Digital painting and the question of value...

"Wow, this painting is great! ...oh, it's only digital." 

Kelley McMorris

Outer Harbor - South Entrance
http://fineartamerica.com/featured/buffalo-south-entrance-light-lianne-schneider.html

A couple of weeks ago, I saw a wonderful illustration posted on Facebook that had been reposted from artist/illustrator Kelley McMorris' blog. At the top was a sketch of a digital artist thinking and planning his/her next digital art creation - paying attention to light, form, composition, color, message. This kind of thinking goes into the creation of a digital work BEFORE one ever puts pen to tablet just as it goes into creating a traditional artwork before putting brush to canvas. At the bottom of the illustration, however, was another sketch of the same artist sitting back in his/her chair and saying, "Computer draw me a horse." The two sketches demonstrate the difference between what actually happens in the process of creating a digital artwork and what the public perception of such art might be.

Until I took up digital painting, I probably suffered from the same misconceptions. Now, I know better and, like many other digital artists - illustrators, cartoonists, 3D fantasy creators, fractal artists as well as digital painters - I'm anxious for the day that digitally created art is perceived by both the public and gallery owners and art critics as valid and valuable art. That day has not yet arrived. Few critics can even agree on what constitutes "digital art" let alone consider it for the rarefied atmosphere of upscale galleries. Isn't most photography digital now? Photography as art seems to make the cut for what constitutes "fine art" though photo composites and significantly altered and textured works are not viewed the same way. Besides, I don't recall any photograph ever bringing $44 million at auction. (I'm speaking of the recent auction price for the Barnett Newman "Onement VI" painting that looks like a blue ping pong table top).

I hope you'll pardon my outrage about this but just because some ritzy art critic decided to tout Newman's series of paintings in New York art circles doesn't make it art, let alone art worth $44 million. Perhaps it's the "little green monster" at work in me, but I can assure you that a great deal more thought, time, effort, reflection about mood and message went into my digital painting pictured above than went into this work. Give me a roll of blue painters' tape and a gallon of oil based house paint and I could create the match for this in red or yellow or whatever color the critic might like. Then there is the $75 million for a 1950 Rothko, or the $148 million for Jackson Pollack's No. 5...but I'll stop there.

There is debate even within the digital painters' circle though about whether what we do is merely a duplication of traditional painting techniques or an expansion of them, and further whether a work created specifically for reproduction and print, even in limited editions, could ever have the value of a singular "original" traditional painting. So let's dissect the process and the question of reproducibility versus value.

Writer/artist Stephen Danzig contends, "Within the digital creative matrix is a human consciousness that must utilize the traditional processes of understanding line, color theory and subject matter - its linear function is the same by definition as traditional processes and must be judged and valued accordingly." There is some agreement about the similarities in the creative processes. According to the Wikipedia article on digital painting, "As a method of creating an art object, it adapts traditional painting medium such as acrylic paint, oils, ink, etc. and applies the pigment to traditional carriers, such as woven canvas cloth, paper, polyester etc. by means of computer software driving industrial robotic or office machinery (printers)....'Traditional digital painting' creates an image in a stroke-by-stroke, brush-in-hand fashion but the canvas and the painting tools are digital." 

I consider myself a traditional digital painter because even though I work from a sketch or a reference photograph, I apply each stroke and color in my painting individually just as if I were working with acrylics (my previous traditional medium) on wood or canvas. I work doubly hard to create the effect of tooth, texture, brushstrokes - aspects of a finished painting that would be automatic using traditional materials. I am not talking about programs - and there are many excellent ones on the market - like Corel Painter that will "clone" a photograph and convert it into any kind of painting with just a few keystrokes and the push of a few buttons. (Not that that is as easy as it looks either!) I am talking about starting with a blank "canvas" or a simple black and white sketch and actually painting each brushstroke, being responsible for color mixing, type and size of brush, desired output style, proper lighting and so forth. Even using a reference photo - as a painter would use a model or paint in plein air - does not negate the incredibly detailed work the true digital painter has to do.

This is where the disagreement often begins about the merits of digital painting. It is both harder and easier than traditional painting, I think. It is harder because as J. D. Jarvis, the Museum of Computer Art's contributing editor says, "Digital artists work hard to mimic the effects of gravity, absorption or resistance and interaction with grain and texture that happen naturally (or by chance) with physical materials. And, since these "accidents" shape the nature of such material-based work, digital tools force us into devising new virtual techniques." I have to use digitally rendered effects like "noise" or "grunge" or canvas texture to give my work the same kind of dimension and texture a physical painting would have. But it's easier and more freeing too for several reasons. Contrary to Stephen Danzig's assertion that digital art has the same linear function as traditional art, creating a digital painting or illustration is NOT a linear process. It is a layered process. Some of my digital paintings or digital composites have more than 30 layers. One folk art painting I did had 84 separate layers before I was even remotely satisfied with the final project. This is a major difference but one that should bring added value to the finished output. "Digital tools offer production techniques ...such as multiple undos and the ability to save and combine previous renditions of a single project and, thereby, allows us to risk pushing a composition in a direction that while it may have destroyed a physical work on traditional materials, only brings a digital composition greater depth and more polish. If nothing else, we are allowed to know that flash of inspiration wasn't really a good way to go after all and can return to the previous undamaged state. For this reason alone, digital compositions should be the strongest, most polished and thoroughly explored compositions in art and, at the same time, the most spontaneous." 

To be continued in Friday's post....

Original, giclee or lithograph?

All Aboard the Lightning Express

http://lianne-schneider.artistwebsites.com/featured/all-aboard-the-lightning-express-1874-lianne-schneider.html

There's a lot of conversation in art circles, particularly with regard to marketing - and perhaps a bit of snobbery - about the huge difference in value between an original oil or acrylic painting, a giclee print or a limited edition lithograph. I don't think there's any question that an original painting should command a higher price than a photograph or lithograph of the painting. The trouble is, once you've sold the original it's gone...or is it? And what about an original digital painting? Is that also an original? According to the law, it is. It's simply a different medium. There are wide varieties of opinion about all of these forms - mine is just one more to add to the mix.

Because of technological developments in the printing process, the question arises then about the value of giclee prints and lithographs. Clearly the intent in both cases is to make an original available to a wider public at a lower price. True giclee requires scanning the original oil or acrylic painting and then using a special printer rather than a screen or plate to make copies that retain all the tonalities of the original without any dot screen pattern. Special light fast inks are used which provide a broader range of color than a standard inkjet printer and if not exposed to constant sun the colors will remain true for anywhere from 25 to 75 years. The same is true for digitally painted originals or even digital reproductions, making it possible to own a true copy of a fine art work at a fraction of the cost. Giclee can be printed on canvas, paper (specialty papers), metal, acrylic surfaces and cloth. Giclee on canvas is as close to an original as it is possible to get without having the original painting. While it is possible to print thousands of copies as giclee prints, generally speaking, fewer giclee copies are produced than lithographs unless the artist has licensed a particular image. On the other hand, giclee prints can be handled like lithographs if the artist arranges to have only a limited number printed and then sells them as numbered limited editions. Offering giclee as limited editions is a way of keeping the value of both the original painting and the prints higher than they would otherwise be.

A lithograph - even in modern lithography - is an original art work created directly on the stone or plate, inked by hand and printed by hand one at a time. Though it is possible to transfer an image from an inkjet printer to a lithographic plate, it's still a time consuming and painstaking process. According to Ebay, "A lithograph is an authorized copy of an original work created by the artist himself or other skilled craftsmen. A lithograph is rarely worth more than the original artwork it reproduces, but if the print quality is excellent and the production numbers are low, it may still have significant value in the art world." Fine art lithographic print making is still done today, most often in numbered limited editions, making them valuable as collector pieces.

The piece included in today's blog brings the debate to a new level because it is neither a totally original art work (manually or digitally created) nor a true reproduction as a photographic copy or a giclee print would be. It is not an original in the sense that the subject matter, composition or design are the product of my own imagination. What it is is something called a "derivative work" - an art work that uses components of other works to make something new - in this case a digitally painted interpretation of a 150 year old lithograph. The original is a "chromolithograph" printed by Currier and Ives produced in an unlimited edition. An "original" print is currently on display at the Library of Congress and is in the public domain. So since this work is not a faithful photographic copy of the original, nor a new lithograph that faithfully and accurately duplicates the original, it is not a reproduction. What is original to me is the medium by which I recreated or reinterpreted the lithograph - that is by digitally painting the new image from scratch. That gives the finished product a number of elements that are uniquely my own - my painting style, the texture of the digital work, the depth of color, the changes or adaptations of the original composition which include leaving out things that were in the background or  painting an entirely new sky, for example.

So if you were to buy a giclee canvas of this railroad image, what would you be getting that would make it worth more than a few dollars? Well for one thing, you would get a "painting" in the sense that a canvas made from a digital painting retains the look - texture, brushmarks, depth and feel - of a painting rather than the smooth surface you'd get with a photographic reproduction. You'd get a painting that would retain its color longer than the original lithograph which has faded until there is very little color left...though of course, the fact that the original has yellowed with age certainly adds to its value. In fact, as Dr. Angela Stanton (who is also a digital painter of some renown) says, "Digital paintings have many advantages over paintings that were originally painted on canvas or paper and then photographed and posted for sale as print. The most important of these advantages of digital over "real" is that since digital was created digitally, it will look printed on canvas or paper exactly as you see it on the monitor and not flat! Digital photography of highly textured items like oil or acrylic paint removes all textures and makes them appear flat. You don't get this problem with digital art. You get exactly what you see!"  Of course, I totally agree - lol - but then, it's in my best interests to do so!

What it boils down to is that few of us can afford original art - most things that would appeal to us that are not boilerplate "factory" paintings are going to be very expensive. For good reason - good artists deserve to be well paid for their time and talent. But it should make any artist feel good that more people get to share the joy of that art because they can buy a giclee print of the original or they can own one of a limited number of lithographs of that same piece. It is no less art for being a recreation or digital creation or for being a faithfully rendered giclee print from the original.