There was a nice story about my artwork in Elan Magazine this month and I suppose this blog is the best place for me to put up some of my new digital/encaustic work that was mentioned. Last spring I began working on images where I would try to distort the figure as much as possible in terms of proportion, and then by careful rendering bring the surface quality back up to something pleasing. Here's my initial sketch, and then the finished digital painting. Surface quality is important to me as rendered visually, but also as a physical surface. 
My oil paintings have always been very smooth, but over the years I've tried to get more surface quality to my work by painting alla prima whenever possible. I wanted my new digital work to also have texture, and I also wanted to rework the art physically if there were areas that I felt needed more development. What I ended up doing was using encaustic medium to completely cover the print, and then using a combination of oil paint and encaustic, I proceeded to paint various areas. This resulted in a nice complex surface, with a luminosity that is not possible in a straight digital print. It's pretty hard to tell what was painted and what is digital. I also built various boxes to contain the artwork and various items that I felt were important to the subjects.
2 comments:
the work here is painted or digital?
The work above is digitally painted and then reworked with real paint on top. I kind of lose track as to what is what, but generally the faces are more digital paintings and the backgrounds are paint.
My older work like at the Leisterstudios.com site is all oil paint. I really like working in all the mediums, each one has different strengths and weaknesses.
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