Ballentine in the physical world

Ballentine printed and mounted at my parent's house. Amateur gluing job I know... I need to fix it somehow. View Ballentine in her natural habitat here

Sketches

Here are two sketches I've recently done. Using only lines to make my drawings is my current answer to two important questions associated with computer-aided drawing:

1.)How can an artist get past the stigma that using the computer to draw is merely a shortcut?

2.) How can an artist have the most possible control over their drawing on the computer when computer programmers (artists?) have already decided most of a computer's functionality for you? ie: those who make the drawing software basically already decided what the circle tool does, and the parameters of the paint bucket tool.

My solution is drawing with one pixel-wide lines. I do this because then "physically" I touch every pixel that is modified in the drawing, undermining the idea that computer drawing is a shortcut. And the line is a very basic function... it's about as close to full control as an artist can get while still maintaining a free-hand drawing experience on a computer. Also, computers do lines very well. I feel like lines are an innate action for computers.

Art 2.0

Art 2.0 is a reference to the term Web 2.0.

According to Wikipedia "Web 2.0 is commonly associated with web applications that facilitate interactive information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design, and collaborations on the World Wide Web. Examples of Web 2.0 include web-based communities, hosted services, web applications, social-networking sites, video-sharing sites, wikis, blogs, mashups, and folksonomies. A Web 2.0 site allows its users to interact with other users or to change website content, in contrast to non-interactive websites where users are limited to the passive viewing of information that is provided to them."

Since Pepperdine, I've been interested in Internet art. A painter or draftsman by trade, I wondered specifically what an "Internet drawing" should look like. I'm not talking about uploading photographs of static drawings made in the physical world. Rather I'm interested in drawings that use the Internet itself as a medium... like charcoal or graphite. Think of the possibilities: interactivity, infinite duplication and sharing, and unlimited size to name a few. The definition of drawing that I prefer to work with is "A mark that transforms a ground." By this definition, a website could most certainly be considered a drawing.

I'm not the first artist to contemplate the potential of the Internet as a medium, in addition to a space, to make art. In fact, I'm probably part of the third or fourth generation of Net Artists. I do, however, have a certain loyalty to traditional drawing techniques that might lend me my own niche.

www.BradleyCarter.com is my showroom of sorts, but it is my hope that this blog will help in the process of creating my artwork. In art, digital art especially, it's so easy to overlook the process of an artwork. But the process of creating an art piece is important to an artist. It might even be the most important part... even more important than the finished piece. Something like the saying "it's the journey that matters, not the destination" I guess. Well, this blog should document some of that journey, and it is my hope that it will increase the significance and power of the art it documents.