Digital Paintings

Figure Drawing

Bodies, faces, gesture. Two-minute poses, twenty minute poses. These are some of the results of taking my Powerbook (with pressure sensitive tablet) to various life drawing classes and workshops.

Here is a little collection of drawings that originate from ideas, or from doodling & then they take on a life of their own, or perhaps featurebations that graduated to this more respectable page :-)

Paintings & drawing in a long horizontal scroll format. Much easier to do digitally than in the field on paper! I've spent some time studying Chinese painting, and really like the long hand scrolls. Because they're so long you only get to see a small part at any given time, and must scroll through it bit by bit as it tells you its story or walks you through its landscape.

Drawings done on location. Powerbook on table, tablet in lap. Trying to be inconspicuous. (Ha! Fat chance.)

Of course the first thing I do when I get a new program is play with all the cool features. This tends to result in images that just scream "Aha! Sphere filter..." or something like that. Mostly I'm playing with the charcoal, watercolor, and distorto tools in Painter. And of course a little bit of phunky fotoshop hacquing.

All of these pictures are drawn entirely on one computer or another.

The computers

My main digital drawing "instrument" is a Powerbook 520c (with not enough memory) and a Wacom pressure-sensitive tablet. The screen is passive-matrix, so pretty much only one person (i.e. me) can see it at any given time. Sometimes this is an advantage. It's difficult to show off my work, though.

Sometimes I use a Sun Sparcstation 10 and a mouse to draw. Never, ever, use a mouse to draw anything. Your brain will end up severely warped. Really! Look at me.

The Software

Fractal Design Painter, Adobe Photoshop, Sun iconedit (huh?), XPaint, xv, ...

Ongoing... Gallery 92 West in Half Moon Bay, California

This is my "home gallery," where I usually show my work.

April - May, 1996 Jumpin' Java Cafe, Mountain View, California

Not only does this place have a great name, but they've got good taste in artwork t'boot! :-)
I'll be showing some of my "traditional media" work there for a couple of months. Figure paintings (they say nudes are OK as long as the mood is light) in acrylic on ppaer in bright colors (I'm told I'm in my "green period" these days), and some landscape pastels.

September, 1996 La Di Da Cafe, Half Moon Bay, California

This will be my first show of digital paintings on the wall! This means that by September I have to figure out how to print out these things. Dye sublimation, ink jet, Iris prints, perhaps even a large 3x4 foot acrylic-jet on canvas of Body Mural!

Enjoy...