Twins abstract portrait sleep
Vodnik wip
Various sketches
Scribbles Drawings
Painting Lights
On track
Art process painting brush attached to stick
Gonna call these long distance paintings. I attach my brush to a stick to do the underpainting then use that as a point to jump off from
Sleep drawing
Made this drawing while falling asleep
And this is the painting that just refuses to resolve itself. Funny how some paintings just get worse and worse the more you paint them. Can it be saved? I'll give it an hour in the morning and if it doesn't change it's attitude it's gonna have to go sit in the corner.
Mish mash drawing and painting
Water Goblin Vodnik
Painting doodle characters
Girls
Some sketches with goauche
Fluid paint
Painting Barbie
Digital Flower
I wonder how long people have been painting screens? Or what the first painting of a screen would be? Of course photography greatly influenced how we see painting, as well as how paintings were created. But screens. That's something else. Nowadays it's quite common for an artist to be painting from a screen. It isn't widely known, but much of the reason we saw an explosion of hyoeerealist works, like from Chuck Close, were due to advances in photography and printing. A large scale photo could be printed out and painted from. Now if course artists will use a screw and then zoom in to the areas they are painting for further detail. But I wonder how that connection to a screen effects the final work. Much like how paintings from life inevitably look different than those painted from photos, paintings from screens likely have a certain color sensibility, and approach as well.
In this piece I worked with a simple idea of a digital avatar of some sort, that is morphing and looking Ata flower it has found in its environment. It's funny that my swirls and blobs have become more normalized with the advent of AI image making utilities like dalle. Perhaps finally some will see what I was referring to years ago when I started painting my own reactions to digital avatars, that were also surprisingly organic to those who would view them. But the digital world isn't all hard edges and pixels. There also organic shapes and lighting. In fact I think much of our desire for pixels in video games is due to a sort of originalist approach to digital media itself.
I had a lot of friends and family send me articles about dall e and image making software, and it seems a select few are scared that this technology will somehow displace artists. I don't think that will ever be the case. Art is predicated upon luxury items that have scarcity of some sort. And even today, people still feel the desire for all sorts of handmade items. From soaps to sculptures. The need for humanness will likely go on the other direction and I can imagine hands on materials like paint and clay only getting more popular in the years to come.
Painting Daily to make tiktoks?
Started on this painting of a person holding a flower. Thought about stacking more layers to differentiate between foreground middle and background. The airbrush is a pretty simple tool to achieve this.
I've also begun to edit in some snippets of videos from my life into my shorts. There isn't really some broader goal from this to trick the algorithm or anything. Just was editing my normal process I'd and thought “what if I just put this video of me at the park in there”?. It's strange that as artists now were expected to also be social media managers, and “content” producers. Some smart people have probably investigated this in depth. However as far as contemporary art is concerned, there's actually not a lot of overlap between the high brow world and the peasants on Instagram. Some of my favorite painters aren't even there. And of course, for younger people that see most of their art online, fed to them by an algorithm based on what it's thinks they'll like and how long they'll stay on the platform. It's almost as if this algorithm has become a curator for all that we see. It's also one reason I still love libraries.
Also, as someone who makes paintings and tiktok videos of paintings. I can't help but think of the performative aspect of painting as it relates to these short form videos. Watching people paint isn't anything new. From painters performing at wine tastings or even those guys in Las Vegas who dance and paint jimi hendrix or something. For some reason, people like to watch people paint. Anyway, I think that tiktok and Instagram are likely also dictating how paintings look. Certainly those that feed their algorithms in the right way are rewarded for it. And artists are susceptible to encouragement. It can make them take the wrong roads, and defy their own vision.
At the same time. It's often argued that artis communication and needs to connect. If this is the case then some art is simply better at doing this. Certain art resonates more than others, and those artists and that art is rewarded for it. This is very different than a gatekeeper dictating what's good, and in a way, tiktok and Instagram bypass it and let some artists connect directly with their supporters.
