The Boy Who
Couldn't Draw

Can he still be an artist?

Many skilled artists are being 'shunned' in a way, for not using a pencil, pen, or tablet.. For not drawing or painting or creating 'from scratch' I can understand where you're coming from if you feel this way, but I'm here today to talk about my art methods..

Photo-manipulation-beyond-recognition using multiple sources… I guess that's what you'd call it. If you take a close look through my gallery you might be able to 'reverse-engineer' my work, see how I put it together, perhaps even recognize the materials I used. It's often obvious that it wasn't 'drawn.'
But some of my work has actually been mistaken for being drawn from scratch, and I guess that's where the 'beyond-recognition' part of the method comes into play..

Photoshop, afterall, came before the tablet.

To further explain my method, and to make it obvious and easily detected, I created this piece of Zelda fan-art [link]
Zelda fans have the advantage of recognizing the sources I used. They'll tell you I have combined elements from four separate games in the franchise. The finished product does not look drawn, doesn't look at all like it was 'from scratch' ..But I was hoping to blend things in a way that would truly make them One. So now they can zoom in and creep around and examine where 'Twilight Princess' ends and "skyward Sword" begins… see where and how it blends…
They all seemed to enjoy this other example [link] which was a blend of  over 30 different sources. It took days. I almost think drawing it would have been easier.. Almost.

Finding the right source material for this method is key, it's as important as choosing the right color paint or the right brush. I've spent countless hours on search engines, looking for something I could fit into my art a particular way. ..I may need a shirt sleeve or wine glass or bolt of lightning. Or something even tinier like an eye-lid or an ear ring. And I intentionally challenge myself; for example, I once needed a red boat. Rather than choosing the largest, ready-to-use, easily-trimmed stock photo of a red boat, I chose a small picture with a more unique angle, where half the boat was obstructed by water, waves, and other things in the way. I had to stretch, pull, twist, blur, smudge, lighten, darken, flip, and drag and distort… I had to use the clone stamp to paint in the missing parts of the boat, and to paint out things that I didn't need or want. I had to make sure that boat  sat in my water like it had always been there. The color has to work, the saturation… It goes on and on… and in the end, I can sit back and say that every pixel is mine.
Had I chosen the easiest source, I would have spent FAR less time zoomed in, holding my breath, creating… all that time I spent blending in the red boat, I was coming up with even better ideas, eventually I had an entirely new direction to take the painting in, just from having the time to brainstorm.

This is photoshop 101 we're talking. Only rather than just airbrushing a celebrity, you can actually create elaborate one-of-a-kind originals by collecting and manipulating and blending material from all over the world.  I learned it in high school, again in college, and countless times on my own at my PC. And as far as I can tell, It is just as popular a method as any other here on Deviant Art.

So how did I make THIS piece? It's all real crayon on white paper, taken from my nephews scribble pad, scanned into photoshop, and manipulated to death. I didn't draw it, but neither did my nephew.  

Let me know how you feel, this is not a negative subject, I'm trying to discuss art that's all. Do you use this method? Do you like it? Do you combine this method with traditional, drawing original creations then finishing off the job in photoshop? Do you consider it stealing? Where do you draw the line in terms of 'fair use' ? Have you been shunned?

Thanx for your time, attention, and interest. I really enjoy it here on DeviantArt
Leo Diamond