Postcard from the Desert

I had a hankering to do some painting recently and got out the old digital paintbrushes and came up with this little gem. Those of you who know my work in this area know that I use my own photographs, then use specialized computer software to create a painting. I use many different brushes and digital mediums to come up with a final painting.

I took the original photo out in the desert in 2010, a year when we had a wildflower extravaganza. It doesn’t happen every year, but when the rains and temps are just right, the flowers bust out all over. It’s quite a site to behold. We had some flowers last spring, but not as spectacular as 2010. In 2011, if memory serves, we had no spring wildflowers at all.

Not long after I took the original photo for this painting, I had occasion to drive from Tucson to Yuma and back…about a 4 hour drive each way. It was non-stop flowers the entire way. It really made for a spectacular drive, which is amazing as that trip is desert the entire way and can be quite boring (the key to surviving this drive normally is audio books).

I often look at original paintings of the impressionists and wonder if the painting would have made a good photograph. Mostly, the answer is no. But when they applied brush to canvas, a normally mundane scene came alive with their interpretations of light and color.

It was this idea that originally got me started creating digital paintings from my original photos. Over the years, photography has developed its own aesthetic criteria…in other words, what makes for a good photograph. And those same criteria may or may not work for paintings. Try it sometime at an art museum. Try to imagine a landscape painting as a photo. You just may discover what I mean.

Then try looking at a great artistic photo and imagine it as a painting. You may find that the scene is much better captured by the photograph. Ah, creativity! It can be quite a mental challenge.

(To see a larger version of this photo, just click on the image)

To see more of my work, both in photography and digital painting, please visit my website, www.corkrum.com