- Mixing the analogue with the digital
- 2611
During my first year of studies at Akto, lessons of freehand drawing were part of the curriculum. I wasn’t really sure, if I would be any good at it, but I actually did alright. I was lucky enough to have a great teacher, Vasilis Poulios, who is a highly skillful artist specialising in charcoal drawing. You should certainly look him up and check out his work! Anyway, I ended up surprising myself with the outcome in a positive way.
Although realistic art is not what really attracts me as an artist – at least so far – freehand drawing of real objects is a really interesting exercise and a very important skill to aquire and cultivate. It makes you better at really observing and actually truly perceiving what’s in front of your eyes, which ultimately makes you overall a better artist, regardless of your choice of theme of expression.
Of course, during my studies, I also had to learn using all the digital tools that we graphic designers have at our disposal. So, at some point, I had the desire to blend the two, the analogue drawing by hand with the digital means. And these first experiments is what I would like to share in this post.
In my first test, I used one of my freehand drawing exercises as a theme. I scanned it and then I “messed” with it using Adobe’s Illustrator (a graphic designer software):
And here is the outcome of the manipulation:
As a second test, I tried out something more of “interior design” (a loved field of mine) drawing as a theme, using a more abstract-style approach. So, inspired by a photo of a room in a magazine, I did the drawing below:
Which I then manipulated in different ways in photoshop. Here are some of the outcomes:
By the way, the chair in this artwork is an older design of mine. Back in the days of me being an entrepreneur/suppressed artist, I found myself – during the idle hours of work – sketching down chairs and other types of furniture and objects.
I had much fun during these projects and I find them very promising. There surely will follow more experiments of this sort.
Besides, the field of exploration is vast and the possibilities innumerable!