EXPERIENCE WITH DIGITAL PAINTING

Experience can be understood as a process during which a vast number of media are assembled into a combination of forms.

The question arises as to what the basic components (media) of painting might be, if you look at a painting as a composition of mixed substances and their reactions to each other. I distinguish eight elements of painting: color, surface, movement, time, space, light, substance (various materials) and finally the painter.

Here, space and light are elements of the environment in which a painting (form) is created;

color, surface, motion, time, matter and the painter are both elements of an environment, as well as a painting.

The experience I have had when experimenting with painting by digital means, is that the ratio (relationship) between several of these 8 elements is changed.

Even while painting with computer processors, the space remains an element of an environment.

In contrast to analog painting, the light in digital painting is an element of an environment, as well as the painting itself. A surface made of paper, fabric, stone or wood absorbs the color of the light in an environment. The surface of a screen has its own internal electromagnetic radiation in addition to reflecting light from the environment.

As is the case in analog painting, the use of color has two origins: color space and colorant. The colorant, or dye, of the screen, and the color space which is stored in the computer memory, both determine the color tone.

The surface in painting is defined as a base. Two main properties of the surface are significant for the attachment of colors: the size and shape of the surface, and the quality of the surface. There is only one difference between analog and digital painting: there is no way to change the original quality of the surface of a screen by the use of digital tools.

Also while digital painting, two different movements can be distinguished: the movement of the painter in space and the movement on the surface.

The relationship between time and the time zones on the surface also remains the same, although the color and original quality of the surface of a screen is made of the same material.

In analog painting I have a way to apply several substances on the surface of a painting base. In contrast, only the materiality of the screen is retained in the digital painting.

Likewise, a painting developed by digital tools always refers to the painter and the communicated meaning.

Oleksiy Koval
Munich, October 2018

I thank to Simon Eastwood, Prof. Bernhard Lypp, Volker Möllenhoff and Veronika Wenger for their support.