My Digital Art

Ok it is time to start producing some art. I have learned enough to make the all important start, but more importantly I have the confidence to trust my creative instinct. Does this mean that I have arrived? .... hardly but it does mean that I am ready to start putting myself or rather my new digital art out there. I have been longing to try this for a very long time.

This is where I try to take excellent photographic images (still working on this part) and combine them with what some may call surreal art. This is not merely the blending of images but rather the creation of elements within an image to provide a blended effect and tell a story.

These images are displayed on 500px and can be viewed at a decent size without the watermark and logo blemishes. I will quickly step through my illustration "Molten Man".

A good friend is the model for the image and the concept for the image happens to be similarities in our lives. We all have our demons and we are frequently doing battle with the darker side of life, whether this be physical, physiological, moral or otherwise. We have both had some success to a degree in fairly recent times and whilst we may not be home and free we have certainly made progress along this long and often lonely road rather defiantly. We both derive a great deal of pleasure from riding our motorcycles and I speak for myself when I say that this gives my spirit a chance to gather strength through exhilaration without distraction. 

So the aim with this image is to visually convey this defiance, depicting the long road, the opposing sides and the small window of change along the way. This then is the image I see in my minds eye. 

 I have included the following description of the image:-

"In this image the man is defiantly returning from the darkness which tried to consume him and failed. I have created a 3D whorl hole as a portal between the light and dark sides to give the illusion of a man and machine half molten lava and half metal, flesh and blood the viewers eye is drawn to the gesture of the left hand."

These illustrations will take on different dimensions depending on the individual whose life I am attempting to capture and visualise or depict, in this instance a hard man living and working in a tough environment and so I have called the set of illustrations "Grit" as this is what I am illustrating, the man's grit and determination.

The images were all created from my own photography and I used Adobe's Lr5 to extract the best from the RAW photograph, Ps where I needed to create some custom brushes to achieve the lava look, Ai to create 3D objects which were then imported back into Ps to compile the various elements into the finished illustration.

I would love to receive some comments and welcome constructive criticism - tis the only way to improve.

Till next time - Take Care.