Ink Deep

Digital Media was a topic I was excited for when I saw it on our curriculum.  Along with Illustration, it was one of the subjects I was the most excited for.  But when we first talked about it, I wasn't all that enthusiastic.  Looking at digital printing and the surface pattern uses disheartened me and I was worried it would end up being closer to Contemporary than what I had envisioned.  This immediately killed my thought process, and I wasn't sure what I wanted to do for the unit.  When we started to look at different artists and styles, I made an intentional stride to find artists who bridged the gap between what we were looking at, and the type of art I knew I was interested in and wanted to work with. Aaron Campbell is the best example of that.  His work was awe inspiring, and his digital illustrations were close to what I believed digital media to be all about.  Whilst looking at his work and similar artists, I regained some of my enthusiasm....

Digital Art is something that I think is ill defined.  Both literally and in the minds of many.  I believe it has as many variations and connotations as 'Art' itself.  For example, if someone records a clip of themselves doing something creative in a video game, it could be considered a digitally created animation.  And therefore, art.  I'm not sure if I like what this could mean.  I've not been shy about admitting my limited knowledge of art and the art world, but I feel a similar problem arose with things like conceptual art.  What is art?  Can anything be art?  What shouldn't be art?  I feel we'll be asking the same questions about digital art very soon, if not already. I believe in my head that digital art is something created using digital tools that has an analogue input behind it, as well as intention.  Maybe that's too specific.  I don't really know.  But if it meets that criteria, I will consider it to be a for...

Digital media allows us to do certain things that would be impossible, unlikely, or incredibly difficult.  It can gift us certain shortcuts.  It can make certain things seem more real or possible.  One of the ideas I was toying with was trying to take a character and insert them into the real world.  The idea was to blend a character and make it seem like they are existing in the real world.  To do this, I would need to find a photograph and then draw an image to fit into it. Thinking back to our theme of environment, whilst I happened to be staring out of a window into a thunderstorm, I realised that I actually really enjoy being in the rain.  So long as it's not cold or windy.  It's probably one of my favourite weathers to stand in.  With that thought in mind, I wanted to draw a character enjoying themselves in the rain.  I starting going through stock images of rainy scenes, to see if any spurred any ideas. I found this image, and w...

Aaron Campbell's work was definitely some of the most inspiring and colourful examples of digital illustration that I'd encountered in recent years.  Coupled with his cartoon-y style and inspirations, his style was something that strongly resonated with me, and was something I really wanted to try.  I took a close look at one of his images in particular, with an eye to trying my own version of this image. Ultimately, as a car lover, I wanted to feature a vehicle as my subject matter, with a colourful scene behind it.  I wasn't sure if I'd ever be able to come close to something like this.  I started by doing a sketch.  Or more aptly, a series of sketches.  I wanted to tie this into the theme of my own environment, and my immediate idea was to draw my own car, a crappy like car that I have such a strong attachment too. This was my first composite sketch.  What I'd done here was take several sketches I'd done and combined them into one to creat...

There are seemingly unlimited ways to create digital art.  As I have been creating digital art on my own before the course began, I have my own methods and styles and on top of that, I'm aware of a vast number of techniques.  I have friends who have created art works by writing code, with no analogue creative input whatsoever.  And even then, digital art isn't just limited to visual elements.  Sound can be created digitally, film and animation. there really is no end to the routes one can take to create art with digital means. That being said, there are elements that I consider to be more 'traditional' within the digital art medium.  This is my personal opinion, so this might not be the majority opinion, but I feel that traditional digital art is visual art that's created digitally, using an analogue input.  What I mean by this is that the digital aspects are created by a Human hand in some way.  Be that with a graphics tablet, or even a mouse, I bel...

For ease of access, below is a list of links that tie into my Contemporary Art Practice work, in chronological order.  The below serves as my sketchbook for this unit: Artist Profile - Jean Tinguely Artist Profile - Michael Craig-Martin Concepts - First idea: Deconstruction Concepts - Second idea: Acts of War Concepts - Third idea: Fighting Depression Development and Creation of Prototype Evaluation