I finally managed to get some things working in studio after the old XP laptop that I had managed to set up the larger tablet on failed. I have upgraded slightly an old toshiba laptop thrown out by work and after ripping the now dead screen off it have a serviceable digital drawing workstation at last. the new cheap Medion tablet (£3.99 from Oxfam!) actually works ok with Windows 7. I then drew a couple of digital versions of the daily ‘doodle’ that I have been doing in studio when there. Not with any great research output in mind but just to keep hand in and to start thinking about the glorious ‘art object’.

Below are these digital drawings and the comparable ‘real’ works. Interesting to work with similar materials in digital and physical space. Two are digital rest are drawn and scanned.

The strange thing is that the two ‘digital’ drawings are much free-er and less ‘digital’ than the hand drawn ones. I felt less prescribed as was trying out tablet and also trying out various brush sizes and effects whereas with pens I had a narrower range of mark-making available ironically ( a large, medium and small sharpie for those interested in such things and a biro). When using biro as thinner, scratchier implement I tried to match that in digital arena with photoshop brushes.

The other interesting thing is the process of trying out some new ‘textures’ was same in both processes. Maybe I have used digital pad enough now to feel more comfortable with it whereas before I always felt inhibited by the technology . But does any of this constitute ‘new knowledge’? I started reading Scrivener’s Hertfordshire essay on knowledge and the art object as preparation for the ‘art object’ as cartoon character series.

http://sitem.herts.ac.uk/artdes_research/papers/wpades/vol2/scrivener.html