter support link formatting of any kind (because they’re terrible platforms run by goons) - so Micro.blogg’s cross-posting feature is smart enough to extract links and tack them on the end of your post.
If you want to share your work on the web, I think it’s very important to own your own website and have it be the source of “truth” for your online work. However, you can’t really escape the gravitational pull of these terrible shit-services like Facebook. It’s awful, but this is where your friends, family, and colleagues are online. You must meet people where they are.
By utilizing Micro.blog’s cross-posting feature - I can be active on both Facebook and Twitter - but I never actually have to log into either. I can post and post and share and share and never see that dumb bird or a nagging message to provide my phone number and blood type.
The latest issue of my newsletter project 100 Doodles where some kids are just trying to do a good deed.
Napping Commuter
Digital painting, iPad Pro, Procreate
Napping Commuter is a a digital painting for Instagram. I created this piece with the intention of exhibiting in pieces on Instagram over the course of a week. Once completed I broke the piece into a grid of 12 squares then posted each in order to my Instagram account such that viewing my profile would reveal the full image. Each post revealing a bit more of the image. Some posts stand alone as works, some are strange and cryptic.
With this piece I wanted to capture some of the feeling of riding the train to Seattle - with this poor commuter as the viewer's avatar. Above him are concrete walls with windows and blotchy paint. Something you'll see a lot of as you cruise through Puyallup and Sumner. The number "2" came from a photograph from years ago. On the side of the train one morning I noticed the number two - in bright white Helvetica and right next to it, the dark blue ghost of where another "2" once was. I snapped a photo. Those two 2s have come to graphically represent the train in my mind - something about the faded space where a decal once was, next to a bright fresh decal of the very same thing says something about repetition and pattern and commuting.
