Blog post: 19 June 2025 - continued (2)

Digital derring do

Since I'm predominantly motivated by drawing, not working in a specific way, I feel that the more I work digitally, the more I get closer to what drawing is really about. For me there is an opportunity to bring more focus to the content or intent of the drawing itself. So I may take on a much more complex subject to draw or include a topographical narrative to say more about what I'm trying to convey. The reality is that I wouldn't have made some of these drawings without a digital approach. I'd have ended up spending more time tussling with the media than been able to express myself.

Digital decisions can be reversed more easily by adjusting colour selections, reversing strokes made with a digital brush or adding layers to add or remove components. Of course digital media includes challenges of its own, not least knowing when to stop, but by reducing the jeopardy that exists in the mastery of traditional media materials I have found myself making bolder, braver work; made much more quickly and somehow with a more fluid outcome.

Challenging traditional norms requires derring-do and being open to the possibilities within this expansive medium. Creativity seems to emerge from the breakages in the traditional media chain of command and by not making things in a known way or indeed making the same type of work every time. It's possible to experiment more freely without incurring expense (except that of time). I think we may sometimes lose sight of this creativity by being bound up by how we want materials to look or for fear of taking studies further and either overworking or wrecking them entirely.

Self portrait as Little weed. - digital collage - originally a collage of seed packets transformed with digital drawing.

Drawing different things differently
Ongoing inquiries to understand the best approaches to reflect the textural mark making that is often a characteristic of my sketchbook drawings have caused me to challenge the conventional boundaries of materiality, working on the interplay and a flux across all media by either transforming drawings made traditionally into digital collages or working back from a digital drawing into print. And vice versa.

Having won the inaugural Sonsoles print prize at the Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair, I have also begun to explore the discipline of screen printing and have already found that this is complementary to my digital drawing. Since a lot of my recent work has been looking at layered palettes, the interaction of textural qualities, obscurity and ambiguity created by overlaying multiple drawings (for example either created entirely digitally or within digital collages on top of traditional media studies); it has been a natural step to do this in print.

My ‘Day of the Dead selfie’ began as a digital postcard made from life in Mexico, back in the studio became a digital collage and the collaged design has recently been used to make my first screen print at Sonsoles. I’ve also taken my Dumfries House residency drawings into digital collages and screenprints to further explore these mediums. In a recent screen print adventure I used a digital drawing to practise the movement of the brushstrokes I wanted to make in a monoprint.

Taking a digital drawing into a design for a print brings traditional media sensibility back into focus; whilst a digital collage made in the studio from a traditional drawing may elevate the subject of the drawing into a different space. I have recently been using traditional and digital media (en plein air sketchbook diary studies) of Great Dixter House and Garden where I volunteer, combined with new studies made digitally of the chasubles in the V&A museum. This has involved working more experimentally, exploring mixed media techniques within digital collage and resulting in topographical narratives that bring the subjects to life. I enjoy exploring the boundaries between traditional and digital media, sometimes jumping into the spaces that open up as a result.

By digitally drawing into an existing creation I hope I have brought further understanding not just repetition. I am keen to challenge my own limitations to make drawings that satisfy my ideas. I keep experimenting until I land closer to what I intended. By working across media I hope to create something near to the truth or to discover something entirely new.

Of course detractors may argue that digital drawing isn't real art; it's a trick or cheating. Some may say that digital approaches are only valid as a tool towards creating work in traditional media not as a thing unto themselves. Whilst acknowledging that some parts of the art world insist on having these purist and elitist views it can sometimes make me feel isolated, though I'm hugely grateful to my artist buddies from the ODDY23 cohort who are tremendously encouraging.

As a digital practitioner I actually love it when people can't necessarily understand how the image has been made. Someone might think I've made a thing in traditional media, then they look again. Somewhere along the way the lines have become blurred. Rather than being duped by digital I believe I have brought my audience closer to what inspired the work or what I intended to say. Closer to the truth.

Digital is not a trick else all art is a trick.