Story Behind My Art - The Narrows
The Narrows
I first heard about Connie’s story from my friend Chen. Since Chen is the best female runner in my friend circle, I had no doubt that Connie was one of them - those who were born athletic and good at outdoor sports.
However, I was wrong.
Connie was born and raised in Shanghai, China. When she was young, she preferred opera, photography, and literature. She was a city girl who “couldn’t even pass her fitness test in gym class”, according to Connie.
It was changed after her son, Enchee, was born.
Enchee was diagnosed with autism at age three. Motivated to get Enchee involved in recreational activities, Connie began taking him on hikes when he was around age 10. They went on various trips of increasing intensity and duration, from Mount Madison in New Hampshire to a 10-day European hiking tour of Mont Blanc, Enchee grew up to be a well-mannered young man, good at math and physics, in addition to hiking and running.
I was honored to create an artwork for their trip to the Narrows at Zion National Park.
Although in her mind, the Narrows upstream should be calm with round rocks glistening under the clear water, it was filled with mud and sand that ate their water shoes numerous times.
I kept true with the scene, made the sky the same color as the water, which painted a cohesive background so Connie and Enchee stood out more. I also highlighted their determination and perseverance by slightly altering their postures from the reference picture.
The painting was well received, and I felt accomplished. :)
Increase Digital Art Value With NFT
For a long time, digital artworks were inferior to traditional artworks. One of the reasons was that they could be duplicated easily, the copies held the same quality as the originals so it was hard to differentiate prints from originals.
That has changed since the argumentation of NFT.
NFT (Non-Fungible-Token) acts as a certificate of authentication for digital artworks. Digital artworks “signed” by NFTs are originality guaranteed. So it’s a must-have if you are a digital art collector.
There are many marketplaces online for NFTs, such as Opensea, Rarible, etc. You can buy and sell digital artworks on these platforms. However, I’d like to introduce a different way of using NFT to increase your digital artwork value.
Say you want to sell original digital artworks by printing them out on canvas, and sell them through art fairs or galleries, you can create an NFT using a digital platform and transfer it to the buyer as a certificate of authentication, or a “signature” of your artwork.
The buyer not only owns the physical artwork, but also owns the artwork in digital format, which they can share on social media, print out more copies, or trade it later. These additional benefits greatly increase the value of the artworks, even more than their traditional peers.
You might ask why the artists would give away so much right of their artworks, one great feature of NFT is that the creator can decide a royalty up front (up to 10% on Opensea), so whenever an NFT is traded in the future, the creator can be rewarded fairly online.
Why Did I Choose Digital Art?
After some basic training, every artist needs to choose their direction to further their art pursue.
I started in urban sketching with ink and watercolor and thought it was my destiny. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still one of my favorites, I appreciate the combination of sleek lines of ink and soft shades of watermarks, actually, they were reflected in many of my Spiritrait Abstract paintings.
However, after back and forth debates, I settled on digital art. Here are my reasons:
Low cost. Instead of a roomful of paints, paper, brushes, and canvas, I only need an iPad and an Apple pencil to start painting. If I don’t like a piece, just hit the “Delete” button. Especially for beginners, your first hundreds to thousands of paintings are most likely to be ended up in a trash can. I have heard enough stories from anxious artists who cannot sell their artworks and are forced to stop painting and start selling.
Environmentally friendly. Not only it is budget-friendly, but it is also environmentally friendly. A digital artwork can be printed out after it is sold, so no paper, ink, or canvas is wasted.
More versatile. With more and more galleries going online, digital arts can be displayed not only in person but also on various digital platforms.
NFT secured. With NFT, digital art can be protected and secured, so much fewer worries about forgery or stolen art.
High-quality prints. Even though traditional artworks can be turned into prints, the color and texture can be lost due to low-quality photo shots. Digital artworks can guarantee the print quality because it captures color’s hue, value, and chroma accurately with high resolution.
Future forward. The digital revolution is already here, we need to keep up with it, or even be a part of the leading force.
Are you also into digital art? If so, what is your reason?