DIGITAL PORTRAITS IMAGINED AND REMEMBERED 2021 ongoing
It began while watching the nightly news commentators. My mind began to stream away from interviews with exhausted hospital staffers, video of blanketed bodies with respirator faces, degradation of our natural landscape, warring factions.
I picked up my ipad. On the ipad I had previously limned about 50 drawings from live models before sheltering at home from the pandemic. So I aimlessless swiped through them, stopping at one or another. Mindlessly my finger began to engage with the mechanics of the art app, Procreate. Drawing, painting, cropping, distorting, evolving images became primarily portraits, or “heads” more specifically. From that night, the activity became a daily obsession. Fifty-five portraits later, I’m now painting from a live model on Zoom twice a week. The recent memory of painting from the zoom model emerges when I make portraits now.
These portraits are not individuals I know nor referenced by photographs of people. Just whatever emerged. They are spontaneous digital paintings of my state of mind expressed through the image of a human head painted with one finger on an iPad. They may be characters I am creating to fill my more solitary life. I may fall in love with some of them in the process of painting, Characteristics and stories attach to them. Sometimes I begin with one portrait and transform it into another version. I finish one every other day.
Newest portraits can be seen @judepittmanstudio on instagram. Prints available on paper or metal. contact: pittmanjude@gmail.com
I picked up my ipad. On the ipad I had previously limned about 50 drawings from live models before sheltering at home from the pandemic. So I aimlessless swiped through them, stopping at one or another. Mindlessly my finger began to engage with the mechanics of the art app, Procreate. Drawing, painting, cropping, distorting, evolving images became primarily portraits, or “heads” more specifically. From that night, the activity became a daily obsession. Fifty-five portraits later, I’m now painting from a live model on Zoom twice a week. The recent memory of painting from the zoom model emerges when I make portraits now.
These portraits are not individuals I know nor referenced by photographs of people. Just whatever emerged. They are spontaneous digital paintings of my state of mind expressed through the image of a human head painted with one finger on an iPad. They may be characters I am creating to fill my more solitary life. I may fall in love with some of them in the process of painting, Characteristics and stories attach to them. Sometimes I begin with one portrait and transform it into another version. I finish one every other day.
Newest portraits can be seen @judepittmanstudio on instagram. Prints available on paper or metal. contact: pittmanjude@gmail.com
