Wednesday, August 24, 2011


Frosted Walla Walla Tall Barn and Wheat Stubble
digital painting


Frosted Tall Barn and Wheat Stubble
photograph


I like the creative power that comes with the computerized darkroom.  This "darkroom" allows me to reach beyond the limits of photography.  Some folks object, feeling that it is not legitimate unless a "painting" is created with canvas and brush.  I tend to reply to such comments that the first cave person who used color probably faced similar criticism.  Digital art is an art form.  I feel it is an excellent way for art students to learn by seeing how an image would appear given different techniques.  For the above image I took a photograph taken during a horror frost and processed it using Corel Painter 11.  I applied the palette knife brush.  The process took about eleven hours.

In our photographic competitions we have two classes in the Electronic Image category: Traditional and Creative.  In Traditional, typically, very little modification is done.  Sometimes the only modification is to crop the image so that it has better composition.  In Creative it is wide open and many digital tools are used.

Last weekend at the Walla Walla Farmers' Market I had a young couple who fell in love with one of my digital paintings.  They wanted to purchase the original "painting" and seemed very willing to pay a nice price.  It took awhile to explain that it was a digital painting and they were holding the "original".  They said they would have to think about it, but did not return.  On the digital paintings I think I need to make them all "limited editions" in order to enhance their marketability.  If I were a cheat I could have produced a print on canvas, signed it and called it an artist proof.  As long as I declared it a digital creation I guess that would not have been cheating.

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