Since my grand-kids* turned me on to video games, I have been compelled to love digital fantasy worlds. Even still, I am jaw-dropping-awed by what can be crafted on the computer. This is a realm that has few limits for the imagination, sometimes a steep learning curve, and phenomenal resources for an artist.
Using digital captures of my hand drawn artwork, original photos of flora close to my home and heart, I alter them primarily in Adobe's Photoshop with Corel's Painter as complementary inspiration. By combining details from different sources, changing colors, adding new imagery, applying software techniques, and much more, I can produce variations unattainable in the more immediately committed processes of printmaking or drawing. I also create from imagined images, solely with the monitor as my canvas and a Wacom tablet with drawing stylus.
Animating my artwork is a natural extension of creating digital images, and I have always envisioned dreamlike, fluid art that 'moves' on the canvas. My good luck has given me the opportunity to learn the basics of Adobe/Macromedia's Flash software. Isn't it amazing that an individual can solely create an interactive cartoon?
Adobe/Macromedia's Dreamweaver & Adobe's In Design software are the other pieces of my digital 'tool box'. Website design and graphic art for print media are my other loves.
All of my digital art is original.
View my Digital Fine Art | View my Flash Animations
View my Graphic & Digital Design
These are the images that find themselves in a persistent struggle of addition and deletion, moments of miscalculated frenzy often canceled out by new work covering the previous. Sometimes it's a love-hate relationship played out on a piece of paper. One wouldn't expect that such an inanimate object could have such power…frustration and delight intertwined.
I especially enjoy drawing with colored pencils, particularly Prismacolor brand pencils, but these images include other media for particular effects. Collage, spray enamel, watercolors, crayons, pastels, gold leaf and more are used in conjunction with the colored pencils.
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Mixed Media Drawings represented by www.avalongallery.com
Simply put, lithography is a printing process. Developed in 1798, by Alois Senefelder, the form of lithography that I employ is nearly identical to Mr. Senefelder's original technique. The technique is based on the antipathy of ink (greasy in nature) and water. Our modern offset lithography printing and the advanced lithographic techniques used in contemporary electronics all trace back to this first method.
While Mr. Senefelder used slabs of finely honed limestone, I use specially prepared, perfectly flat, aluminum plates that accept a greasy drawing medium that is in turn etched with chemicals in order to bond the drawing medium to the plate. Water is then sponged in a very thin film over the plate's surface before the 'greasy' inked roller applies the colored ink for printing. Only the drawn areas will accept the ink. Once the plate is fully proofed and inked, a piece of best quality paper is laid on top and both are run through a litho press (in my case a Griffin Press with a hand crank). The resulting impression is called an original print, and in this case, an original lithograph.
My original, hand-pulled, lithographic impressions generally combine several to many separate plates, each for different colors. This means that the same piece of paper will be run through the press as many number of times as the number of plates. Because of the high demands of the process, I print very limited editions with a series of color variation proofs some of which are used in creating unique mixed media and hand-colored art pieces.
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Lithographs represented by www.avalongallery.com
It's impossible that I might have grand kids! Still, they seem to have defied all my personal illusions and now bring excessive amounts of entertainment to my life!