Embellish This
The finishing touch for any photograph or digital art piece is to print it, but how this is done can make a big difference. With a photo, we just crank up our trusty inkjets, and out comes a nice photo suitable for framing. With digital art however, more is definitely better. For prints I make at home, I print on Red River’s Linen which gives the look and feel of traditional canvas. For larger sizes, I send my stuff to Finerworks, and that includes printing on actual canvas. This is where a digital painting takes on a little more of an “artsy” look to it.
While this is all fine and good, there is still something “missing”. One of the reasons traditional galleries are slow in showing digital pieces is that they lack something that traditional art has. First, they look “flat”, even printed on glossy canvas. If you’ve ever visited a traditional art museum, you can see the painted strokes on the canvas. While painter can simulate an impasto look, it just isn’t the same. Secondly, I can crank out as many copies of my work as I want to, and they will all be exactly the same. They are lacking the uniqueness of a traditional piece; that “one of a kind feeling”.
So what is a digital artist to do? We are at the beginning of a new frontier, mainly the process of embellishing your print. This can be done in a couple of ways; the first way that I have done is to use an acrylic clear gel, and “paint” right on the canvas. When the gel dries, it gives the three-dimensional look of actual brush strokes. If the artist is careful to use the details in the painting as a guide, it can look quite “real” when finished. There are other artists who use a finishing spray on the print, and add their own acrylic or oil paint to them. Painter masters John Derry and Jeremy Sutton are offering these techniques in their workshops now. You too can now have a painted piece that is as unique as any in a museum.