Computer or drawing board?
People often ask me: “Do you use the computer for your paintings? Or the drawing board?”
If people don’t see my paintings in real, sometimes they even think my paintings are only digital images.
In some way I find that a compliment; Apparently the scenes I create are looking crisp and perspective-technical correct enough to make you think they are beyond natural. Well, the are beyond natural, but that is in another way.
At the other hand I could not accept it as a compliment. Although I realize that creating digital images is not just simply pressing a button, I’m always hurrying to say that my paintings do not come from the computer.
I’m surely convinced that my style is heavily influenced by modern graphics and animation, but the sketches are still done on an old-fashioned drawing board with a ruler and an eraser.
Of course I know a computer program would be a lot easier. And maybe faster.
Years ago I decided I wanted to learn making digital images and 3D scenes. I bought a Dummies-book and I started full of enthusiasm, being under the impression that from now on my limits would be solved soon and my new possibilities would be endless!
After a week dragging myself through the lessons, I slowly started to hate it. Everyday I had forgotten what I had learned the day before. And every day I felt guilty about the lost painting-time. My aversion was growing rapidly. Not because I don’t like the computer (usually I’m glued to the screen too much), but this felt like doing algebra. In the week I tried to learn the beginnings of that digital drawing program, I could have drawn 7 models by hand! Everything inside me was unwilling to follow the course.
I was not the right person to sketch behind the computer.
I wished I was, but I’m afraid I am not …
Ok, the drawing, ruling and erasing takes a long time and it is not my favourite part of the whole creation, but viewed in the light of the amount of time 1 painting takes … I decided I can handle it without the computer.
To understand the distortion of the white joints on the surface of the water, I simply stuck a piece of plastic with a block pattern in my bath tub. Than it's a case of slightly stylization (in the meaning of simplifying) of what you see.
To me it was unmistakeable from the start that your work is hand painted. It has an aura about it that is not digital. I don't know why that is, but I noted this when vjbasil posed the question - it hadn't occurred to me before that it might be considered digital art.
That learning curve for a digital editor is indeed impossible -for us women at our age - oh stuff that! we're just too full of art to also cram technology in there - at the same time. If you study the Programme without the pressure of wanting to create it is quite doable also for the likes of us and predictable and even less sophisticated than you might first think ( in some respects, though I just watch Happy! and fell in love with the possibilities of such programmes). But there is something about it that changes the way you produce your art (something static) that influences the whole work. Different strokes for different folks, but it remains an application, with functionality always as its core.
No it's not an aura, but a layer of naivism I could not hide
If I ever break a leg (I hope so) and need to lay down for 6 weeks, I will pick up that course again!
If you see a chilly wind in my paintings in the future, then you know I've broken my leg.
Will come back to you in December wearing fleece and bobble hat.
hi @red-white-blue
This is amazing, i'd swear that you did it in a 3d program!
this one is also a masterpiece!
I'll check out your website to see all of your work!
I just did and I am perplexed: fantastic Original art!
Some of the paintings reminde me a (little) bit of Willink, but more friendly and much more fun!
fantastic art. I 'm thinking of ordering the calander.
grtz, @vjbasil
WOW, that's so cool
When I just started painting in my late twenties I was a huge admirer of Willink and maybe even more of Pyke Koch. And certainly in my first few paintings that 'gloomy' atmosphere was certainly detectable because I tried to 'imitate' it.
Thanks for your uplifting words.
@vjbasil.... She has similarity with you.. Both of you and her like painting... I like your hobby...
Your work is beyond good.
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