My business card identifies me as a Barefoot Writer, Photographer, and Engineer.
I took a series of photos looking across Burlington (VT) harbor and Lake Champlain toward the Adirondacks on a gray and dismal summer day. The weather didn’t keep the sailors away, just the sun. Rather than losing what was a nice scene with good composition, I decided to use it as the underpinning for this digital painting.
The idea for creating a photorealistic — and artistic — image from a bland photograph isn’t new to me. American artist and illustrator Bert Monroy is one of the pioneers of digital art. In an interview I heard he talked about his (phenomenal) Times Square panorama but even more than that, he reinforced this notion I have of making lemonade out of the spilled lemons.
I go for a realistic representation in my own work, even if the individual objects are more drawn than pixelated.
My own Burlington lighthouse is pretty accurate. The sailboats, at greater distance, less so but they stand up to poster sized enlargement. And I deliberately flattened what Liz Arden called “the cartoon mountains.”
I take a lot of images at my own beach on the Atlantic in the Keys. It’s a place I like to go back to again and again and I like taking you all along. Every day is not perfect there but every day is perfect in my photographs.
Of course, the painted nude is perhaps a bit more fanciful. That palm doesn’t exist in nature. I don’t think my inch of beach has ever seen that much surf although I did use it and its sky as my model. And I’m pretty sure no ladies have taken the sun quite that way on that beach. I do like the artistic use of body paint.
Enjoy.