Digital Media in Art and Design

Digital Media in Art and Design

Bijou Karman

Bijou Karman is an artist and illustrator from Los Angeles. She graduated from Art Centre College of Design, CA with a Distinction and has now worked with clients including, Harper's Bazaar, Penguin Books, The New Yorker, Nike, Glamour, Rihanna and Starbucks. Her artwork is a burst of colour with very little tone, detail and depth. Her work is almost cartoon like and is about expressing colour, pattern and fashion through one design, without it becoming too overpowering. I think that in her work, the garments and accessories are highlighted and stand out the most as the people are very subtle and appear to be engulfed by all the colour and pattern. Although little detail is used, there is incredible attention to detail with each painting or design conveying personality.

Karman’s work has included pastel colours, bold colours, various jewellery, fur coats, zebra print, tile, floral and polka dot patterned outfits for example. The colours, patterns and objects within the work all tell a storey about the models within. She uses both paint and digital techniques to create her portraiture. Karman will work with clients then decide whether to use acrylic gouache on paper or Procreate on the iPad Pro. To begin her designs, she will gather reference imagery for the assignment or painting, which she uses to create digital sketches of. She will then begin her final image either digitally, by hand or a mix of both using Photoshop.

I find Karman’s work really interesting as I enjoy using both digital techniques and painting, so being able to see an artist who combines the two in such an artistic and sophisticated way is very inspiring. Similar to Karman, I have scanned in my own drawings and put them into Photoshop, from which I have doodled over using the pen tool, however I have never thought about doing sections next to each other that combine the two techniques. To do this, I could use a clipping mask or use the magic wand in Photoshop, which I have already practised using. 

Orla Kiely

Orla Kiely is an Irish Fashion Designer who graduated from Dublin’s National College of Art and Design in Print and Fashion, afterwhich, she worked with a wallpaper and fabric designer in New York. She believes that the 1990’s was the end of colour and pattern with neutral palettes becoming the centre of our homes. During this decade, Kiely became a well known designer due to her continuous use of colour and pattern despite the decreasing interest in it. She has a trademark print, the retro ‘stem’ graphic which is now printed on any item, from mugs to cars. She likes to keep her designs “clean and simple” so that her designs stay minimal. Kiely began by designing hats and had a stool at London Fashion Week, however after she noticed people weren’t wearing hats, she decided to move into bags. HE printed fabric bags and been rather successful in the late 90’s and these were made from laminated cloth. This was a unique technique as people would think of this as tablecloths.

Before digital design was available, Kiely would create wallpaper and patterns using the old technique of gouache painted by hand onto paper. After this tile had dried, it could be presented and if approved, the design would have to be hand painted using tiny brushes until a larger, more detailed pattern emerged. When this happened, the designer could finally see if the pattern was successful or not. She explains how this technique gave her the “best colour training anyone could have had”. Today, with her designs being reproduced on everything, her designs are often edited digitally. She will edit the colours and shapes within her designs. This not only reduces time and allows for more experiments, but it is also a necessity as companies and clients will now only use CAD or CAM, especially when her designs are incorporated with car designs, therefore Kiely must make her patterns easily accessible for her clients.

I think because Kiely’s designs are so simple and lack detail, tone, pattern within, clipping masks and the magic wand and other similar techniques are necessary. I feel that her designs could be created using the shapes in a word document, however using Photoshop or Adobe Illustrator would allow more manipulation of the shapes, so that their not just one set, standard design. I would think that her designs are made purely from shapes and not the pen tool or other free drawing methods as each line in her work is clean and precise.

Rosanna Webster

Rosanna Webster graduated from Brighton University in Illustration. In her work, Webster uses a range of mediums including, film, photography and collage in a purely digital way. She uses her work to explore diverse themes, from modes of ‘play’ to shamanism. Webster originally began her creative journey drawing and sketching, however later tried experimenting with collage and photography that in turn led to her working in film and production.

 Webster often describes photography, collage and film as intertwined and not separate techniques, however she thinks of film as her preferred discipline to work in, partly because of how new it is to her and also because of how instant and emotive it is. Webster explains how “In a 30 second film you can really affect and move people, I think in a way that images maybe cannot.” Additionally, Webster talks about how people can become precious and protective of their work and so she tries to encourage other artists to constantly push themselves and their work and not have a fixed outcome in mind. She also believes that people should find inspiration in unexpected places. 

To create her designs, Webster begins by taking photographs, usually portraits or landscapes, which she then adds layers of texture, tone and moving image to. This enables her to bring a dynamic composition and makes the original photograph more intriguing and invigorating. Her clients often ask her to bring movement into stills and bring them to life, so she will use her own processes to create the required atmosphere for her catwalk stills or gifs. Webster will begin by collecting together all her images, from columns to skies, to flowers and placing them in Adobe Stock. She then uses Photoshop to experiment and explains how “once you decide something works and license the image, this automatically linked and swapped in to the Photoshop composition- it’s a really streamline way of working”.

I think that when I created clipping masks in Adobe Illustrator, I used a similar technique to Rosanna Webster. Although I have not yet experimented with moving image, I have been able to crop and edit photographs and collage them with others. I also think the technique I used in Photoshop to place my own design and pattern within a T-Shirt links to this artists work too as she too places images within other images.