March 15, 2022

Containing infinity

For many years, I’ve struggled with ‘digital’ as an art medium. No matter the tools or the technology advancements, I’ve never been able to get the same connection between heart and hand from digital tools as I have physical ones. I used to think it was me. Then I thought it was the medium. But now I know what it really is – a combination of both.

One of the things I love about physical media is that they come inherently constrained. A pot of ink and a sharpened piece of bamboo goes a long way to creating lines like Quentin Blake’s. Oil paint and a palette knifed helps to create work like Richard Musgrave-Evans. A brush, water and colour are the foundations for some of my favourite artist’s work. And, of course, it’s not the materials alone that are responsible, but a combination of the constraints of those materials and the artists that wield them.

So, when it comes to digital, what are the tools? Well, the problem is that they are infinite. Millions of possible brushes, colours, canvas textures and software are at the artist’s disposal. And then there’s the hardware – wacom, cintiq, tablet, pens, mice, the list goes on. It turns out that I haven’t had a problem with digital per se – I’ve had a problem with infinite choice.

So, following this thread, I’ve experimented with a hypothesis-led approach (very scientific, I know) to try to learn something new about myself and the medium. So I frame it up:

I believe that by constraining the options within digital I will have a better chance of producing work that pleases me. I will know this if I can create some illustrations I like within a few hours of sitting down to play. And this belief won’t be true if I still end up producing not a single thread to follow.

So, that’s what I did.

Using an iPad, Procreate, 2 brushes, and 12 colours, I set out to explore where the combination of those things and me would lead. I used my design blog articles as the foundation for exploring some concepts for editorial illustration and, well, begun to play. Here’s what happened.

A picture of a cart before a horseA scientist being surprised at a test tubeA pair of hands framing a starA smiling head growing out of the ground as it's being watered
Four images: 2 digital brushes & 12 colours

Constraints are freeing, not limiting

So far, the hypothesis seems to hold true. I really like where these are going. There’s something there. They are far from perfect but I can certainly see my admiration for Leunig and Ralph Steadman in them. They are yet another reminder to me that imposing limits on one’s self (even if they are somehow just made up), provokes progress. We *think* they’ll prevent anything from happening but in fact they promote something. And, something is better than nothing, which is where I was at before when faced with digital as a medium.

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