Matt; Thank you for your reasoned reply. I understand.
The biggest decision that looms before you is how, or whether to, focus your digital art interests and skills towards creating a meaningful body of work with some longevity. Creating startling horrific images is a very well-worn path that's been well trod long before you (or even I) walked the planet.
Painter Ivan Albright (of "Picture of Dorian Gray" film fame) is perhaps my favorite, probably because he was originally a Chicagoan (as am I) and the collection here at the Art Institute of Chicago features quite a number of his best works which I see frequently.
Ivan Albright,
Self Portrait, 1977 (?)
Creating 1-off images with a digital camera and Photoshop might be a nice pastime to entertain yourself and your friends. And that's fine. But it's a dead-end. I think you have an opportunity to use your skills to create a significant contiguous body of work if you set your mind to doing so. There are many very current examples of artists who use photography and digital manipulation to create arresting scenes and portraits that do very well in the art marketplace.
The young German Beate Gütschow recently had a showing at the
Museum of Contemporary Photography here in Chicago in which she exhibited some truly fascinating pieces created much as you create yours.
For portraiture two current artists come to my mind for you to consider studying.
Dutch photo-artist
Loretta Lux has been hot for the past few years. (She's approximately the same age as Beate, and that's not her real name.) Her signature larger-than-life portraits of children are truly startling to see in-person, initially because they are lit so oddly and offer viewers the (now almost cliché) "Dutch death stare". But then you realize that there's something
not quite right about these subjects. Yes, Photoshop is involved, but in extremely effective subtle ways that I'll leave you to detect.
The other artist that comes to mind is local boy
Ben Gest. (Also a 30-something.) His portraits and scenes look perfectly normal --even a bit banal-- until you look at them very closely. Like those of Loretta Lux, there's something not quite right about Ben's images. In fact, close inspection reveals that many would probably be physically impossible. Like Dr. Frankenstein, Ben builds his images often from hundreds of individual images to create gestures that have one toe outside the reality box. Once again, subtlety is most powerfully effective when it comes to his digital tinkering.
I hope this helps to inspire you, and perhaps onlookers.
