TITLE:
Artefactual Skills for Simulating Impasto Effect in Digital Painting: An Adobe Photoshop Solution
AUTHORS:
Godfred Yeboah Annum
KEYWORDS:
Impasto, Tactile, Craquelure Filter, Digital Photo-Art, Traditional Digital Painting
JOURNAL NAME:
Art and Design Review,
Vol.10 No.4,
November
10,
2022
ABSTRACT: Impasto is one of the fascinating techniques in studio
painting that traces its foundation to the period between the 17th and 19th century Italian painters like van Gogh. It is characterised
by thick application of paint in a plastering mode to artistically model forms
on a canvas using either a bristle brush or a palette knife. When effectively
executed, the technique finishes with the effect of ridges that cast shadows
under grooves created by the thick application to give the painting its unique
tactile contrasting appearance. In digital painting, the painterly effect of
impasto is simply impossible to execute. Most of the well-known graphic
application software cannot offer any applicator that can render the
characteristic effect excellently. The author of this paper has developed a
practical scheme for achieving this result using the Craquelure Filter in Adobe
Photoshop version 21. The principal objective of the author is to employ the
descriptive and demonstrational research methods to illustrate this artefactual
scheme, which constitutes a practice-led exercise under the design-based
research scheme. In this scheme, the author engages two of the major digital
painting techniques: “Digital photo-art” and “Traditional digital painting”
techniques to execute a figure painting composition in impasto style.