Form fitting

Here is an example of what you can do with just a simple image. I took a closeup photo of a rock, applied tonal alterations to it and then used the twirl filter on several layers, rearranging them this way and that to give me the effect I wanted. Of course I had no idea what I wanted when I started out. I just let the image dictate the artistic direction.

Maine flora

This is a perfect example of what can be done with just a single image, and is based solely on a simple a simple nature photograph. The rest is all tinkering with adjusting first the tonal elements and then using the filter gallery in Photoshop.

Cave painting

Another one of my more complex images -- and of course one of the larger files I've worked with -- this began primarily with the old nude study. A woman is reclining on a chaise lounge or some sort of casual furniture, with her back to the viewer. After tweaking the image itself -- and adding the special effects using the stained glass filter in Photoshop -- I started the search for the background textures. As those fell into place -- several bits of texture in fact -- I then started toying with the idea of integrating the human figure into the inanimate background, and came up with the idea of juxtaposing the two as part of the same whole, rather than trying to keep them distinct from one another.

Blue doors

While this is in fact "only" a photograph with just the light and dark tonal qualities altered a bit from the original, it struck me that it was more like a painting than anything else. As I recall, this was taken in the French Quarter in New Orleans two years before Katrina. I wonder if the building still looks the same.

Woman in the water

This is a perfect example of letting your imagination run amok. I began with two images, one a nude study of a woman sitting in a chair against a wall and the other of a close-up texture of a rock. After combining the two I added an overlay of another small image to provide the "tattooing" effect and the finished it off with water using the Flood filter plug-in for Photoshop (Flaming Pear software if you need to know).

Framed

This was another very large file that began as a simple square of texture. After numerous dressings and re-dressings I then the added components first of textures taken from rocks and then from the Studio Geometry series of images. Wedded together we get this:

Birth of an idea

This particular image was quite possibly the largest file I have worked on: more than one and a half gigabytes. I began with a simple close-up of a rock, as I was keenly interested in the texture, and then brought a similar file onto the image, replicating that layer many times after modifying the shape, tonal qualities and texture, before positioning it the way you see it here.

I have also experimented with this image at different angles: with the "birth" happening upwards, sideways, what have you. It pretty much works for me all the way around in fact. I do like this variation the best, however.

Machiavelli's watching

This was one of the first composite digital images I created -- quite a few years back in fact, when I lived in Vermont. This particular image represented my general approach to digital painting: begin with a background (in this case a water image with a round shape I created using Bryce) and then just start experimenting with various other images: here I usedf a stock nude photo from the early 20th century, and then a photo of Machiavelli's statue outside the Uffizi gallery in Florence; I added the eyes (my niece's eyes in fact) to "give Niccolo some life." And voila!

Tidal wave in neon

Here is still another variant on the "Tidal Wave" theme, using the swirl tool in Photoshop combined with substantial alteration of tonal and textural values.

Intensity

The following composite image was created by merging several different images together. The centerpiece is a closeup I took of a woman looking at me and the camera. She looked intense to me then and even more so now.

Des Trois Couleurs

Let's shift for a moment from still to moving images. The following video was shot beneath the Arc de Triomphe in Paris in late September of 2007.

Something a bit different

I've been remiss in posting images from my digital painting collection but by way of atoning for that sin here's something, as the title says, that's a bit different:

Tormento

This image began with an old nude study that was heavily manipulated in Photoshop. I then added a couple of additional background images created in Photoshop and applied several tonal and distortion filters.

Tidal wave variant

This is a variation on the theme reproduced in the previous image. Obviously the color, tonal and texture parameters have been significantly modified. The result nevertheless produces a smiliar sense of space.

Tidal wave

This image began as a simple color photo of a rock and then heavily manipulated in Photoshop using saturation and twirl tools among other elements.

Looking out, looking in

This is one of the most complex images I have created to date.

It utilizes four different key components: a photograph of a woman I took at the Boston Marathon, a scanned image of the movie poster for the film Attack of the 50 foot Woman, a Piranesi print of one of the churches of Rome, an old photo of two women taken in Paris. I then hand-painted the tiny figures in the Piranesi print, modified the tonal and color parameters and integrated the elements together using masking tools. This was not only one of my most challenging pieces but also thoroughly enjoyable. I took a "stream-of-consciousness" approach, letting the images do the conceptual work so to speak. The best way for me to work.

RRMC

This is an image taken in the parking lot of a hospital and subsequently manipulated in Photoshop using the twirl tool as the primary filter, as well as tonal and saturation tools.

Lonely day at Old Silver Beach

This is based on an image I shot at Old Silver beach on Cape Cod, Massachusetts some years ago. It actually began with a sizeable group of people in the frame but what struck me as I worked on modifying the tonal and and color parameters was the melancholy aspect of the picture. I felt all it needed was removing several other characters and so voila! I had my image.

Look into my eye

This image began as a photo of a rock formation taken during a visit to a garden in the Chinese section of Vancouver, British Columbia.

Antifresco

This is a combination old nude study with textured background from a stock photo overlaid with another stock image from Digital Vision.

Digital Goddess

As you can see "Digital Goddess" is another variant of the Brigit Helm image, used in the previous post ("Indentured").

Indentured

This image originated from a still photo of Brigit Helm, the female lead in Fritz Lang's Metropolis.

Painting with pixels

Some years ago I came across a wonderfully insightful guide to producing art with the computer called, oddly enough, Painting with Pixels. I've long since forgotten the author -- and the book is equally long gone I'm sorry to say.

But I mention it as a way to kick off this blog. Because digital art is simply that: painting with pixels. And there's no better way to let your imagination run wild than to pick up a digital imaging editing program such as Adobe's Photoshop or Elements and a Wacom graphics table and have at it.

And if you need inspiration check out the Museum of Computer Art. Don Archer, one of the co-founders of the museum and it's main guru today, is not only a friend and colleague but it a perceptivre student of computer driven artwork.

Every so often I'll try and post a piece of my own digital art, maybe something I've finished or something I'm still working on, like the two pieces below:


These began as simple photos of rocks I came across at Schoodic Point, Maine.

Try this at home!