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I approached digital painting when I was about 13. It's a tool that makes me feel totally
unrestricted. It's my easy-way out, I need it. When a project get into my mind and kinda
hunts me, I need to let it out from my mind in order to free myself from it. I know for
sure it is the future of painting. It's been a real revelation to me.
Digital painting is a new way of dealing with painting. It no longer relies on traditional
tools, such as brushes or canvas, but instead on a graphic stylus and a tablet.
When I was a child, I was always drawing and I remember that the first sketches I made
were comic strips. At the very beginning, at the age of 6 or 7, I used a binder to collect
my drawings and each one of them was a cartoon. Since then, I've never stopped. Then I received
a graphic tablet for a present and I immediately understood its high-potential and the technical
growth that I could eventually get at with it.
I first used the tablet to create comics and then, little by little, I moved on to illustrations,
then digital graphics and finally digital painting.
Everything around me is a source of inspiration. Mostly, I paint portaits: they make me feel
satisfied like nothing else, because the facial expressions of human beings are countless
and keep on telling new stories, over and over again.
Experimenting with digital painting is just like experimenting with traditional painting:
be it digital or traditional, with the use oil or a tablet, does make no difference whatsoever
because it's all about the artist, not the computer. It's just a tool: you can do whatever
you want with it, whatever experimentation, whatever contrast.. You can do anything.
The achievements I get at please me only temporarily. When a work is done, indeed I feel fulfilled:
for a couple of days I can't take my eyes off it and I like it. But after this short
period of time, I need to move on and whenI look back at it, I know I can do better
and I need to go ahead, reach new goals and new boundaries I still haven't reached. So,
actually, I'm never really satisfied..!
My creative process consists of 4 or 5 stages. The first: when I have an idea that is hunting
me, I immediately put it down on paper. I draw a sketch and then put it away. When I
realize that, day after day, I keep on thinking about the same project, then I know I need
to develop it. So I move to the second stage: I basically go looking for the model I have
in my mind. If it's about a portrait, I call a friend or anybody who resembles the subject-idea
and make a shooting of it in many different positions, trying to get the exact depiction
of what first came up to my mind. Third stage: I choose the picture that pleases me most
and then computerize it. As soon as the pic is on PC, I draw the subject's postures and
lines with the tablet, like a sketch, that's now on the computer. Then I move into the
forth stage, which is the actual digital painting. Now it's the time for me to go wild! It's
a very spontaneous process: the colors emerge right here and now and, depending on the subject's
facial expression, on what I want to communicate and on what sort of reaction I want to get
from the audience, I use either warm or cold colors, now a bit more yellows and then a
bit more blues, a bit more blacks than whites, more contrasts instead of more lights.. Really:
I just go wild and everything is quite spontaneous and on the spot.
As soon as I'm happy with it, it's time for the framework printing.
Since when I'm in France, I've realized that gallerists look for works produced as unique
exemplars. This is a plus-value for purchasers, who can then say: "I'm the only one who owns
it!". Digital paintings, instead, can be printed over and over again, on all sorts of frameworks,
whereas a canvas is the one and only. Therefore, if you want to persuade a gallerist, you must
make sure to produce something unique, like a framework or an installation or whatsoever
support that will define your digital work as irreplaceable.
Anyway, I think digital painting is now just at its dawn, it's a brand new art, so very
innovative, and I'm sure it is the future of painting, the real contemporary painting.
The most important advice that's ever been given to me is definitely to always be curious:
to be curious like a child. To never overrate the level of competence we're at nor what
we've done in the past. To be like a sponge. To look everywhere for sparks and ideas: from
your colleagues, from your rivals, from ordinary and extraordinary people, from anyone. To
welcome all advices and to learn as many techniques as possible. And to be able to give back.
To not be jealous of your own craft and to offer your advice and your technique in order
to receive the ones of others.