HIGH SCHOOL

Matt S., Self Revealed. Digital photo, charcoal, and pencil, scanned.

Cristina Pinton

Many artists and teachers find themselves straddling two worlds: one of comfort, repetition, and confidence that comes with experience; and the other of growth, expansion, and the unknown. I have often found myself in this position: wide-eyed at new techniques and advancing technology and grappling with the disconnect of age, relevancy, and cultural context.

In 2014, I began teaching digital photography when my faithful darkroom students of two years inquired about it. One student in the class, already passionate about digital SLRs, gave us the simplest of tutorials, later suggesting equipment for a lighting studio. He provided us with fascinating insight into this new world of screens, flashes, and pixels. While still holding onto film and chemistry at heart, the curriculum expanded tenfold when we developed a digital photography curriculum and digital art classes that welcomed Photoshop manipulation and an infinite reservoir of new possibilities.

Peter S., Infinite Creativity. Colored pencil on black paper, scanned and digitally altered.

The two hemispheres of art-making—old methods and new technologies—collide and weave together beautifully. Although our department was equipped with the tools necessary to teach digital media, I didn’t want my students to miss out on the tactile power of analog photography and the sensory responsiveness of clay, charcoal, ink, paint, and paper arts. I couldn’t resist incorporating both in my lessons for photography, design, and drawing classes.

My AP photography classes always merged digital negatives with alternative processes (cyanotype and liquid light) and scanned/painted/ripped digital prints. AP drawing and design students experimented with digital mixed media, combining drawn elements (oil pastel, marker, paint), scanning them, and adding digital enhancements. We would often talk about the challenges of each medium and the ways that we could interweave them.

My teenage students understood the ease and forgiveness of the digital world but yearned for the physical relationship of a tangible and physical responsiveness of hand/pen/eraser/shavings/smudgings/fingerprints/paper. The two hemispheres of creation at times collided and sometimes fused, but the intersection of analog and digital continues to be a new space for all of us to bounce around and find what fuels our creative ideas.

Alan Z., Watching the Stars, digital print and contour line pen.

• What properties of analog materials are the most difficult to replicate in the digital space?
• What makes something feel “real” instead of “altered”? What makes analog special as an experience?
• How do we rely on digital manipulation to correct or imitate reality?
• What are the pros and cons of digital versus analog production/process?
• How can we merge digital and analog so they work as distinct methods in one piece of art?

• Scan dried paint or oil pastel marks on paper, and layer on top of digital imagery (focus on portraiture) for contrasts. Consider personal history, narrative, and symbolic use of “skins” of multiple materials. See photography based contemporary artists Tawny Chatmon and Shirin Neshat.
• Merge doodling and permanent marker outlines hand-drawn on a printed photograph. Layer in Photoshop and fill in and color areas using the paintbrush palette. See artists Ana Strumpf and AM DeBrincat. Consider popular wall art and graffiti work, such as the line drawings of Keith Haring.
• Create a pen drawing of what you wish existed in a photographed landscape. Scan the drawings to fit the natural scene. Use analog and digital processes as metaphors for the physical and dreamworld, the tangible and intangible.
• Alter photographs by printing, ripping, burning, or piecing together with tape, string, etc. See Rory White’s taped photographs and Judith Golden’s work.

Cristina Pinton is the chairperson of the visual arts department at Avon Old Farms School in Avon, Connecticut. pintonc@avonoldfarms.com
Between Two Worlds