cowboy, baybee

Okay, so I made one or two edits to this painting today. (07/06/07). I would have done it sooner, but I was out last night talking rubbish at various people of my acquaintance.

I suppose I should offer some brief sort of explanation for this painting. Or at least try! I'm not certain if I can tell you where it began, or where the idea came from... what I shall say is this:

I'm working on theory and practice of painting - improving my skills and adjusting the way I think about an image, and therefore the way I work on it. All the ways I worked in the past split my image into character and background, or lineart and colour, or any number of other ways of splitting a single thought in to several, unconnected pieces. This is only helped by the ease of using multiple layers in programs like Corel Painter and Adobe Photoshop. My theory is that an image, a painting particularly, ought to be a single and coherent thought. I can't add background after I've finished painting a character, and I shouldn't, more to the point. Even if I can pull it off successfully, the image loses coherence - it is several thoughts, seperated by disconnection.

What I'm looking for is a coherent whole. A single, united thought, complete in my mind on conception, and developed as a whole, each part at the same rate. Beginning with colour blocks and layout, each colour affecting and informing it's neighbours... as if you reach back and grab the complete thing as a whole piece, and slowly bring it forward until your thought is expressed.

This all stems from the perpetual idea that digital art can sometimes lose a certain life that traditional art can appear to have, most obviously in the transition between pencil and ink, or between ink and colour... from sketch to finish, something is lost. Or perhaps never gained? The way I am trying to work here is, although digital, always worked on one layer, as one thought, without sketch or stages - one thought, that should retain the life and passion you see in a pencil sketch. It should not lose that coherence, that single thought, in the polishing.

That's the idea anyway. Something like that. I wish I could express it properly!

I am beginning to truly love painting. And better, I am beginning to truly love my painting, for the first time in my life. It's a wonderful feeling!