View of Siena 1, digital painting

View of Siena 2, digital painting

View of Siena 3, digital painting

I’ve been culling through the umpteen-hundred photos I took on our Italy trip looking for shots that might make good digital paintings or inspiration for future paintings. I sometimes have to “live” with an image for months or even years till I figure out what do with it. Digital painting speeds up the process… somewhat. What’s a digital painting? First, I start with a photo I think has possibilities. For example, with the last image here, “View of Siena 3”, here’s the raw photo:

Photo for View of Siena 3, unretouched

I like the jumble of buildings but, I was shooting against the light and the colors are pretty blah. So, I go to work in Photoshop, retouching, color correcting and enhancing, applying filters and so on. Lastly, I begin to “paint” digitally—for me, a painter after all, the fun part. Using a Wacom tablet and pen, I go over every square pixel (are pixels square?) schmooshing the colors around in a way that’s a lot like real painting. Hard to see on the above images but here’s a detail:

Close up detail of View of Siena 3

The cool part is, when I’m done, I have a nice digital image that is reproducible and a preliminary sketch for a good old-fashioned paint and canvas painting.