This design exercise will introduce you to the concepts of repurposing cultural imagery and of basic photomontage.
I create a variety of textures by painting unusual surfaces, distressing other surfaces, and combining found texture with manufactured. These are digitally scanned and saved into a library I’ve been gathering for the past couple of years. When an idea for an image presents itself, I develop a drawing, which is also scanned and saved. I’ll then begin to digitally combine selections from my library of textures into my drawing to create a sort of “tactile” pastiche. The results are vividly colorful images which have – I think – a kind of magical, children’s book illustration quality to them.
It’s rather interesting to me how this same visual language takes on a different note as the subject matter evolves into the more “traditional” portrait or other artistic composition.
Present Tense Future 