Michelle Wrighton Fine Art and Photography

A few people have asked recently how I create my digital paintings so I thought I would write a post with some work in progress images to show how I paint.

There are a number of ways to create art in a digital format, there really is no right or wrong way, it is all up to the individual artist.  My background is a lifetime spent working with traditional art materials – graphite, charcoal, colour pencils, pastels, acrylics and oils – and I utilize all this experience and knowledge I have gained working with traditional art mediums to paint digitally.  I use a Wacom Intuos 4 digital graphics tablet and electronic art pen and the powerful real media emulation program Corel Painter XI to literally paint just like I do with traditional mediums, just electronically.  The Painter program allows me to choose the type of medium (charcoal, pastels, watercolours, oils etc), the size and type of brush and blenders I wish to use, as well as the support I want to paint on such as canvas, sanded pastel papers, watercolour papers etc.

All of these variables respond just as they do with real life mediums in regards to the application, mixing and blending of colour.  The pressure sensitive tablet and pen records not only the movement of the pen (digital paintbrush) as I move my hand, but also the angle I hold the pen at, as well as the pressure that I apply to make each mark – essentially all of the variables that make a particular mark with traditional art materials are duplicated by the amazing technology that I have available to use.

The biggest difference for me between painting digitally and painting traditionally are all positive – the lack of mess, no wasted time setting up, lack of fumes & toxic ingredients (an important factor when you have auto-immune issues), no paintbrushes to clean, no wasted paint, no running out of the perfect colour mix, being able to paint for five minutes at a time if that is all I have available or if I unexpectedly get interrupted.  Probably more important to me personally as an artist though, is that painting digitally has allowed my creativity to flourish in a way that has never happened with traditional art mediums – I put this down to working photo realistically which is very time consuming and mentally draining.

With digital painting I am free to follow the slightest hint of inspiration for trying something new, knowing that I can always go back to the last saved copy if that particular path of inspiration comes to a dead end.  This is certainly not something I ever tried with traditional mediums for fear of completely destroying dozens of hours of work on a painting.  LOL so I should probably add ‘liberating’ to the list of reasons that I love digital painting so much!

There is so much more that I could write about digital painting, but I will leave that for another post!

This is a painting I finished recently of a lovely grey arab photographed by fellow artist, Cathy Sheeter.  I havn’t given this one a title yet, so if you have any good ideas, I would love to hear them!

Finished digital painting of a grey arab horse, © 2010 Michelle Wrighton

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Things are progressing along, the Fine Art and Photography gallery have now been added, (but they arn’t linked from the front page yet, and the slideshow isn’t working at this stage).

The links page has been set up and split into different categories so that there are not too many links on each page.  The Commissions, Prints, gifts and merchandise pages are up, as is the original fine art for sale page, but I havn’t been able to add any pieces yet.

It will be a few more days that I first expected to get everything sorted out with the website, unfortunately we had storm damage from a tornado that went through our neighbourhood nearly two weeks ago and we have had to empty the furniture and contents of half of our house into the other half of the house to get the damaged carpet replaced.  As much as I hate doing it, it is a good excuse to de-clutter and get rid of things we no longer use so its going to take longer to get the house re-organised than originally anticipated…great timing of course (not!) as the kids are also on holidays.

I have a number of new oil paintings that I have been working on in between the last few commissions that I have, including some wildlife – a meerkat, a lemur, a snow leopard and a few dogs – a pug, a Rhodesian Ridgeback and a German Shepherd with plans for a German Shorthaired Pointer, a Chinese Crested and a Golden Retriever, as well as a Border Collie agility piece.

At the moment thought, I can’t get into my studio due to the extra furniture that we have had to put in there, so I will post work in progress photos of them when I get the chance.  And at some stage if I ever get the time,  I need to add some back dated posts about a few awards my artwork won in a show I entered in October last year.  I am hoping to finish up all the commissions by August so that I can focus on my own artwork for a while, so I hope there are no more unexpected interruptions in my life!

There is just not enough hours in the day!