In Digital Art Studio1, Karin Schminke, Dorothy Simpson Krause, and Bonny Pierce Lhotka explore ways to integrate digital printing with traditional media. The book guides you with images and text through various processes, both basic and advanced. In part one, the authors focus on the basic processes of choosing printing surfaces, creating customized surfaces, underprinting, and overprinting. In part two, the authors move to more advanced processes such as printing on fabric, wet transfers, dry emulsion transfers, gelatin transfers and 3D work.
Schminke, Simpson Krause, and Pierce Lhotka reveal that the printing surface can be just as important as the artwork printed on it2. If you choose a surface that absorbs the printer ink too much, the image will appear "desaturated and flat"3. However, if you choose a surface that doesn't absorb, the ink will just "puddle and run"4.
The authors discuss ways in which the digital image can serve as an underpainting for traditional media and how the digital image can be printed on top of certain traditional media. Since the ink used by printers is water-based, it can only be printed on water-based materials (as opposed to oil-based). Certain surfaces must be precoated in order to accept the ink, just as certain surfaces must be gessoed or primed when working in traditional media.
If you are interested in the advanced process of combining digital and traditional materials, I highly recommended reading Digital Art Studio since I have yet to try these processes for myself.
In previous work I have done, I created a digital self portrait in Adobe Photoshop, printed it out on 3 feet by 4 feet canvas, and worked back into it with traditional media. My teacher had the tools available and a large enough printer for me to make something of that scale. I have also printed digital pieces on canvas without reworking them traditionally and had viewers ask me what medium I worked with. They were unable to tell the piece was digital due to the traditional surface it was printed on.
Not only have I carried out an entire piece digitally or added traditional media into a digital piece, but I have also used digital techniques in some of my traditional pieces, though it isn't apparent.
In an oil painting that was recently exhibited in the Fall 2006 Art Department Exhibition, I used Photoshop to first sketch out my composition. I painted from the digital sketch and the original photo. Originally I wanted to project the image onto my canvas because I wanted to create a highly realistic image, but decided to just trust my eyes in recreating the image. Below is my original photo, my digital sketch, and the resulting painting.
In another project I combined digital media with traditional 3D media. The assignment was to transform an object into another object both digitally in Adobe Illustrator, and in 3D using clay. The background of each object also had to transform. In both the 3D and digital representation, I chose to transform my background digitally in Photoshop by layering two images and adjusting the opacity from 0%, to 25%, to 50%, to 75% and to 100%. The result of my 3D transformation is below and the digital rendition follows after.
Digital media is not limited to 2D but can be combined with and can even create 3D forms. Robert Lazzarini is an artist who recreates 3D objects after distorting them digitally.
A 3D model of the original object is made on the computer using both animation and industrial design programs, and then digitally distorted5. The arist utilzes a computer-generated model making tool to produce the distorted object using the same materials as the original6. Some examples of the sculptures Lazzarini has created are hammers made from oak and steel, a telephone made from plastic, metal, and rubber, and a chair from maple7. Visuals of some of Lazzarini's sculptures can be seen on his website.
1. Schminke, Karin, Dorothy Simpson Krause, and Bonny Pierce Lhotka. Digital Art Studio. New York: Watson-Guptill Publication, 2004. 2. Ibid, p21.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. "Robert Lazzarini". Pierogi 2000. Retrieved 12 Oct. 2006. <http://www.pierogi2000.com/flatfile/lazzarin.html> 6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.