T3

I’m currently involved in a month-long online exercise with about a hundred other artists called Creative Act II. Basically, we spend 20 minutes to an hour every day working on a weekly theme and posting the results to a blog. This week, I’m reworking photographs using Photoshop.

I don’t know if any of you are like me, but anytime I see a composition or shot I remotely like, I take it. I’ve been doing this for years now and have a hard drive full of pictures that don’t really make my cut on their own. What I’ve liked about joining Creative Act II is that it’s inspired me to spend some time each day and revisit these photos. Furthermore, it limits my Photoshop work on them to about 20 minutes, so It rarely feels like I’m overworking them.

In some regards, it has that solemn quality of painting, where a final image evolves through the application of  layer upon layer (of course, my drawing tablet doesn’t hurt, either). On the other hand, there’s this tinge of malcontent—it’s cheating—I’m not painstakingly mixing paints on a palette to accomplish this, and ultimately, it’s just hiding an inferior photograph—isn’t it?