Excerpts from Interview on Critiquing Digital Artwork
I: We are back with Steven Friedman who is noted for his stunning digital artwork using a technique that he terms “digital natural media”.
S: Thank you
I: Steven, one of the criticisms made about digital art in general is it is too new, that there are no standards by which to evaluate it by.
S: When you talk about “standards” I love to quote an expression I heard over in England - it goes “The nice thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from”. I think that aptly applies here.
I: If that is the case how do you evaluate good digital work from bad.
S: I cannot speak for the entire art community, but, yes I do have my own personal criteria for evaluating my own work. Contrary to popular belief, not everything I turn out is good, and work that I have done previously I look at now with a much more critical eye.
I: Could you then talk about how you view and evaluate your work.
S: Sure. To begin with let me re-state the tenants of how I approach digital art. For me, it is an extension of the photographic process. Photography has traditionally been evaluated on successful use of light, composition, color, and subject matter. These are what I have termed photography’s primary dimensions. The digital processes I use add two new dimensions – texture, and degrees of abstraction. A successful image for me means getting all of these dimensions in harmony.
I: What would you say makes you a successful digital artist over an unsuccessful one.
S: You mean other than artworks sales (grin)? – Okay I guess I’d have to say that it has to do with how I have explored the medium and applied it. When I look at my own and other digital artists’ work I ask the following questions. What was the goal of the artist? How has he or she accomplished this goal? Does the image look contrived? Are the effects too obvious? Does the image evoke a feeling or emotion? Does it achieve a balance?
Looking at my earlier work, I would say that a big part of my progress is how I have applied the techniques that I’ve learned to achieve the realistic natural medium looks. To do this I really had to study paintings and examine how natural paint looks, how natural brush strokes look, how pastels look. Each medium has unique characteristics, and it was a challenge to get these just right. Some of the graphics programs have come a long way in emulating the looks but they are still not perfect. One of my main goals is too completely fool the viewer into thinking that the work is done in the medium I am trying to emulate. So that even at very close inspection, the “magic” that I used to create it is invisible to the viewer. Okay, so now that I’ve got the look of a painting. The next criteria for me is “is it a good painting”? Does the balance of abstraction and realism work? Do the paint strokes look too uniform, or look too diverse? Does the tonality work for the image – is it too muted or too pronounced? Are colors too saturated or under-saturated? If the artist deviated from the natural colors, does the impressionistic style work for the image, or does it look forced and contrived? Does the image flow and are all the elements in harmony? Does the work as a whole feel balanced? Very often I’ll print and image and study it on my work board for a week or so, picking little details of what I need to enhance or remove. In this way I really work a painting much the same way an artist in any other medium works an image.
I: Having done all this exploration, what aspects or processes do you now find the most challenging to you?
S: I can sum it up in two words – Size and substrate. Size is an extremely important factor. Digital artists are not locked into any particular image size when we begin an image, but only when we go to print it. Some images work fine at smaller sizes, but others really need to go large – I mean 30 inches or more to really make them work. On the other hand, there are a lot of surprises going large. Little details in an image become much larger and more visible. I find I really have to go to a higher level of granularity when I create the work. The substrate that I print my work on is another challenge. Things really change once to go from a virtual image to a physical one. The type, color and texture of the substrate can really make a tremendous difference. For instance I tend to print on a brilliant white bleed-proof art paper for inks. It tends to mute the textures and colors much more so that printing on a standard matt surface print paper or glossy paper. This works fine for some works, but completely fails with others. I have to really make an effort to find just the right paper for each image. Canvas presents a particular challenge for me since it adds its own texture to the image. I find that because of this, finer details really disappear at smaller print sizes because they are lost in texture of the canvas. Going larger alleviates this a lot since the canvas grain is proportionally smaller. Also printing on canvas sometimes really completes the textured oil paint look I’m trying to achieve much more so than printing on a glossy paper stock. There has been a lot of chatter lately about the inks used in the printing. Many artists are going to pigmented inks (vs. dye based inks) because of the longevity factor. On the other hand I find that some of these inks really lack the luster and punch of their dye-based equivalents. Hopefully these differences will get ironed out as the manufacturers improve them.
I: In what ways do you feel you have evolved as a digital artist?
S: Initially it was a lot of playing with the effects. It was all cool - Everything looked good! Now I am much more discriminating. I have significantly modified how I use effects, and have made substantial customizations to the effects processes themselves to achieve the looks that I want. I do a lot more blending of images and a whole lot more digital brush work. I do a lot of changing tone and texture on selected parts of an images to achieve a less uniform look and I pay much more attention to little details.
I: Thank you again for being my guest.
S: Thank you
I: Steven, one of the criticisms made about digital art in general is it is too new, that there are no standards by which to evaluate it by.
S: When you talk about “standards” I love to quote an expression I heard over in England - it goes “The nice thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from”. I think that aptly applies here.
I: If that is the case how do you evaluate good digital work from bad.
S: I cannot speak for the entire art community, but, yes I do have my own personal criteria for evaluating my own work. Contrary to popular belief, not everything I turn out is good, and work that I have done previously I look at now with a much more critical eye.
I: Could you then talk about how you view and evaluate your work.
S: Sure. To begin with let me re-state the tenants of how I approach digital art. For me, it is an extension of the photographic process. Photography has traditionally been evaluated on successful use of light, composition, color, and subject matter. These are what I have termed photography’s primary dimensions. The digital processes I use add two new dimensions – texture, and degrees of abstraction. A successful image for me means getting all of these dimensions in harmony.
I: What would you say makes you a successful digital artist over an unsuccessful one.
S: You mean other than artworks sales (grin)? – Okay I guess I’d have to say that it has to do with how I have explored the medium and applied it. When I look at my own and other digital artists’ work I ask the following questions. What was the goal of the artist? How has he or she accomplished this goal? Does the image look contrived? Are the effects too obvious? Does the image evoke a feeling or emotion? Does it achieve a balance?
Looking at my earlier work, I would say that a big part of my progress is how I have applied the techniques that I’ve learned to achieve the realistic natural medium looks. To do this I really had to study paintings and examine how natural paint looks, how natural brush strokes look, how pastels look. Each medium has unique characteristics, and it was a challenge to get these just right. Some of the graphics programs have come a long way in emulating the looks but they are still not perfect. One of my main goals is too completely fool the viewer into thinking that the work is done in the medium I am trying to emulate. So that even at very close inspection, the “magic” that I used to create it is invisible to the viewer. Okay, so now that I’ve got the look of a painting. The next criteria for me is “is it a good painting”? Does the balance of abstraction and realism work? Do the paint strokes look too uniform, or look too diverse? Does the tonality work for the image – is it too muted or too pronounced? Are colors too saturated or under-saturated? If the artist deviated from the natural colors, does the impressionistic style work for the image, or does it look forced and contrived? Does the image flow and are all the elements in harmony? Does the work as a whole feel balanced? Very often I’ll print and image and study it on my work board for a week or so, picking little details of what I need to enhance or remove. In this way I really work a painting much the same way an artist in any other medium works an image.
I: Having done all this exploration, what aspects or processes do you now find the most challenging to you?
S: I can sum it up in two words – Size and substrate. Size is an extremely important factor. Digital artists are not locked into any particular image size when we begin an image, but only when we go to print it. Some images work fine at smaller sizes, but others really need to go large – I mean 30 inches or more to really make them work. On the other hand, there are a lot of surprises going large. Little details in an image become much larger and more visible. I find I really have to go to a higher level of granularity when I create the work. The substrate that I print my work on is another challenge. Things really change once to go from a virtual image to a physical one. The type, color and texture of the substrate can really make a tremendous difference. For instance I tend to print on a brilliant white bleed-proof art paper for inks. It tends to mute the textures and colors much more so that printing on a standard matt surface print paper or glossy paper. This works fine for some works, but completely fails with others. I have to really make an effort to find just the right paper for each image. Canvas presents a particular challenge for me since it adds its own texture to the image. I find that because of this, finer details really disappear at smaller print sizes because they are lost in texture of the canvas. Going larger alleviates this a lot since the canvas grain is proportionally smaller. Also printing on canvas sometimes really completes the textured oil paint look I’m trying to achieve much more so than printing on a glossy paper stock. There has been a lot of chatter lately about the inks used in the printing. Many artists are going to pigmented inks (vs. dye based inks) because of the longevity factor. On the other hand I find that some of these inks really lack the luster and punch of their dye-based equivalents. Hopefully these differences will get ironed out as the manufacturers improve them.
I: In what ways do you feel you have evolved as a digital artist?
S: Initially it was a lot of playing with the effects. It was all cool - Everything looked good! Now I am much more discriminating. I have significantly modified how I use effects, and have made substantial customizations to the effects processes themselves to achieve the looks that I want. I do a lot more blending of images and a whole lot more digital brush work. I do a lot of changing tone and texture on selected parts of an images to achieve a less uniform look and I pay much more attention to little details.
I: Thank you again for being my guest.