Approaching Fine Art Digitally

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Hour 1:

I started brainstorming ideas and themes. I asked myself “what exactly comes to mind when you hear ‘man versus nature’.”  I then remembered a painting I had back home that seemed to portray this theme.

Hour 2:

I drove back home and took a picture of one of the unfinished paintings I had been working on.  My roommate let me borrow her camera.

Hour 3:

I changed the saturation, contrast, and colors of the image. I also photo-shopped the orchids in and matched their color with the lungs as best I could.

Hour 4:

I decided that a simple animation would be best due to the presence of the actual painting itself. I pressed animate and began creating and organizing layers.

Hour 5:

I continued working on little details in the animation, especially trying my hardest to make it seem as if the veins in the lungs were vines/roots taking over the person’s body.

Hour 6:

Still, I continued working on minute details in the animation. I had to try my hardest to not let the layers and the frames confuse me; to me this was the hardest part of animation.

Hour 7:

I decided I wanted an already dead leaf to sprout out of the individual’s neck while the veins/vines/roots were simultaneously taking over.  I thought the dead leaf symbolized man’s side of the struggle, that nature isn’t always victorious.

Hour 8:

For the final touch, I decided that I wanted flowers to “sprout” out of the individual’s eye socket region.  I chose narcissus flowers on purpose; narcissism being man’s ultimate weakness in the struggle. I resized an image of narcissus flowers and matched their saturation and contrast as best I could to the individual.

Hour 9:

I put some final touches on the entire animation, deleted some unneeded layers and frames, and pasted the narcissus flowers into the last two frames of the animation. This action appeared to make them “pop” onto the individual’s face.

Hour 10:

I changed the file format to .gif and saved for “web and devices.” I resized the image down and changed the viewing mode to pattern, which gave the entire animation an almost sepia-like effect that I was very fond of. I then posted it onto my blog as my Final Project! Voila!

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Matthew Ritchie was born in London, England in 1964, and currently lives and works in New York City. Throughout his art career, Ritchie has produced various works on paper, prints, light-box drawings, floor-to-wall installations, and sculptures. Utilizing these different techniques enable him to tie his sprawling works together into telling structures that revolve around themes of mythology, religion, philosophy, and science. Drawing is most often central to these works. Ritchie scans them onto the computer so that the images can be blown up, dissected, made three-dimensional, and transformed into digital pieces. His work has been showcased in single-person exhibitions at places including the Dallas Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami, and even the Whitney Biennial (1997),

Upon first glance, Ritchie’s works appeared somewhat chaotic to me; not in a negative way, just that I wasn’t able to initially grasp what he was trying to portray or say. However, after viewing the works separately and subsequently envisioning them as a whole, his art made more sense. Personally, I still don’t really see where the themes of mythology or philosophy come into play within his pieces due their abstract quality, but his pieces do, in a way, tell a colorful story of sorts. I am extremely fond of his vibrant color schemes and intricate patterns that he blows up to larger-than-life size to stretch across the walls and floors of the exhibit. It’s almost as if they have a mind of their own. My favorite piece of Ritchie’s work would have to be “Proposition Player” which was showcased at the Contemporary Art Museum Houston, Texas.

Born in New York City in 1951, Jeffrey Wolin is currently the professor of photography at Indiana University. His most well known works comprise photographs of Holocaust victims and Vietnam War veterans. Behind the subjects (in some of the photographs they are separate descriptions) are backdrops of text, presenting stories of the survivors in their own words. In addition to those works, Wolin has been photographing his two sons since 1996, letting them provide the stories behind their own pictures. Most of Wolin’s photography is in black and white.

I think Wolin does an excellent job of capturing and conveying human emotion on camera. His ability to do so, combined with the use of black and white photography, produces strikingly intense facial expressions. I, especially, am drawn to the eyes of his subjects. His photographs, especially of the Holocaust survivors, evoked feelings of sentimentality, home, and strong emotion in me, which I credit to the handwritten text of his backgrounds. They made me feel as if I had more of a personal connection with the subject. My favorite has to be the elderly woman holding up a photograph. Her intense eyes aren’t even directed at me, but I can still feel a beam of emotion.

In 1994, originally born in Taiwan, Arthur Liu emigrated from Taiwan to Florida, where he began pursuing his interest in art. Originally focused on journalism, Liou became fascinated with portraying art through video. His work is animated digitally and often rendered with 3-D modeling software. His most recent piece, “Bloodwork,” has gained much attention and critical acclaim, as well as a Rising Star award in the Fotofusion 2004 contest.

In all honesty, I don’t really know what to make of Liou’s work as a whole. There are, however, certain elements of it that I am definitely very fond of. For instance, I think it’s wonderful he was able to take his suffering out through his video art piece “Blood Work,” when he found out his 5-month year old daughter was diagnosed with leukemia.  In addition, Liou is very poignant, well spoken, and detailed when describing his work, which serves to balance its abstraction. Ultimately, though, I find Liou’s work to be a bit too computer “enhanced” for my taste. His pieces remind me a little too much of video games.

Born in Albany, New York, Klett initially studied geology before gaining recognition as an artist. For a number of years, he worked as a photographer with the U.S. Geological Survey. This is somewhat evident in his photographs and the documentary style of his work, which focuses mainly on human interaction with the landscape of the American southwest. Most of Klett’s photographs are shot in black and white.

Personally, I’m a big fan of nature photography as well as the Sonoran desert. In my opinion, Klett does an impressive job of capturing its majesty and vastness. In addition to the desert’s natural beauty, I appreciate the subtle aspects of humanity he incorporates into his work, be it small televisions, cars, or saguaros mimicking human gestures. On top of that, Klett’s use of black and white in his photographs gives me an almost dry feeling in my throat when I look at them, as if I’m there withering in the desert heat myself.

Let me first start with a personal definition.

I believe fine art is any tangible product put into existence via physical exertion of the human body. Think about it. Paintings, sketches, sculptures: they’re all produced by a series of muscular contractions in the human hand. What’s weird to me, however, is to think that this strictly tangible process can be combined with a digital one, where the concrete, palpable world of fine art is tossed aside in exchange for digital abstraction on a desktop. In doing so, though, ample space is left for visual manipulation with the aid of technology.

This is when the art form of photography crosses my mind. A picture can be snapped with a digital camera and uploaded onto a computer screen, the pseudo canvas of this technological age we live in. With the help of Adobe Photoshop, colors can be intensified, visual themes can be highlighted, and all sorts of eye-catching tricks can be employed. When combined with technology, the creative possibilities of fine art seem even more infinite to me. It’s as if approaching art digitally creates a holy union of rigidity (computer science) and freedom (art) into one awesome creative outlet super force.

Well, maybe that’s taking it a little too far. Either way, I can’t wait to learn more!