Welcome to my website which will give you an introduction to my NFT art.
Current work brings together my experience as a classically trained fine art painter,
digital painter and sculptor into one place.
The freedom that exists with this workspace means that I can show my traditional techniques and my digital art
together in a single image, which you might understand is wonderfully inspiring and progressive for me.
My subject matter flits like a butterfly between seemingly flippant pop art imagery and imagery that tackles complex
universal concerns about the world we live in.
This juxtaposition between lightness and empathy is probably a fair reflection of my personality.
Apart from my more stablished traditional technical skills, I have been painting digitally for the last fourteen years,
mainly in photoshop.
My illustration work has been published in places such as Tatler and by companies such as Hallmark.
My output as an illustrator runs into thousands of published images, therefore it proves to be a fantastic, extensive resource
when creating new originals as NFT’S.
I create my digital work now in part to provoke the conventions surrounding what is considered acceptable as fine art.
This debate is particularly pertinent to NFT’s where arguments that it is not real art are voiced by concerned traditionalists.
I would argue, from labour intensive experience, that the precision effort and consideration, to form composition and technique,
is every bit a consideration of mine when working digitally as it is within my more traditional methods.
The majority of NFT art is created by AI word instruction, or alternatively by what is known as a rendering software, which has innate
three dimensional line drawn resources that can be placed together by the user on screen, the computer then ‘renders’ the images
together to complete a piece of art. The rendering software is a development from the online gaming sector, this is why there is so much fantasy art in the NFT space. The rendering computer can only work on preset drawings, those drawings are mainly fantasy based.
With this method, an eye for design might determine an individual computer operators art style from another,
but lacking in human intuition, this mechanisation of creativity within digital art is in part what contributes to it’s criticism.
To further explain my position as an artist, I have spent over a decade perfecting what I describe as a digital ‘painter’ technique.
In appearance this looks different to more commonplace rendering images, and in practice it is very different. As I quite literally
‘paint’ the images with the computer screen becoming my canvas, and my Wacom tablet and pen becoming my palette and brush.
I am not restricted to 'fantasy' art by computer software, I have the freedom to work on any subject matter, which allows me
to create art that people can relate to.
As opposed to a computer image of a dragon sitting on a rocket ship, as it's flying over New York, framed by a rainbow with flying pink unicorns & Donald Trump waving from the street below, you get my point, not a criticism, an observation, that separates my work from others.
Important in the context of debate, an oil painting or watercolour that I create involves the moving around of natural pigments
‘suspended’ or held together by water or a linseed oil base.
The Digital painter technique that I have refined has effectively replaced pigments with pixels. I move pixels around
on my screen, my canvas, by working around my desktop digital tablet, as I would when moving oils around on canvas.
The digital brushes I select, and hand movements and gestures I make in photoshop, are as particular to my hand,
as any brushstrokes are on a canvas.
When you consider the work of Georges Seurat, the French Impressionist, his fascination was with colour and
optical perception.
In using a technique that has been titled ‘Pointillism’ he would create his paintings with deliberate marks of different colours
placed next to one another, for example yellows strategically placed next to blues.
It is when standing back from a Seurat paining that the squares or blobs of paint, so strategically placed next to one another
combine in the eye to form the colour green.
Similarly when zooming into one of my digital paintings the same becomes apparent, pixels of colour next to one another to
form the whole.
Zooming in reveals a pixel, a square of yellow, next to a pixel, (a ‘pigment’) of blue, when zooming out the
individual colours combine in the eye to form green, precisely what Seurat achieved with his beautiful paintings.
Academically my education includes a Masters in Fine Art, and a Higher National Diploma in Technical Illustration.
I have of course exhibited my work in the U.K. including some nice galleries and art fairs in London.
In addition my paintings have also been included in the saleroom’s of Christies and Sotheby’s.
If you have any further questions or would like to reserve one of my NFT Artworks please message me on my email.
Your enquiry will be answered and your NFT minted on request.
Will Rocket. MA, HND.
