Mon, Nov 21 2011 07:29 AM
| photography, apps, painting
| Permalink
Several of my prints have been sold to artists who aren't interested in hanging my prints up on their walls. At least not directly.
They then go on to explain that they would like to buy one of my photos to use as the basis for one of their own paintings. I always consider this a real compliment.

I've always enjoyed watching painters work along the coast of Maine and elsewhere. They set up their easels in many of the same places I set up my camera and tripod. I do envy painters. I think it has to do with being unencumbered by some of the technical restraints imposed by photography, although I'm not really sure. All I can say is that I've always been attracted to painting as a medium but I've never taken a class or a workshop.
I recently bought a secondhand
plein air easel kit from an artist friend of mine who no longer needs it (it was too good a deal to pass up) and I've decided to take a novice painting workshop next summer. I'll see how it goes.
But until then, there are apps for that.

Actually there are several sophisticated digital painting apps, particularly for the
iPad: (
Procreate,
Auryn Ink,
ArtistsTouch, etc.) With this boat and lupines photo, for example, I used an app which allows me to control the individual brushstrokes by hand (well, ok....by finger or
stylus.)
The point is, I have much more control over the photo painting process than if I were to simply run a filter in Photoshop. (I almost wrote 'finger painting process' in that last sentence and I'm having a kindergarten flashback just now.)
The best part about digital painting? No messy cleanup!

Painting apps and filters - as creative and fun as they are - still demand a certain degree of discipline in order to get the results you want. Anyone can run a robo-paint filter and hit "print", but it's rarely that simple.
I tried to come up with a funny way to summarize my feelings on these kinds of things:
If your process is easy, your work might be cheesy. Which sounds a bit like something the late Johnnie Cochran might have said, come to think of it.
For further reading on digital painting, check out
Marilyn Sholin's excellent book
The Art Of Digital Painting. It's an inspiration if you've ever wanted to turn your photos into painterly works of art.
You may view a larger version of the painted lupines & boat image
here.