MOCA Week 4

This week I chose the artwork of artist Renata Spiazzi. Renata was born in Italy, where she received traditional fine arts training in drawing painting and sculpture. Twelve years ago Renata was introduced to the computer. She started investigating the possibility of what the programs could give her. "Even though I use photographs in a great part of my work, I like to abstract them. This gives the finished work a certain simplicity free from preconceived objective ideas," she says. Renata has two computers: one is for light works, thinking process, and burning CDs; the other - a Compaq with 4 processors, 1.25 gigs of RAM and 23 gigs of hard disk - is the one she uses for finished work. The artwork is called 'The Flame Within', and was started on a textured drawing paper. A doodle was drawn on it with a piece of paraffin. Then a wide watercolor brush was chosen and dipped in water and Paynes gray. It was smeared on the paper. Where the paraffin had touched the paper the watercolor did not show. Where the paper was not touched by the paraffin the Paynes gray took over and left little puddles. This image was scanned, overlapped in Photoshop with a gradient and this was the result. It pays to explore different techniques!