Tuesday 16 March 2010

Bert Monroy

A twist on my favourite art movement, photorealism, Bert Monroy specialises in digital photorealism.


"Red Truck" 2004


"Peter's Ice Cream" 1991 (!!)


"Oakland" 2004


"Oakland" 2004 (detail)

"As a photo-realist painter, I have often been asked why I don’t just take a photograph. Good question, when you consider my paintings look like photographs. Well, for one thing, I’m not a photographer. To me, it is not the destination that is important—it is the journey.
The incredible challenge of recreating reality is my motivation." -- Bert Monroy



"Lunch In Tiburon" (date?)


"The Sidelines" 1999

Monroy started out in a career in advertising and since 1984 has been making what he calls "digital paintings". They're really quite something, and his website allows you to zoom in on some details and the thought that the image isn't actually there, it's all made up of random shapes and shadows, it's a trip.


"Damen" 2006


"Damen" 2006 (detail)

Here are some statistics for graphic design nerds like me:

"This is my latest and most ambitious digital painting of a Chicago scene unveiled at Photoshop World in Miami on March 22, 2006.
It is a panorama of the Damen Station on the Blue Line of the Chicago Transit Authority.
Adobe Illustrator was used for generating the majority of the basic shapes as well as all the buildings in the Chicago skyline.
The rest was created in Photoshop.
• The image size is 40 inches by 120 inches.
• The flattened file weighs in at 1.7 Gigabytes.
• It took eleven months (close to 2,000 hours) to create.
• The painting is comprised of close to fifty individual Photoshop files.
• Taking a cumulative total of all the files, the overall image contains over 15,000 layers.
• Over 500 alpha channels were used for various effects.
• Over 250,000 paths make up the multitude of shapes throughout the scene.

1 comment:

Kendra said...

I totally thought these were photos. They're amazing!