Any kind of painting involves movement of the hand. That is a fact, whether it be finger painting, traditional brush, palette knife, spraypainting, or experimental techniques like throwing paint or dripping it or covering your body in paint and rolling around on a canvas. There has to be some way of moving the pigment around. Even the gentleman who has cerebral palsy and paints with brushes affixed to a sort of headband device moves his head and neck around to give his vision form (there was an HBO documentaty about him if you want more info). Painting involved brushwork and that was the way the world spun.
The advent of the computer and
the subsequent idea of using it as an artistic medium seemed quaint and awkward
to me back in the early part of the 1990s. As I became aware of Adobe and
their applications I started coming around. Until then all I had seen in the
digital realm of art was the kind of thing that looked as if an artificial
intelligence or robot had decided to express itself. And to be blunt, most
of the time it appeared that said automaton was probably flamingly gay. No
offense but too many bright colors, bad gradients and florid fractals left
me feeling put off by what seemed to strike other people as groundbreaking
in the burgeoning tech/geek subculture. At about the point that I was ready
to write off digital art I caught sight of one piece in an article that gave
me at least a little hope. At the time I was in college studying fine art,
but had decided to take some graphic design courses as well. After laboring
through a semester of paste up and rubylith it was a treat to get to work
on a Mac. Keep in mind that this was a time when most mainstream schools were
just getting graphics departments going and I was starting off with Photoshop
2 as the app of choice. The image I saw was really very simple, three birds
on a simple branch in a very simple manner reminiscent of a childrens book.
Calligraphic strokes delineated the forms of the birds and their perch, and
they were colored in simple monotones that looked like watercolor. Like seeing
a very large television broadcast the image of a watercolor. The work was
on display in a gallery on a monitor with the dimensions of about six by four
feet if memory serves. It was assuredly different from everything I'd seen
so far, and I had the spark of an idea as to what MIGHT be possible with digital
art, but there was no way I'd ever be able to find, purchase, and display
a monitor that size in Mississippi several years prior to the internet's sudden
ubiquity. Still, germinating in my head was the idea that eventually the right
people were going to figure out how to make it all work. At the same time
I'm getting my feet wet learning how to use Photoshop as a page layout program.
Not it's best intended function. At the time it was great, really advanced,
but the instructors were relatively new to using and teaching with a computer.
Something lacked, but not for lack of trying. In my spare time I'd try to
think of that early Mac mouse as the tip of a giant pencil or brush and come
up with nothing spectacular. I figured if I kept at it long enough I could
eventually DO this. Paint with a mouse. The same thing happened years later
when introduced to Painter 4 in 1999. Lots of cool and extremely convincing
brush strokes, texture and behavior of materials that really mimicked their
real world counterpatrs. I was impressed, things were catching up to me and
what I wanted to do with this giant pencil lead I was trying to wield. Still
the results were nothing comparable to my hand skills in the physical world.
Again I thought maybe it's just time to put this particular aspect of art
aside. Or go totally abstract with it which is not my style.
This was at a time that you could call pre-internet. I was at a two year school
taking graphic design courses. When we actually got the internet I was blown
away. I was one of the first people I know to have it at home. So much information
at my fingertips. My only prior exposure to the www was back in '95 on a Window
3 system. It was marginally interesting. Dithered, bitmapped graphics if any
at all. Most of fit was forums, MUDs, and usegroups. My thinking at the time
is that this would never catch on. So a few years later and it has become
a baby monster about to demand a large portion of a lot of people's attention.
It's got possibilities galore. It could be the coolest technology thus far.
And I still can't paint with it?! I can play Doom, look at porn, and do all
kinds of research, but you still want me to draw with a big clunky mouse?
Forget it.
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