Monday, July 18, 2016

A digital world

All is normal here; or almost normal. The hammering and other assorted construction noises have started right on time; 6 AM. My hip kept waking me up last night...this hip pain drives me crazy! Unfortunately, that is the 'new normal'. But I have something to fight it now and that's my new Wacom digital pen/board. I've been painting with it every chance I get and I'm getting better at it. Nothing good enough to post here but I think it won't be long. I already have one abstract that was was worth printing and although the printer setting was wrong, I was able to piece it together from the 4 sheets that printed (like a jig saw puzzle) and I like it.

As I said before, a number of artists are giving the digital world a chance. Digital painting has been given a bad rap because of the proliferation of fantasy/science fiction type paintings that have emerged from the digital boards. Now, some big name and middle name artists have tried it and done well. I can see why a very good artist would welcome the chance to 'paint' with the pen as it takes away a lot of the drudgery; such as laying down the correct background. And when you make a mistake you only have to hit Control/Z and the mistake is gone without a trace left behind. I may have given this artist a mention once before, Randall David Tipton. His work is always worth looking at. He's not an abstract painter and he's not a hyper realist. I don't know what school you would put him in but he adventurous enough to have been experimenting with a digital pen as well as Yupo.

Right now I'm following the works of Emil Nolde. I can't forgive him his affection for the Nazi Party and it pleases me that they turned on him and destroyed/banned all of his works and forbade his painting of anything, even in private. But his paintings before that time have their own life and I love his palette of reds, yellows and gold combined with seascapes.

I think I have discovered another benefit from the use of a digital pen to paint with. The pad sits on my right hand side and I must watch the screen in front of me to see the cursor. My hand has to function out of sight. Glancing down won't reveal a thing. I have to turn my head slightly to see the pad and now I can't see the screen/cursor. It's a whole new experience for my brain. Try looking at your monitor while sketching on a notepad on your right. Besides the sketching, you also have to access the menu on your screen to change colors or brushes, all done without being able to easily coordinate the two; your hand and the screen image. I think this is going to do good things for my brain! (learning something new is better than a thousand crossword puzzles) *


* I made up that 'fact'. It's probably closer to a hundred...:-)

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