Digital Painting: Not Quite Blood, Alchemy and Ritual
Years ago, I used to do digital painting. It was a satisfying way to work, but eventually I eschewed it in favour of returning to my traditional painting practice. The motivation behind this was a general dissatisfaction with not having a tangible end product. Eventually, the conventional painting style took over completely, and I packed away my little Wacom tablet, never to use it again.
Lately, I’ve been feeling drawn back to digital work. There is something about working in digital that unshackles my imagination more than traditional media. With my current interest in reading and writing, I find it hard not to relate this to books.
For me, digital work is like the comfort of Alan Garner’s ‘The Weirdstone of Brisingamen’. It’s a pure flight of the imagination, unfettered, joyful narrative indulgence where I can immerse myself in a story and a place. Working with traditional media is more like a spiritual experience. It is blood, alchemy and ritual; more akin to Cormac McCarthy’s ‘Blood Meridian’.
When I talk to my painting students, I try to impart something of the esoteric magic that is traditional painting. There is something raw about that experience of giving life to a tangible object, albeit simply some wood fibre with oily pigments smudged on top. For me, this is a wholly different experience from sitting at my screen with my drawing tablet. Not more or less, just different.
The digital method of working can also offer connections to something more profound. All art making in our flow state offers something of this. There is something unique, however, something primal and, without doubt, mystical about the practice of dirtying your hands and making your mark on something in the real world. This is why I have zero fear of AI as a creative practitioner.
You’ll know that I encourage the use of AI as a creative tool. It is an interesting resource with some low-level applications, but it will never connect you to the mystical experience that is raw, human creativity. It will never replace painting. Painting is all about the soul, which is its fundamental component. I have given some of my drawings and work to AI and asked it to riff on those and create alternative compositions in my style; it simply can’t do it. It may come aesthetically close, but the imagery lacks a fundamental human connection.
Having said all that, I love working digitally and will be digging my tablet out again soon to venture back into digital illustration. In the meantime, here is some of my old work for you to have a look at. Bear in mind that they are from circa 2008-2009, so they are significantly outdated in terms of techniques, and definitely no AI is involved.
I’ve always wanted to paint one of these digital images in traditional media, so maybe that will be an interesting next step in my process.
