Written by: R. Dawson
Contemporary art today utilizes almost limitless choices of materials, techniques and processes to create artwork. As an artist, it is exciting to take advantage of new technology to challenge your practice and work outside your comfort zone. This multidisciplinary approach is also integral to how many artists think, bridging the gap between mediums and creative contexts, widening their audience and the critical components to their work.
Incorporating Digital Art into Your Practice
One way to integrate a digital component to your work is to explore green screen technology. With green screen (or Chroma Keying as it is officially known), we can manipulate the physical painting with a digital element such as a video to create a layered digital collage.
The Chroma key technique is employed by the film and television industries to transport actors to fantastic locations and settings. In principle, the effect takes a color found in the frame and makes it transparent, allowing us to put another image there in its place. It is effectively a form of video collage, combining a foreground and a background element together to create a single image.
How can we achieve this?
Although Hollywood spends millions on visual effects, the same technique can be utilized with relative ease on a smaller scale using Liquitex Acrylic Gouache. A good key (the term used for turning a color transparent) is generated when a color is solid with little variation in tone or pigment and is flat and matte. Acrylic Gouache is very effective at creating block color for keying, with little variation and brush strokes.
Today, the effect is easy to replicate with a camera and computer or smartphone using software such as Adobe Premiere Pro, Davinci Resolve or iMovie (which will even work on your iPhone!). We are using Adobe’s Premiere Pro here today. The software is not too challenging to use, and the effect can be applied with ease.
