Digitally Modifying Motifs

Above are three stages of the digital cleaning process of motifs.

I have spent part of the last few weeks digitally cleaning a select few motifs from paintings of mine. Using software I zoom right in to the image and smooth out areas almost pixel by pixel using the one colour most relevant to that area.

As you can see, the first image of Pot Plant 5 is a high quality digital image which captures the detail and texture from the original painting nicely. This is great for giclée prints which are then mounted and framed but for clothing and other items, not so much. The cleaning process simplifies the motif and removes brush stroke markings.

The original painting is my favourite of the ongoing pot plant series. I like the way the leaves seem to burst out of the frame despite everything being contained within it. There is a liveliness to it which is anchored by the white, low-sided pot.

Above are three more examples of digitally enhanced motifs from the same series of paintings and below, my Household Objects series from 2019.

Although it’s now possible to save time by using readily available AI to clean and sharpen images, this would eliminate the human element entirely. The imperfections, wobbly lines, etc - ie. the things that give the paintings their naive quality - still evident on the final images, would be cleaned up too, these are the details which matter most to me.