It was another time. It was another place. I lived in a tiny, fifty-dollar-a-month apartment in Tucson, Arizona. I earned money doing whatever odd art-related jobs I could get, but mostly painted and drew. It didn't take much in the way of sales to pay the rent and keep food in the pantry, so I had a pretty free life. I paid my rent for several months on one project -- a woman hired me to draw her an original tarot deck. I'm not sure what she was more interested in -- getting her deck or getting mine. So to speak. She tried any number of times to get me to sleep with her.She was barking up the wrong tree. Sorry, hon, wrong gender....
But I digress. I wanted to write about the image in today's post. Take a look at it. Go ahead. Click on it. Look closely at it. Yeah, it sure looks like a painting, doesn't it?
And it is a painting. Just not one done with oil, acrylic, gouache, watercolor or tempera. This was painted in the computer. (And it's based on a creative-commons licensed photograph by one Thomas Hawk.)
But I used brushes. And brush strokes. And color blending techniques. And even smeared the paint around once it was on the canvas.
I painted this in a natural media simulator. It's actually an inexpensive software package called ArtRage. And it feels like painting with real brushes on real media. I also use a Wacom tablet, so that enhances the painting sensation.
But mostly, working with this stuff is fun. And it doesn't make the house stink of turpentine and gesso.
So, it's nice to get to do some painting again. Even if it's only painting with pixels, it's still painting.
If you're into paint, give ArtRage a try. It's a hell of a lot of fun.
1 comment:
Artrage is a lot of fun! I really like that it fits with every different person that uses it. Your use of it is terrific. I tend to come out with an image that I normally wouldn't produce so it's a very creative tool for me. I can't understand why artrage isn't more well known. It's a fantastic piece of software.
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