Tag Archives: Digital Painting

Mortality, a life threatening condition.

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MORTALITY

I posted this earlier in the year and didn’t tag the post, so it remained buried in the archives since then. I’m reposting as a response to ‘Versatility’ anxiety (see here and here).

MORTALITY
The sweltering heat at hand
and along a stretch of beach
made hard the shadows
and the imperfections on her skin,
footprints on sand,
far from its reach
and its bathwater flows
erasing all but Adam’s sin
lapping at the edge of land.

The above picture is a combination of photography and digital painting. The text is part of the picture and I have included it in the event you cannot read it in the picture.
Its a comment on modern society. Especially the obsession with physical appearance which we see everywhere today. Films, TV, advertising, its everywhere. The human form is presented, flawless as a classical statue. The feeling of being physically inadequate must haunt the susceptible. Especially the young.
Even though we know that photographs can be ‘Photoshopped’ we subconsciously accept the image as real. I think this media was appropriate for this ‘painting’.

The elements in the picture are:
the beach – where the D-Day scene from the movie Saving Private Ryan was shot (Curracloe, Co. Wexford, Ireland)
the statue – Venus de Milo, even she suffered from the ravages of time
the beach litter – Leonardo’s da Vinci’s The Vitruvian Man. Vitruvius (born c. 80–70 BC, died after c. 15 BC) described the human figure as being the principal source of proportion among the Classical orders of architecture (Wikipedia).

The computer application used was Photoshop, appropriately.

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Dawn

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DAWN

Its a long time since I posted a digital painting. So here is my illustrated poem about the dawn of the day, the dawn of the year and the dawn of Christianity. I’m not a very religious person, but it is Christmas time.

The sketch was drawn with a Biro, photographed, and opened in Photoshop. By changing the picture mode from Greyscale to Bitmap the lines were made rough at the edges and the shades of grey were converted to black or white. I then brought the mode back to Greyscale as this allows more scope in manipulating the picture. The text was typed into a separate layer in white and the background layer painted black to show the white text. I did the painting, etc. using the scratch pad on my laptop. A graphics pad would have been a lot easier, if I could remember where I put the pen.

In a way I was shamed into doing something different as I was nominated for ‘The Versatile Blogger’ award. But I’m addicted to landscape painting and I will need a ‘fix’ soon, although it will be hard to detach myself from the Christmas activities of the coming week. If I’m not back before then, happy Christmas to all who read this and see you when the Sun/Son returns.

Cinerama

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Do you remember the experiment, about 40 years ago, in cinematic projection which was called Cinerama. The recent efforts to introduce 3D in cinemas reminded me of this. Cinerama involved projecting the movie on a wide curved screen. 3 projectors were used, side by side, to produce the effect. Depending on where you were sitting in the cinema your entire vision was filled with the screen image. This, of course, was the problem – where you were sitting. Very few of those in the cinema got the full effect. If you were to the side of centre the screen was distorted. Why somebody didn’t think of this before the millions were spent converting cinemas and producing films for same, is a mystery. Of course the whole project was abandoned after a few years. I wonder will the same happen with 3D.

We were in Glenbeigh, a few years ago, looking north across the bay towards the Dingle Peninsula. The vastness of the scene reminded me of a Cinerama scene. Of course I took loads of photos but none captured the scene the way I would have liked. It needed a Cinerama treatment. The above photo was the result of my ‘experiment’ (Click on the photo to enlarge it).

The original photo

This was the original photo with a Photoshop ‘Watercolour’ filter applied. By sampling the image I painted in the extra width rather than stretching the scene. When printed at about 4 feet wide it looks good as the ‘curved’ effect gives the feeling of been in the scene.

(Printed on an Epson Stylus Pro 9600 on matt paper)

The Lighthouse and the Sea

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2 mediocre photos were used to produce this digital painting. The application used was Photoshop. I was thinking about the lighthouse keepers and the loneliness of their lives usually in isolated places and separated from their families and friends. The ferocity of the sea and the power of nature is very much in the news lately as these forces destroy the works of men.

The text which runs around the edge of the painting is as follows:

The howling gale
has forced the sea birds
down upon the tower
lonely and windswept
cylindrical with power
full of watchful nights
and card playing.

Nature is shown as contorted and angry, twisted into monstrous shapes while the Lighthouse is rigid, hard and resilient.

The photos used.

Mortality, a life threatening condition.

Posted on by

MORTALITY

MORTALITY

The sweltering heat at hand
and along a stretch of beach
made hard the shadows
and the imperfections on her skin,
footprints on sand,
far from its reach
and its bathwater flows
erasing all but Adam’s sin
lapping at the edge of land.

The above picture is a combination of photography and digital painting. The text is part of the picture and I have included it in the event you cannot read it in the picture.
Its a comment on modern society. Especially the obsession with physical appearance which we see everywhere today. Films, TV, advertising, its everywhere. The human form is presented, flawless as a classical statue. The feeling of being physically inadequate must haunt the susceptible. Especially the young.
Even though we know that photographs can be ‘Photoshopped’ we subconsciously accept the image as real. I think this media was appropriate for this ‘painting’.

The elements in the picture are:
the beach – where the D-Day scene from the movie Saving Private Ryan was shot (Curracloe, Co. Wexford, Ireland)
the statue – Venus de Milo, even she suffered from the ravages of time
the beach litter – Leonardo’s da Vinci’s The Vitruvian Man. Vitruvius (born c. 80–70 BC, died after c. 15 BC) described the human figure as being the principal source of proportion among the Classical orders of architecture (Wikipedia).

The computer application used was Photoshop, appropriately.