Original To Displate : The Original One.

Today, I'd want to present (again) this piece, which is at the same time a new digitally reworked one and an "old" original one (2017)

It's only a small drawing, less than 18cm on its largest side, but it has a really great symbolic importance for myself, as it has initiated my will to explore these weird graphite drawn structures that I'm now used to work on.

The One that made me discover the range of possibilities offered by graphite drawing, wood, and gesso combination. It made me discover the power of straight lines playing with spirals and circles' tangents.

It made thrill out when applying shades above these raw structures.

I wanted to make a Displate out of this one, but couldn't figure out how to do it, kind of afraid to make too much or not enough.

I finally opted for simplicity, and for this, used my favorite graphic software : Art Rage.

Aiming at simplicity in the final result didn't mean that I wouldn't search for new little things to learn, and so I went into these menus I've never used yet.

For those who don't know about this software, Art Rage is a natural painting tool, with a minimalist interface where most of settings are quickly reachable with your graphic pen. Colors mixing and matter texture are rendered on the fly.

Menu navigation is limited at its bare minimum, although there are some very powerful tools in these menus, one of which I had completely ignored until then : the "layer effects"

I won't enter in specific details, so let's say that this function gives a standard layer some thickness that you can "engrave" and get some interesting texture effects.

That's the kind of tools I find useful when working on these conversion projects, as my main intend is to preserve an handmade aspect even if it's reworked digitally. I haven't tested fully the function and its possible applications, but it will be for sure one of my usual tools for this kind of work.

Everything that gives texture and grain is interesting in these cases. That's a domain in which I already did find Art Rage great, but with this specific Layer Effects function, it has reached a new level up.

For those who'd wondered, displates are printed posters on metal support.

I'm slowly building a collection there, on displate.com (affiliated link), but there are also plenty of great artists and creators doing so, from which you might want to discover the work.

I think I've covered most of what I wanted to talk about. Unfortunately, I didn't record the creation process this time, so that video about creation with ArtRage will be postponed for another time !