THOMPSONSPF10RESEARCH

Manipulation


Interest:

My work often tries to make the viewer second guess what they are seeing as in my series “Grocery Heart.” I think that I using a new tool or method to do this might be another effective way to achieve this confusion. Digital painting overtop of photographs in particular with the Wacom tablet can blur the lines between a painting and a photograph. The photographic representation of the subject morphs into a purely digital collage of pixels as the tablet is used in certain manners. Vik Muniz blurs the line between the object and the material using things such as chocolate. My work may not be as blunt as material and representation but rather I am interested in the state of confusion. The confusion created is also representative of the confusion created through commercialism and the rapid consumption we often take part in as a society. I think photography is surreal and that digital painting over my photographs may be a way to grab initial interest from my viewers and create confusion. It plays with you visual sensory as to how something was created and hopefully raises questions about how much the photograph has been manipulated, painted or not. This act is the blending of the truth and the lie of a photograph.


Quotes:
"My portrait work is highly layered and I work with a stylus and wacom tablet adding hand drawn lines and "paint" drips and splatters. I have always been intrigued by process and building up a work of art with layers, either physical layers when it comes to collage work or digital layers when it comes to my Pet Portraits. Some of my pet portraits will have well over 70 Photoshop layers before I am finished with them. I regard the computer as just another creative tool and I enjoy trying to push the boundaries of what is possible with digital art. I am passionate about color and I have a real fondness for both line and texture. My goal is to create a work of art that is a celebration of love and a lasting tribute to the special bond we all share with our animals".
Collins, Rebecca “Rebecca Collins” Artpaw.com http://artpaw.com/rebeccacollins.html


“Over the past decade Muniz has been teasing us with artful lies by combining his skilled draftsmanship with photography to create hybrid images that capture one medium in the matrix of another. Whether one looks at Muniz's portrait of Jackson Pollock poured from liquid chocolate syrup, his head of Medusa inscribed in a plate of spaghetti marinara, or his landscapes fashioned from thousands of yards of thread into richly textured pictures that recall the paintings of Van Ruysdael and Monet, one first sees the seamless photographic image, only to find out that something inside it is amiss.
Like the optical illusion duck/rabbit in which the mind's eye enables us to see the single unified image as either a duck or rabbit, and to switch between the two, Muniz's works engage a similar visual dynamic. Where we see a portrait, we find the drippings of chocolate; in a landscape we discover the dense skeins of string. The result leaves us battling between one and the other as his images defy a fixed apprehension.”

Gookin, Kirby “Creative Time Presents Vik Muniz Clouds” Creative Time
http://www.creativetime.org/programs/archive/2001/clouds/muniz/essay.htm


Annotated Biography:
Today, Wacom® announces wide-ranging support for the powerful new features of Adobe® Creative Suite® 5 (CS5), officially launched yesterday. The significant upgrades in CS5 include new pen-centric capabilities, particularly in the brush engine for Photoshop® CS5 and Illustrator® CS5 software. Photoshop users will get the most from the new brush capabilities in CS5 when using either Wacom's Intuos®4 professional pen tablet or Cintiq® interactive pen display. "Never has there been a better time for professional photographers, designers and artists to combine Wacom pen input with Adobe's Creative Suite software to naturally express their creative ideas and increase their productivity," said Don Varga, senior product manager for Wacom's professional products.
“Wacom Pen Input Complements Adobe Photoshop CS5 Brush Engine and Revs Up Creative Productivity” PRNewswire. Apr 13 2010. http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/wacom-pen-input-complements-adobe-photoshop-cs5-brush-engine-and-revs-up-creative-productivity-90732834.html


Here is some things I have been trying: