On Photographic Illustrations

The following are Jade's thoughts on her artwork (photo illustration)....

Photography is my medium. And Photoshop, Expressions, and other illustration software have really opened up the artistic side and allowed me to explore other possibilities. Whereas many artists see in terms of color and shape, I tend to see light, shadow, pattern, and how these things can interplay. Photography is one of the only art forms that teaches you to see differently, and without the camera.

And with the advent of many different types of graphic software, digital art is becoming popular and widely used. Artists now take up, not only the paint brush, but their Wacom Tablet Pens to create artwork, not on canvas, but on their screens. Paint is replaced by pixels. Different types of digital artwork have come into the scene. And I have used my photography skills and knowledge of different software applications to create photo illustrations or photographic montages (photomontages).

• Photo illustration combines two different mediums: Photography & Traditional Illustration (artwork created using traditional media, such as pencil, charcoal, paint, etc) in a digital forum (the computer).
  
  
• Photomontages are different image used to create one seamless image.
  (Montages or photomontages differ from collages in that collages are different pieces used to create a whole, yet each individual piece retains its identity. For instance, Pablo Picasso using newspapers & other real life material and pasted them onto his canvas in what is known, in the artistic definition, as a collage.)

For a good majority of the montages and photo illustration pieces I do, I take almost all the photographs. In some cases, I also use commercially available stock photography of various sources to supplement images. In the case of the artwork, each element is either created or, in the case of photographs, manipulated in various types of software, then arranged in Photoshop or PaintShopPro to create the finished piece. For more information about how I create these images, please read the FAQ.

In addition to photo illustration, I also do quite a bit of straight photography using digital equipment. I originally got my start in traditional film photography, but with the advent of the digital age, it has become substantially easier to do photography.

In December 2005, we were awarded with Brian's Froud's Artist of the Month Award.