26/09/25 14:57 Filed in:
AI | Digital PaintingWhen I started my career as architect, we drew everything by hand in pencil, pen & ink on vellum and Mylar film. Loved it. Then Autocad emerged and we drew everything on screen with a mouse or digitizer board. I loved it. Autocad bought Revit, which offered greater accuracy across the board in 2D and 3D. I loved it. No matter the process the architecture came from thinking people who learned the newest digital skills to describe graphically the entire building form integrating structural and mechanical engineering. The argument put forth by some about AI being no different than the car replacing the horse or contractor with the hammer moving to the nail gun is not a valid argument as these examples are about progress inclusive of human direction and control. The horse was steered an operated by a person, just as its automobile replacement. The nail gun replacing the hammer still required the individual operating it to think about how and where to nail.
For me 40 years later as a practicing digital painter, the value presented by the computer is one that allows me to lay out my idea and focus on the composition, like my architectural work. I maintain authorship of my art as I maintain my eye to hand symbiotic relationship to create. This humanistic participation can’t successfully exist without my brain guiding and driving the stylus. I create authentically and honestly through my direct, first person interaction. This interaction is personal and spiritual, and the results sell themselves as collectors come to know me and my inspirations. There ARE NO inspirations coming from a non thinking data scrape. The risk is real as users of AI "art” shift from creator to curator, and in time the curation becomes easier than creating, and the AI generated visuals enter an AI feedback loop where AI is now data scraping AI generated imagery and the Art world becomes the lowest common denominator of intellectualism.
03/07/25 18:28 Filed in:
Digital PaintingCreating art using computers and graphical software is often referred to as “digital art”. I’ve always felt that term suggested the computer was participating in the art, contrary to my process. My artworks are the result of my traditional watercolor and acrylic painting technique as adapted to the computer. The work I do today has transitioned from how I used to paint with liquid medium, building up layer upon layer of color using various techniques with brushes, now utilizing computer software allowing me to create on screen, layer by layer.
For me, applying liquid paint to canvas is a commitment I found limiting, as I continually study, examine and contemplate how shapes, patterns and colors may be interpreted differently, and how their interactions with colors on other layers can change the personality of the work. Since 1988, I have created exclusively as a digital painter exploring color-form relationships to realize my ideas, as my processes and my creative vision.
The computer exists within my process as the canvas, brushes, and paint. I ask nothing more of the digital side except to continue to allow me opportunities to study the fundamental elements of form and pattern, color and light in various ways. My works are the result of conceptual experimentation of these elements, each reacting with the other, as a fluid composition where there are no commitments until every aspect of every visual element and its attributes are considered.
Analogous to the photographer’s original negative, each artwork realized from my digital file is considered an original work.
03/07/25 14:20 Filed in:
GeneralI'm going to try writing a blog about my process and my inspiration. There are no guarantees I will actually do this! Stay tuned.