Index

When a photograph is used as the basis of a picture, that is just the start of a complicated process. I may decide that the colour of a part of the original is not quite suitable; I can isolate that part and adjust the colour; I can alter the hue, I can make it lighter or darker, I can make the colour more vibrant - or more muted, I can even change it completely, say from blue to yellow. And that is just the colour - of one small part of the image. I may do that to a dozen small areas to start to get the effect I am aiming for.

Size is another aspect that can be changed. If a feature is not to my liking I can make it smaller or larger, I can also distort it or move it. A further possibility is that of combining images. Few of my realisations are much like the image with which I started. They normally contain several different images, sometimes quite a few are combined to

Naturally, time and effort are not unique to digital art, the same is true of any artist who strives to achieve what is his mind’s eye.

My prints are made using long-lasting inks on a high quality, acid free watercolour paper to endow the pictures with a longevity of many years and all are printed in limited editions.

Digital art is, in one respect, like an etching or a lithograph; the artwork does not exist until it is printed. With etching, the work is done on a copper plate, with lithography it is on stone; with digital it is on a computer.

The computer can, with the appropriate software, manipulate and transform images. Those images can be hand-drawn, computer generated or imported digital images; they can be colour or monochrome and, naturally, can be of any subject, even abstract. Digital images can be photographs from my camera, objects I have scanned on my scanner or illustrations taken from the internet. I use all these sources in my work.
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create the effect I’m after. Additions are often from the original scene to help create an overall impression of a place rather than an exact likeness.

Apart from all that has been mentioned, There are any number of other manipulative techniques. One I frequently make use of is adding texture to create interest to a surface. I have mentioned just a few of the possibilities, there are many more and, of course, a number of techniques can be combined. One can begin to see that the opportunities are endless.

After many hours have been spent working ‘on-screen’, the time comes to put the result on paper. Proofing and printing can be both time consuming and expensive as often much experimentation is necessary before perfection is achieved.