Daily Digitalia

Always mindful of the admonishments of many artists who preceded me, I draw every day, either with traditional materials or digitally. Since I come very late to digital drawing, one of my constant issues is how to use various digital programs--Sketchbook and Painter mostly--I've done dozens of digital drawings, mostly discarded but saving one or two for friends and sometimes posting one or two here. Recently I went back and review digital dailies from the last year or so, which I've christened my daily "digitalia" (something electronic, digital, and/or binary, singular, "digitalium"). It is a good exercise for me personally because the review refreshes memory about interests, ideas, variations in technique, and so on. Review also provides a kind of progress report on drawing skills and digital ones. Many of these digitalia were done from images or stop frames seen online, though in all cases they are significantly modified. The original inspirations might have been ads, news, or snapshots posted somewhere, but in many cases the inspiration was evanescent.

"Winter Wind," February 2018

Winter was less severe last year but still cold and snowy. Sometimes just getting across the street in a snowstorm is tough. This digitalium was a study for a possible oil painting. Drama is introduced by limiting the palette and contrasting cool-warm and light-dark. This may yet become an oil.

"On the Truck," April 2018

A month or so after the image above was posted came this digital painting of a worker clinging to the side of a compactor truck. In this painting the reference was an online photo. Whoever did the original photograph had a wonderful eye for composition. Cropping the truck out of the image Using that composition but changing colors and background made the figure more emphatic. This particular digital painting was done using Sketchbook to work on layering techniques. Although it was an interesting digital experiment it's unlikely that this will ever be an oil painting.

"Roger Stone," May 2018

News photos and videos are common inspirations, but I had completely forgotten that Roger Stone (right) who has been in the news a great deal lately, was in the news in May 2018. Although the exact inspiration for the digital sketch here is unknown, clearly the subject was making an impact almost a year ago as he has been doing these past few weeks. One of the motivations behind any daily drawing is simply to practice. Drawing well-known public figures is a humbling exercise because the slightest mistake is instantly obvious. Instead of being put off by that fact it serves as a way to push observational skills and also translational ones. That is, sometimes a likeness is achievable without exact accuracy in drawing.

"Elder," July 2018

Later this past year one of my foci for study was facial expressions. Using digital drawing was simpler, although in many of these studies from last summer one of my goals was to emulate traditional media as closely as possible. At first my drawings were done from various books and other sources but were sketches of generic faces--tronies, in a way. None were of actual people until a bit later. This particular drawing came from a video pause frame. The old woman was staring out a window, but her gaze seemed to me to be equivalent to the thousand yard stare that you see on the faces of shell-shocked soldiers. Staring into the distant past, perhaps. Regretful, perhaps. The important thing was to capture the expression in her central features rather than making a totally accurate portrait.

"Mr Coon," August 2018

By last fall, daily digitalia had become a bit more polished. In August I made this digital painting in Sketchbook with various digital tools, layers and techniques. This image was never intended as more than a learning experience but fulfilled that objective reasonably. Today it's an example of progress to that point, as any sketch would be. The reference seemed to show the quick, crafty intelligence of raccoons, and capturing that was my other objective.

"Closed for the Season" November 2018

By November, although most daily digitalia continued to be sketches of heads and figures, an occasional landscape also figured in these pieces. One sunny afternoon I happened to be passing a golf course that was closed. The sun was bright on the fairway despite the leafless trees. The pattern of the dark foreground branches against the sunlit trees across the expanse of grass made a pleasing pattern. I captured it with a cell phone snap and then translated that into this much altered daily digitalium, "Closed for the Season."

Daily digitalia do indeed continue here along Druid Hill Creek so perhaps more will show up in these musings.

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Drawing Digital Dailies
Digital Doodles
Digital Drawing