Digital montage .. nude

[Jim Read]

Hello all,

I've been having a bash at the digital montage caper over the past year or so, I'm an autodidact so it sort of comes and goes, I do a pic get so far think about it and then do another one using what I have found out making the previous one.

Cheers - Jim

[edit] deleted original pic at 800, it was too high to see all at once on me browser and loaded this one at 600 high

 

[George Holroyd]

I like it, would be nice to see more as well, maybe side by side. Is there a story here or some thing that is pushing you to create these?

 

[Asher Kelman]

Hello all,

I've been having a bash at the digital montage caper over the past year or so, I'm an autodidact so it sort of comes and goes, I do a pic get so far think about it and then do another one using what I have found out making the previous one.

Cheers - Jim

[edit] deleted original pic at 800, it was too high to see all at once on me browser and loaded this one at 600 high

Welcome to OPF Jim! Appreciate seeing new work with a personal view of things.

This picture resonates with me as I too decided to use such figure studies as a montage. My reason was to get away from that actual person and become more abstract. I'll have to find the link!

Others have used surfaces of text rocks and so forth to give the body a patina. For a start, I like the model's pose and the world you have placed her. I do have a technical question about edges, though not a criticism by any means. At the right, especially, her outline is very obvious and sharp. Was this an artistic decision? I'd select the edge with a tad on both sides and do a gaussian blur to allow the two elements meeting there to blend imperceptibly as if they had been captured in the same shot.

Thanks for sharing,

Asher

 

[Jim Read]

Hello George,

I thank you for your interest and your nice comment. I will show more as I make them. I am pushed by two things into creating them, the first is a simple love of bodies and their shapes.

The second is my inability as an artist and having tried and failed with all the usual arty thingies, pencils, paint, etching etc etc. I first came across digital montage in 1998 and was amazed at what could be done and thought I'll never be able to do that. About a year or so ago it really got the better of me and I made a start and made some awful stuff.

Now I am beginning to have ideas that I can see in my mind and can work out how to do them.

Cheers - Jim

 

[Jim Read]

Hello Asher,

Nice of you Thanks for the welcome and for liking my pic. The sharp edge on the right (there's a white line as well) happened when I reduced the image from its original size and then reduced it again to fit in the browser. The figure is made up of six layers which are not all quite in register having been taken off image to work on and then put back into the final image. I usually contract the lower images by a pixel or two to hide them and when I select one I contract and then feather it by 0.5 pixels.

That usually works but I will have a go at a contract and blur. I'm not sure about wanting the image to look part of another one as though it's a single image. The single image being what I'm trying to get away from

Cheers - Jim

 

[Asher Kelman]

Well Jim,

I am enjoying your work and looking forward to more. Hope you have some in the works!

Asher

 

[Maggie Terlecki]

Interesting work, Jim. The subtle color changes in the skin remind me of the paintings of Andrew Wyeth. Very nice and definitely different.
Maggie

 

[Jim Read]

Hello Maggie,

Thanks for that nice of you to point me to Andrew Wyeth's work, the name meant nothing until I saw that book cover pic, you're right there are similarities. What I tried to do was vary the skin tone using the layers underneath in various states of transparency, my idea was that the flowers would show through without overwhelming the figure.

Cheers - Jim