DIGITAL HEALING

Context for “Pandemic” digital painting gallery

Below I am presenting short blurbs about my process and experiences with taking on digital painting starting in 2020 and moving forward. Some of this is technical, while other blurbs lean to underlying concepts. Overall, this has been an eye-opening experience that has helped me to view this medium differently than I have in the past. To be up front about my intentions with this project, a major caveat I set for myself is for this content to exist only in a digital realm, experienced through screens of all sorts. I have no intention of printing or otherwise translating these images into a physical medium; although I should heed the advice, ‘never say never’.

I would love to hear feedback, comments, etc. so feel free to contact me on social media or through the CONTACT page on this site. Thanks for reading!

-Joel

FINDING FAMILIARITIES

Using an iPad with Adobe Creative Cloud (Capture, Fresco, etc.), I was amazed at how I could work in ways that I was familiar with. Particularly with sketching in pencil. Granted, there is a learning curve for operating the software, but the flexibility of erasing, layering and the ability to undo surprisingly made drawing less anxious.

NEW BRUSHES

Adobe Capture is a great tool for generating tools, resources to use in other programs. I have used it to set color palates, create vector shapes and patterns, but an interesting feature is the ability to make “brushes”. As a painter, I felt this was a particularly important endeavor I should not avoid. It takes some work to get something useful, but there is no better way to lay out a stroke of toilet paper roll than with a digital brush.

GENERATIVE, NOT COMPOSED

With the resources available in the software I have access to, the experience of painting digitally has come with a sense that the work is pre-structured in a clear, precise way. My experience painting in a studio leans on my personal mental capabilities, relying on intuition relating to my physical presence in front of the materials I had collected. In the digital realm, this is compensated for by over-organizational structures that allow for a sense of play as I generate compositions by remixing the items I have previously assembled.