Joseph Arruda:
Digitally Real
Written by Shannon Amidon Photgraphy by Daniel Garcia
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s it real art or is it digital art? This is the question that San Jose artist Joseph Arruda is frequently asked, and his answer is: both. Influenced by award-winning American artist and writer Bill Sienkiewicz’s aesthetic to “learn all the rules so you can fundamentally figure out when to ignore them,” Arruda creates what he calls an “art hack,” mixing a variety of digital and traditional techniques to create his abstract and portraiture artwork.
I’ve actively played with, and I suspect most of what I do is both a little bit primitive and a little bit unorthodox, which may be why a lot of folks regularly ask “which part is real and which part is the computer” and I’m not sure you can quantify it in the end really...and to be honest I’m not sure why it would matter. It’s kind of a Zen thing.
“I AM EQUAL PARTS TECH GEEK AND A CREATIVE.”
How do you figure out when to ignore the rules? I look at the process as: I have been given a tool, what are the natural limits and corner cases for this thing? Sometimes you get a spectacular result that isn’t even reproducible and sometimes you go, that was a bad idea My head never got the memo that said you’re either this and really didn’t work. or you’re that. I just said if there is something out there and it will produce an interesting result and I can figure When people ask you what you “ do,” how do you answer? out how to use it, I will use it. So my process, for lack of It depends on the context. Since I am equal parts tech a better term, grew out of that. For example, I will start geek and a creative, I lead with whichever I think the with a pencil sketch, scan that sketch, print the sketch audience is likely to grasp easier. When I tell some folks on Bristol paper, paint on that, scan it again, print it that I do art or illustration as part of my livelihood, the out again in color, etc. In some ways it’s a ridiculously looks range from acknowledgement to dumbfounded. overwrought or inefficient process, but mentally it works for me. What is your process, your medium? I’ll use just about anything available (except oils, which I love but have no real facility with or patience for), but I definitely orbit around a lot of the same materials: acrylics, gouaches, a large army of various pens and markers, and various digital tools such as Photoshop, Krita, and Context Free. I do a few things that seem to be my own schtick, mostly around the mixing of analog and digital. It’s something
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