Debi Friedlander
friedlander2.com
My recent art consists of two multi-media variations:
"Colored Pencil PhotoFusion" uses a multi-layered technique combining the best of digital photography with the classical rigor of traditional colored pencil painting. The technique maintains a photographic realism while allowing the "hand of the artist" to shine. My photographs are a jumping off point for a continuing artistic journey. I adjust and manipulates the digital originals to achieve promising base images, which are then printed on archival artists’ papers. The translucent colored pencil layers create an evolution in color harmonies, pushing the images in ways that often create dreamlike or romanticized realities, both painterly and photographic, and recapture the feelings of a scene usually lost to the camera "eye".
"Capella" art features small pieces painted with musical accompaniment, often in coffee shops, bars, and other live music venues. Also a layered technique, they begin as ink drawings with watercolor washes. Textural elements and colored pencil are the top layers. They tend to be more spontaneous than the Colored Pencil PhotoFusion technique allows, but use similar layered techniques.
Both styles emphasize individuality, visual and emotional depth, and complexity. The light-fast colored pencils are used to amplify colors - warming, cooling, sharpening, or softening. Elements are emphasized, hidden, or reworked to create entirely new compositions - paintings that are subtle or flamboyant, impressionistic or realistic, intimate, metaphoric, or combinations of these.
Everything I paint is a portrait. My favorite subjects are people, flowers, animals and water. My art is an attempt to communicate the beauty of their spirit and individuality.
"Colored Pencil PhotoFusion" uses a multi-layered technique combining the best of digital photography with the classical rigor of traditional colored pencil painting. The technique maintains a photographic realism while allowing the "hand of the artist" to shine. My photographs are a jumping off point for a continuing artistic journey. I adjust and manipulates the digital originals to achieve promising base images, which are then printed on archival artists’ papers. The translucent colored pencil layers create an evolution in color harmonies, pushing the images in ways that often create dreamlike or romanticized realities, both painterly and photographic, and recapture the feelings of a scene usually lost to the camera "eye".
"Capella" art features small pieces painted with musical accompaniment, often in coffee shops, bars, and other live music venues. Also a layered technique, they begin as ink drawings with watercolor washes. Textural elements and colored pencil are the top layers. They tend to be more spontaneous than the Colored Pencil PhotoFusion technique allows, but use similar layered techniques.
Both styles emphasize individuality, visual and emotional depth, and complexity. The light-fast colored pencils are used to amplify colors - warming, cooling, sharpening, or softening. Elements are emphasized, hidden, or reworked to create entirely new compositions - paintings that are subtle or flamboyant, impressionistic or realistic, intimate, metaphoric, or combinations of these.
Everything I paint is a portrait. My favorite subjects are people, flowers, animals and water. My art is an attempt to communicate the beauty of their spirit and individuality.
Photo by John Friedlander
