sketch_k8 (cave wall)

sketch_k8_BWphoto_backgrd

Studio notes: I printed this out at 16 x 21 inches on 100% rag paper (full bleed, i.e., no border). The hard edges and solid colors of the curving pixel art lines give the printed image a certain "pop," as an object hanging on a wall, owing to the contrast between those sharply defined areas and the softer, photographic parts. It feels complete to me, not needing additional cutting or collaging. Possibly because so many of the texture decisions are worked out on the screen, and the printer is reproducing them faithfully.

Conceptually was probably influenced by Reneabythe's photo-comparison Cecily Brown vs Garbage Pix. Yes, there's a bit of "my kid could do that" sneering in those pairings but Cecily Brown kind of deserves it (her earliest work looked like copulating rabbit entrails but I'm not sure what it's supposed to be now -- bee yoo tee ful painting?). The art and technology website Rhizome.org is having a panel this week on "digital painting" (props to andrej and mirrrroring) but two topics they probably won't be discussing are (i) Cecily Brown vs Garbage (could this be the "new abstraction" they are talking about?) and (ii) Artists Who Have Finally Said F.U. to Apple and Windows and Are Switching to Linux. Those would be my salon des refusés topics.

sketch_k8 (e-waste)

sketch_k8

Drawn with Linux MyPaint and GIMP. As noted previously, if you use the "pencil" tool in GIMP it doesn't anti-alias. Interestingly you can stay in pencil mode and use some of the other brushes, which behave kind of like pixel art. This pile is a tangle of brush experiments, as well as some things you can do with tinting layers via airbrush (in non-pencil mode).

sketch_k4

sketch_k4

drawn with Linux MyPaint

Posted this earlier and took it down because it was meshing poorly with the surrounding imagery (no pun intended). This is an ongoing problem with the blog format.
The high contrast rough weave background is a MyPaint default so I'm treating it as a found image. It's kind of nuts -- the "natural" fiber is almost pure pixel art when you inspect it closely. The watercolor effects of the paint program don't so much soak into this weave as hover in front of it. All this puts it into "so bad it's good" territory, at least conceptually.