This digital painting uses urban Middle East motifs. I lived in Cairo, Egypt for a couple of years and was struck by the magnificent architecture that graced the older areas of the city. This is something of an homage to those beautiful forms.
This image was created entirely in Photoshop using a fairly wide array of brushes. Like some of my other digital compositions, this one was a case of starting with a few effects and going with the flow from there, while trying to pay attention to composition, contrast, and the use of lines.
This is a layered image, with diluted acrylic washes at the lowest level, then some blue and red strokes, followed by the black, which was much thicker than the other pigments. This piece borrows from the evocative shapes of Asian ink traditions, but is not a Japanese or Chinese character.
In this work, I was focused on creating a sense of colors merging into and flowing around each other. I think the net result also evokes a tangle of nerve fibers.
This painting was created fairly quickly, but in layers: blue, orange, and black in that order. The blue is mostly covered up, but it comes through in some places. I did this very spontaneously, while at the same time I tried to pay attention to the overall composition and the mix of colors. I used acrylic paint and diluted it so that it would splatter and run.
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I started this piece with an idea from a recent New Yorker article on the artist Mark Bradford. What Mark often does is build up multiple layers of paint, often ending on top with a layer of white, and then scrapes the top layer or layers off with various instruments. He also uses collage to create other effects.
For this piece, I put down different colors and patterns on a couple of Photoshop layers. On top of those, I created a solid white layer. Then I masked that layer and started “digging through” the mask using various shapes, lines, and patterns. My initial idea was to do it all with rectangles, but in the middle, I thought it would be more interesting using other shapes and patterns. And in many places, the top layer was made partly transparent, so elements of the underlying layers only partly came through.n Toward the end, I added arcs and other lines on top of everything.
This image is like the previous one, “Elemental 1.” You could think of it as a process of discovery and going with the flow, but with digital tools. See that previous post for a more complete description of the process.
This image was created entirely in Photoshop, but the process was much like that of abstracts I have made using paint and ink. In both cases, the idea was to start with an interesting shape or effect and then add to it (or take away) in an intuitive way. In the end, the exercise is a much about the process of discovery as it is about creating a pleasing image. Of course, the creation of something attractive is at the heart of how most people understand art, but sometimes one’s intuition doesn’t lead to that result. In such cases, the response should not be to discount one’s intuition and try to force an effect, but to trust the process and stick with it.
Another in a series inspired by Asian art. I created three counterpoints in this piece. In terms of the composition, there are back to front and side to side elements. The third counterpoint is between the monochrome gray/black and the splash of red. In putting all of these elements into the image, I hoped to use broad, simple strokes to create a rather complex and engaging image.
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