Photoshop as Art

I've been creating a slew of new artworks lately, primarily digital. Which is interesting and new for me because, while I work in digital design a lot for work-related purpose, I would rarely define most of my digital work "art". I usually reserve that term for painting or writing. But lately I've gained an interest in delving into photoshop as an art-tool as much as a work-tool, which has led to a bunch of new works.



Those are links to a few of the recent works, which I've uploaded to my DeviantArt page. I've decided to become active on DA again and share these works online because I've gained interest in using the stock photography on that site (not for paid works of course, and these works in particular use my original photography).

If you have not taken a look at DeviantArt, but love fresh and original artwork, I highly recommend it. It was probably the original art community site, and has since become the one to rule them all (others, like Depthcore and Rasterized are much more exclusive and don't let just anyone join their ranks). If you browse the favorites section on my page you'll see what I mean. Or, follow this link to browse the all-time most popular works in the 3D abstract category, which is one of my favorite categories. I've always loved looking at images like I See No End:



These sort of images actually fall into a sort of cultural style of 3D Abstraction that is pretty rampant in popular digital art. They usually have a high amount of technical detail, have extremely warped perspective, and oftentimes look as organic as they do mechanical. In some cases the genre has become quite tired, as I've seen images like this (and sometimes poorly executed ones) as far back as five years ago. Jens Magnus Karlsson was one of the original artists, at least as far as I can remember, that pioneered this "style" of digital work. Like many things, it became formulated and imitations appeared, but it is hard not to be inspired by it nonetheless. His infamously good website, Chapter3.net, is little more than a resume page now, and he now apparently runs a high-scale design firm in NYC. Most of that original artwork is quite hard to find. His DeviantART page is gutted, and even Google Images can't find any of the "Chapter3" work in question. One of the few examples you can find of his work is in the spectacular book New Masters of Photoshop, which of course is right next to my elbow as I write this. I highly recommend for those who ask the "how did they do they do that??" when it comes to this extreme imagery.

Thankfully though, the digital art scene, 3D Abstract or not, has much material to satiate your appetite when looking for crazy, amazing, inspirational imagery. One of my favorite active artists of this overall genre is ekud. I highly recommend you check out some of the stuff he is doing (he is also featured regularly on DepthCore).

I hope you enjoy my work. I will be making more, hopefully defining my own "voice" in what is essentially a medium all to itself.

Cheers.