In the digital creative mix
The better side of phone tech...
Digital art has always been on the outer edges of my creative output. It’s that one thing that I just do for myself. I share some of it online, but I’ve never made it with any intentions of it being something that I’d show along with my painting and other work. Most of what I’ve made digitally is usually a way for me to explore collage in different ways that don’t, and in many situations, can’t be made in conventional ways. A lot of it starts with my own photographs and expands out from there to include drawing tools on Instagram and photo editing apps like Pics Art, iPhoto and Photoshop.
My phone has been the common denominator in all of this. The access to so many creative options at my fingertips has led to hours of just making what I think is some of my more adventurous work ever. Many of the images that follow in this post were made while in bed late at night, when I couldn’t sleep from all of the creative ideas running around my head begging to get out or in the early morning hours when I would have woken up too early and not able to get back to sleep.
Along the way there have been a lot of unpredictable, but good things happen, like weird sound glitches in videos when I save my work from one app and upload it to another. One of the cool things I discovered making this work was how useful the Instagram drawing tools and gifs were and why no one was doing more with them.
There were some art accounts that were doing some cool art things on their story feed, but not many. I kind of moved away from making newer phone-based pieces because my eyes are too affected by looking at the screen for too long. Maybe once I get another laptop, I’ll start making more digital work. Maybe. I get a bit overwhelmed with the over abundance of choices with digital art-making tools and have to pare down my ideas to manageable sizes.
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One of the first things that sparked ideas for me were the background images offered up by the InstaSize app. It’s original reason for being was for reformatting of photos to post on IG before IG offered rectangular options for posted photos. I like patterns and for a good while, I utilized stencils in my paintings as something to react against with other types of free-had mark making. With images like those above, I like the flatness of the patterns against different sized photos that presents a sense of odd space within the piece, most noticeable in the first, blue dominated collage above. I also like playing off of the background patterns with the repeated photo images.
In the one with the handwriting, I made use of this note that I found at my old job when I worked at an art supply store here in Philly. It was a piece of test paper that someone decided to make this wild note on. I laugh every time I think about it. Something to unpack there, for sure.
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Another level to this was making portions of my paintings along with other photos more central to the images.
Some of these I pushed as far as I could, particularly in the sixth photo above where I’ve repeated photo images of mine until it looked like some kind of cosmic gem. Same as in the “eyes” of the image directly above. I never intended for those to look like eyes, but, well, that’s what happened and I lived with it…
Glyphs galore!
So, the phone as medium made making glyph-based work so easy. In the same way that using acrylic paints instead of oil paint gets me to places I want to be faster, my phone and these apps made it so easy to just iterate and play with compositions and colors in a way that couldn’t be done otherwise. Just layers upon layers of drawings with some mixed with images of paintings thrown in, as well.
Photo-Video collages
These were a natural extension of bringing photos and digital graphics together. I figured out a way to bring my photos and videos together in ways that surprised me. Since I didn’t have any video editing software on my phone and just forgot about looking for an app at the time, I just did a lot of saving and editing as I went along. I probably couldn’t remember how I did it if I were to try right now, but it was fun bringing the two mediums together, regardless of how clumsy and long the process was.
One of the weird things about moving work between apps is how sometimes, there will be unexpected glitchy things that happen. In the above photo/video piece, the video bit is drawn out in an extended manner which also caused the sound to elongate and warp strangely. I loved when that happened because it gave the piece an otherworldly feeling, like what it could be like to experience time and sound in a different manner or in a different dimension, perhaps…
No matter what I’m doing outside, the ocean is never far from my mind. Out for a hike and/or strolling through a field, my mind always wanders to the times I’ve spent near a warm body of water.
This post was a long time in the making. The idea of it just sat in my head for a long time and I don’t know why it took me so long to get around to making it. The idea to talk about this side of my artistic work more in-depth came from a short interaction I had with
going back to mid-2024 when he asked me about the role of digital art as it related to my other work. There’s definitely more cross-over from my analogue-to-digital work. I think the digital-to-analogue direction has had more impact on how I view handling spaces in my paintings somewhat. There’s a lot of cross-pollination but in different ways.I think it’s exciting to go between analogue and digital art making. If you’re used to mainly making art in analogue ways, I recommend at least playing around with tech to see what can happen. Explore, experiment and see if there’s any use of the digital world with your traditional art making methods. It doesn’t mean that you have to change how you work, it’s just about utilizing the tools at hand. If you don’t like it, you can let it go in an instant by tapping ‘delete’.
One of the better influences of contemporary tech is giving artists ways of exploring ideas without a real investment of money and in a short amount of time, you can have a sketch of something to pursue further or come away with a full-fledged work.
This seems like a good way to sign off. Thanks for reading, I appreciate everyone taking time out of your day to read about what I have to say about what I do. I appreciate you!
TM
I’ve been thinking about the divide between fine art and digital art and if/how/when that divide will break down over time. With our technological culture, I think there’s even greater inherent value in traditional, handmade media. But your work is such a beautiful proof point that digital art can and should cross into the realm of fine art.
What a fascinating and inspiring feast for the eyes! Love seeing where things crossover with your analog work and where they diverge and get playful and experimental. That black and white video with the slowed down wave definitely took me to another dimension, another place in the universe!