Title: Prospective into Self Reflection
Year Completed: 2026
Size: 40 x 30 in / 102 x 76 cm
Technical: Photography and Digital Painting
Price: $3,600

Description
I wanted to share a brief explanation of my process for creating the submitted artwork, as it combines photographic and digital painting techniques. The piece began with an original photograph, which I imported into the mobile app IArtbook. Using this as a base layer, I developed the composition through digital painting—building up form, color, and texture directly over the image. This stage allowed me to reinterpret the original photograph rather than simply replicate it. After establishing the core painted elements, I transitioned into Photoleap, where I refined the work further. In this phase, I incorporated an additional layer, adjusted lighting and tonal balance, and blended textures to create a shadow effect and cohesive final image. The layering process was essential in achieving depth and a more painterly quality, while still retaining subtle traces of the original photographic source. Overall, the work reflects a hybrid approach, merging photography with digital painting to explore transformation, reinterpretation, and visual storytelling. Please let me know if you’d like any additional details about the process. I feel my technique directly embodies this idea of the filter as both a tool and a language. By starting with a photograph, I begin with a version of reality that is already framed—but it’s through my digital painting and layering process that the true act of selection emerges. In reworking the image in IArtbook and Photoleap, I consciously decided what to emphasize, soften, or remove entirely. Each brushstroke, adjustment, and added layer became an intentional act of filtering rather than passive representation. The transformation from photograph to digitally painted surface reflects the way perception itself operates: not as a neutral recording, but as an edited experience. I not only simply altered my image, I asserted a point of view. I chose the colors to heighten or subdue. I had a guided emotional response, where details were sharpened and obscured to direct attention, and certain elements are erased to make space for others to speak louder. This process mirrors the mind’s own tendency to privilege what aligns with its internal logic while discarding what does not. In this way, my artwork doesn’t just illustrate the concept of filtering—it performs it. The final piece became a visible record of my decisions, a layered construction of what I chose to see and what I chose to leave behind. My stylistic signature emerges precisely from these choices, reinforcing the idea that what we perceive—whether in art or in life—is never the world in its entirety, but a carefully edited version shaped by intention, perception, and belief.