My images of aerial views are totally fictional, although in the beginning I used aerial photographs as references for the overall appearance of the landscape. My process involves creating the artwork in two steps: first, drawing freehand directly with the computer, and second, printing the image on paper with an inkjet printer. These drawings do not contain photographs or scanned material.
The works are completely drawn in Adobe Photoshop, with pen and tablet, aside from some preparatory work in Adobe Illustrator. In Photoshop, I start from a blank ground and build up the work with a small set of basic tools and commands, such as selection, painting and cloning tools, copying and pasting, layers, luminosity and contrast controls, grain and smoothness modifications, and automation. In short, the process is a combination of drawn material and various transformations done to this material with the help of the software.
One
of the main properties of digital drawing is a virtual, non-material working
environment. The fact that the image is not bound to a physical base has
several advantages. It allows various combinations of techniques and
treatments, an ease in modifying the whole image at once, an ease in
copying/cutting, moving and pasting parts of the image (within an image as well
as between images), the blending of layers of variable translucency, and the
creation of copies of the image in progress (to save steps in the generation of
the work and to create different versions of a work). Working in the virtual
world also means the image can be altered at any time, even after a final
version is established, thus creating a new, different image from a
"final" one. Another property of the medium is its very fast speed
compared to most physical media. This allows a very short delay between
intention and result, as little time is needed to try out various solutions.
To summarize, the process involves combining key elements from the techniques of drawing, collage, and printmaking with the assets of the virtual working environment.