What is your definition of Mixed Media Paintings?

For me, a mixed media painting is still fine art. A traditional artist uses tools such as brushes, paint & canvas to turn their inspirations into a tangible piece of fine art. Mixed Media/Digital Art paintings are only different in that I am using different tools to turn my inspirations into fine art. With the advent of new technology, the tools may have changed but the artist’s knowledge of perspective, colors, blending, lighting and creative composition and much more are still required. If you have never painted before, giving you a computer & painting software will not make you an accomplished artist.

I use Corel Painter as my digital art software. I start with a blank digital canvas and use the software tools(brushes) to create my images. Everything on the digital canvas is hand painted (every leaf, petal, hair, fur, etc). Each color is meticulously selected, blended and painted on the digital canvas. There are no shortcuts or no single button pushes that make a painting appear from nothing. Even for paintings created from photos, I paint every pixel using the software brushes. This is not a phone app that just renders a photo to look like a painted image. This is a true painted image just using digital brushes as my tools.

The amount of time I take to produce a digital image is similar to that of traditional painting. I still need to spend hours studying my subject, selecting my color palette and determining which brushes to use. There are many hours spent placing color over color, blending to just the right hue, using different brushes to achieve a life like result and insuring my unique style is achieved.

The final digital art can then be reproduced from a variety of fine art printers using archival inks on high quality canvas. While the original remains in the digital realm, the resulting giclee is a piece of fine art.

When I have the painting reproduced to deliver to a client, I will have the digital image reproduced on canvas and then essentially touch-up or repaint the entire canvas to insure that the art is true to my original colors as well as having an artist’s brush strokes embedded in the work.