- Pete Gillespie
- Jun 3, 2020
- 2 min read
For many, there appears to be something of a division if you look at the work I produce, a line in the sand that seperates one approach from another.
At one end stands my drawing and painting, the traditional artwork to quote from Deviant Art's complex and divisive catagorising system.
Everything from my doodles and sketches, produced at the back of important meetings, to the complex watercolour illustrations that scatter peoples homes and have now probably faded a little because you hung them in direct sunlight.
These are my bread and butter.....mmm bread.........sorry, these are the cornerstone of what I do, and no doubt always will be. I love to draw and paint. I find the immediacy of being able to pick up a ball-point pen and sketch zombie's on an A4 agenda or the preparatory nature of setting out trays of watercolours and an easel ready for a days painting equally fulfilling. The day I realise I can no longer draw or paint, will be my 'time's up' notification.
Wow, way to put a downer on things.
In recent years however, and certainly during this whole lockdown shenanigans I have taken to creating more digital work.
Commendeering my daughters graphics tablet, cheers Emma, and trying to guide myself through the intricacies of Photoshop, and in particular Illustrator.
An added bonus of using these very expensive apps is that it has brought life to a lot of the sketches that have been sat dormant in the bowels of my sketch books for years.
I love a sketch book, and must confess to starting (though not always finishing) scores of them. However, they can become museum pieces once I've worked through the empty pages.
I have no problem with museums you understand, but everyone wants to know the dinosaurs come to life once the lights are out, and this gives me that opportunity.
So turning funny little pencil sketches into funny little vector graphics, with the added bonus of then being able to use sites like Redbubble to transfer, quite easily, those images onto real products is pretty darn cool.
Now, to be clear, personally I see no division and no line in the sand. Traditional and digital art is simply art. How I produce it may be different, and a poor wifi connection, like on so many occasions can be the decisive factor. Every idea tends to start with a sketch on paper, so if I had to choose, and if someone threatened me with a pointy stick....who are these people, and why are they threatening artists with sticks?, neanderthals......I'd say traditional has the edge.
But no one ever has.
Pete
These designs and others can be found at
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