1976 Forest Painting Inspires 2011 Digital Decalcomania

Forest Painting, acrylic on canvas, 31" x 51", 1976

The header image for this blog is taken from a painting I did in 1976 of a section of forest immediately to the east of our cabin on Covelo Road in Mendocino County. It now hangs in the hall outside my studio (“The Putterworks”). In future posts, I may discuss this image and related works if I ever get around to writing about the drawing and painting method I dubbed “Realart” back in the early 1970s.

Thirty years later, I found that I still loved the density of shapes, the underlying composition, and the directional forces in this painting enough to want to use it as inspiration for a new digital drawing.

So I photographed it, converted that photo to black and white, then, using the Liquify filter, the Pixelate > Crystalize filter, and several other randomizing processes in Photoshop, created the following image for use as the decalcomania inspiration layer for a new drawing:

"Forest Painting" mangled for use as decalcomania inspiration

Here is the completed digital decalcomania drawing titled “Forest Mangle” completed in October, 2o11.

Inspired by a 31" x 51" acrylic painting on canvas, this digital drawing is titled "Forest Mangle"

Here is an enlargement of a small section of the finished drawing:

Detail: "Forest Mangle", digital drawing, 2011

There are a couple more digital decalcomania drawings in this series still to be presented. Those posts will be coming soon.