These two beautiful swans graciously passed me as I walked by, just beyond the Nature Reserve in a leisurely grass filled area.  Whilst passing I found their way utterly enthralling and simply had to take a photograph.  Immediately I knew this would become a new sketch.

The sketch was made within one hour of starting a blank canvas.

My sketch features row upon row of ‘M’ grasses, an ‘M’ bush (originating in the actual photograph itself, see below), Van Gogh style outlines of the swans (heavily pronounced like fruit in a bowl), whimsical illustrative leafy details and individual character to both the swan and the cygnet.

I made three digital artworks from the Original sketch: EMBOSSED, STARRY NIGHT and COLOUR DOTS.

Here is the first digital artwork made, ‘EMBOSSED’:

‘EMBOSSED’ has ideas of life paths, our spirit, ascension, soul and body. I carefully aligned the 3D overlay imagery at approximately 30 degrees, level with their first bodies legs. This gives a sense of upward-forward motion. My signature, the ‘M’ grasses ‘writings’ and the ‘M’ bush continues with this 3D overlay theme.

Each and every digital artwork I produce is an intricately balanced artwork piece in its own way. Personally I feel each digital piece I make should represent one unique artwork in a specified physical format.

For instance, print, sculpture or textile.

‘STARRY NIGHT’ is a beautiful colour rendition from my Original sketch. I felt the leaves above the swans heads had somehow become the sky.
For my love of Vincent’s art I had to honour his works in the title of this piece.

The blue-green colour scheme is delightful, I loved this as I played with a varying palette to create the nicest looking composition for this piece. I see this as a rug, cushions, curtains or tapestry! It looks so very textile-like.

‘COLOUR DOTS’ represents technology and innovative human thinking. The colour details within this piece can be seen by zooming in on the image.

If you cannot zoom in, I will show you. First though let’s take a look at the original picture itself. The originating photograph was taken on 11th July 2023 at 1841hrs, shown immediately below:

A very cute scene of adult swan guiding its cygnet, exactly as composed in my sketch. They both seemed oblivious to me as I passed by them. The adult swan was focused getting to wherever it wanted. The adult did notice me though.

Shown below is three unedited zoomed images I cropped from ‘COLOUR DOTS’ to show you the beauty within beauty of an artwork:

My pencil lines become abstract ideas: a topological map, computer machine code, engineering macrocosm, an ancient settlement. Whatever you want this to be.

With all three cropped versions you can now clearly see the colour dots! Here are the exact hex colours #FF34FF (magenta), #0CFF0C (green), #3737FF (blue) and #5DFFFF (aqua) just to highlight the main colours.

Grass-Brain looked kind of Matrix-like. This is actually the zoomed head of the swan with grasses overhead!

In Signature Composition my name is recognisable of form – completely unchanged besides the computer filter used to produce a new work from ‘COLOUR DOTS’. I then manipulate images to make the most pleasing compositions.

I have a professional computing background, therefore it is natural for me to use computer software in the production of my digital works.

I made a similar concept of ‘artworks from an artwork‘ with my oil painting “Creative Mind” in September 2018. For that blog article please click the link here: “Creative Mind” including crops of the full image.