Do you consider that your Internet art gallery has been successful?
It's been very useful. Successful? I don't know. I didn't necessarily have a goal. All I thought was that it was a great way of archiving and documenting my work. Then the computer became a tool for making new work. So I put that all together on my website. It's an evolving thing. It gets people visiting it from all over the place, but how people know it's there depends on either their prior knowledge of my existence, or them being told about my website, or them finding it by random chance. I must say the Open University produced quite a few more visitors to my site than before.

So it's successful in that it's useful?
It's useful. I've had strangers get in touch with me. I've had old friends get in touch with me. I've had people who've bought my work and couldn't find anything out about me before suddenly find it, get in touch with me. I've had a few too many questionnaires sent to me, students saying they love my work, will I please tell them why this, this and this. It's all very nice, but actually time consuming.

So have you sold anything through the Web?
Yes, not a great deal, but yes. I hadn't when you made the programme, but I have now.

How do you go about making your digital art. Do you draw straight onto the screen, or do you use a scanner?
Combination. I sometimes take photographs, I sometimes just find a photograph, and I would trace it, and once I'd got the computer I carried on that process.

But sometimes; before the computer and after, I just start drawing from nothing, not even something in front of me. But I usually like to have a photographic reference and I have kept a pile of tracings. When I came to do a painting, I'd just go through the tracings until something hits my eye. Well, I sort of do a process like that but on the computer now.

What software do you use?
I mostly use Photoshop and Illustrator. I'm not really comfortable in Illustrator, I'm much more comfortable in Photoshop, but Illustrator does lines better, I think, than Photoshop, so I go between the two. But I use other software too, because I make music and animations on the computer. And the music, I've used Cubase, Rebirth, Logic Audio, Reason and Peak. For the animations I've used Premiere, and I've tried a little bit of Flash but got stuck. I mean, some software I cannot get my head round. Others are easier and I don't know why. Sometimes it's down to whoever's shown me in the first place, because I'm much better if someone shows me than if I read a book or follow their guides.

What do your friends and peers think about your move into digital art?
Most people are surprised. Most people enjoy what I'm doing digitally and they're quite impressed. I've had a few people who've gone the other way saying "no, no, no you should be painting, you shouldn't be doing this". Not many though.

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Content last updated: 01/04/2005

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