Friday, March 13, 2015

#digitalart #abstract

I'm actually not into "digital art" or "computer art" at all; I've long lamented the sociological state of things where people twiddle around with gizmos for a few minutes, slap out something that the computer mostly was responsible for, not the person, then hangs it in a gallery and calls it "art".

Having said that - ah, the inevitable "having said that"! - I've found myself playing around with making crappy little migraine-inducing swirly things on MSPaint, and dumping them to Twitter in much the same way a guy who lives in an old house drops his used razor blades down the mystery slot to nowhere, then walks away without giving it another thought.

For me, the key is that I'm making these on MSPaint, the world's worst, stupidest, most primitive graphics program, one which is usually not associated with the creation of works like these. It has no effects, no settings, no nothing; basically it's a slate with a pencil tool and a few brush tools, and about the most one can usually hope to achieve on it is something like this.

But I've managed to perform a hack of sorts, one that enables me to get abstract textures and intricacies one can't often coax out of the dumb program. Despite my use of the #digitalart hashtag, I don't take these seriously as "art" at all - I'm just fucking around with it. Having said that (oops, I did it again!), I may use one of these trivial contrivances as book cover art eventually.

Some people are actually enjoying them, which I honestly hadn't expected. But don't think you'll see me hang up my paintbrushes in favor of slaving over a hot laptop anytime soon. I'm still a Stuckist at heart, and you know what the Stuckists say about such things.

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