Ipad Art, Brushes App, QuickTime Player

Farm 3, Brushes/ipad

Field, Brushes/ipad

Box, tablet computer, 2007

Untitled, iphone/idoodle, 2009

I am not anti-technology. A public confession: I think I'm addicted to clicking. I think I found a way to paint and have my clicking too. While nothing replaces painting, each artistic medium having it's own inherent strengths and limitations, Brushes for ipad is very exciting. Here's a

Brushes demo video by creator Stephen Sprang. It sells on iTunes for $7.99 and I think it will save a bit on paint as I am able to use it not only for digital art in and of itself but also for painting studies. I love the materiality of all traditional art media. The difference between an oil painting and a digital painting is corporeality, similar to a person in real life vs. a photograph of that person. Photography has a lot to say, or rather show, so much so that Native Americans thought being photographed might steal their souls. The photograph is far from soul-less, and so is the digital painting. My work is mostly seen via the computer (I wish it was seen more in person, oh well). Digital art is made for the computer. Scale isn't an issue. The images are light-filled. British painter David Hockney is totally on-board and says it is like painting with stained glass. I LOVE stained glass, always wanting to achieve colored light like it. Hockney is prolific, totally going to town on his ipad and emailing friends drawings of flowers daily. He started out using Brushes on the iphone and the pictures were exhibited at the Tate and Royal Academy in London. [Lawrence Weschler's Hockney article and Jordan Galloway's in The New York Press ]

The ipad isn't my first excursion into creating digital art. I've used a tablet computer and an iphone (see above). Ink Art was the software I used on the tablet. It's not that different from Brushes. Many people on customer reviews complain about having to use a finger to draw in Brushes rather than a stylus like on tablets. I am much happier skipping the stylus. It felt too removed for me and touch brings me that much closer to what I'm making. I think it's just a question of getting used to it, like a touch mouse. There are fans of drawing with pencils rather than painting in general because of the difference of control.

The ipad's big screen is the key to my excitement. I enjoyed making images on the go with the iphone, thinking of them more as studies. The ipad is large enough to do more. Jorge Colombo has made three covers for The New Yorker using the iphone, achieving a surprising amount of detail; I'm assuming by zooming in and out. I'm a little worried the paintings will pale in comparison to my new digital images when seen on-line. I also wonder how it sits with me that the digitals are more graphic in nature. I intend to make paintings from some of them, so it should be a rather fluid back-and-forth process. I can also take a picture of my painting and work on it further in Brushes. This can give direction to a work in progress or expand the idea for working in a series. Best yet, Brushes allows the actions/steps involved in making a picture to be played back as a QuickTime file. The subjects I'm painting lately are non-narrative yet I'm seeking to make them into moving images. Move over, Hockney.

The movie below is the making of Farm 3. I had a little technical trouble with Brushes Viewer and Steve Sprang himself replied to my query. Thanks, Steve!

Spring 1 and Spring 3 (Favorite Green Space)

oil on panel
12" x 12"



Spring 2 is coming (spring itself is already here)! These two worked best together for a post.

The sky in the painting is more subtle and has lighter areas than in this reproduction. The sky and grass are very high-key in this as in the original, while the woods are in that neutral-budding-just-before-leaves state. Marks are loose and help show the space and growth patterns of the woods. The top green and bottom blue, both very saturated, are visual bookends. The curve of the lower green band is lyrical and comforting, like gentle waves or lying on your sofa. It's a funny painting because it has serenity as well as the snap of a ping-pong ball, blue on one side, green on the other. Spring is like that, lovely yet energetic. The sky and grass were both really that bright, done from sight from my studio window. Without the treatment of the center, they look like David Hockney's palette, hyperactive, not quite naturalistic.

Spring 3 (Favorite Green Space) is a block away from my house. I'm in farmland with corn, sheep, horses, cows, and unfortunately veal calves tied to their little shelters their whole lives, all on the same road. The green hill takes up three-fourths or so of the rectangle and obscures the bottoms of the trees. I look forward to the moment it comes into sight when I'm driving back home; in the bright sun it gives me a rush (some people get that when looking at Matthew McConaughey, not that I don't...). In those last two sentences you get the formal elements of design backing my work, visual perception, emotional resonance, and let's not forget sensuality (paint is very sensual, as nerdy as that may sound). There is my recipe. It's the winging it kind.