Just were does digital painting fit into the artistic endeavours? I have asked before in this blog whether it is art and of course the answer to that is yes. However, is it painting or something else? I guess to answer this you have to ask what is painting far more than whether Digital Painting is similar.

So what is painting? In a nutshell painting is a mean by which pigment is applied to a surface. Traditionally the pigment is delivered to that surface in an oil based medium or chalk in the case of pastels. In the 20th century this was supplemented by acrylic medium. The debate between which is the best medium is in many ways sterile apart from when considering the techniques. To the view of the painting it is the final result that matters and anyway all paintings, no matter who painted them are constructed in the viewers brain.

So from this perspective digital painting is painting or is it printing, after all the only way to move the image from the digital to the real is by printing the image onto some form of surface.

The reason this came about was when I was discussing my work with the tutor that runs my life drawing course. Initially he thought the works were painted in the traditional sense. He was somewhat taken aback when told they were digital. However, after thinking about them for a while admitted he hadn’t even considered using the computer to make a painting..so perhaps it is painting after all or perhaps not. Whatever it is I get satisfaction from making the images.

So as for the FU work… It continues and the invertible happened…I had to see what it looked like to combine the old and new FU on the same screen. It produces an interesting image…now this is something you can’t easily do with traditional painting (ha ha)

Simon Marchini
Web: http://WWW.simonmarchini.co.uk