"In Possum's Cavern" a digital decalcomania drawing

I discovered in doing this drawing that the more time I spend in the preparation (or the better luck I have in selecting) the random textured resource image, the more fun and surprising the drawing will be.

The resource image for this drawing began as a photo of the back of a large aluminum road sign. It was stained and moldy after being stored on the ground for several years and was already beautifully and subtly stained. When I added some Photoshop filters to selected regions, it really came alive. I instantly knew I was going to have a great time “looking for faces” and other objects and environments as this drawing was completed.

This drawing marks the end of my first set of grayscale digital decalcomania drawings. I am now well into a project in which the random image is in color. This time I used Photoshop filters and layer blending modes to prepare it for the drawing process. I quickly learned that the main drawing method I use when doing digital decalcomania, essentially that of smearing adjacent pixels into each other to define shapes, is much more challenging and much less forgiving when those pixels are all different colors instead of just shades of gray.

I will post some enlarged details of the new color project from time to time, but I know it will be several weeks before it is completed. Because of that and to keep this blog alive, over the next few weeks I will be posting diverse archival images and information about past sound experiments, sculptures, and other media from as far back as 1968.

Thanks for dropping by.