"Caribbean Reef Portraits" - Derived from our "Caribbean Reef" mural.

In 2002 I created a complex mural titled "Caribbean Reef." The images were licensed to a producer of wall murals for use in homes and commercial environments. The mural includes over a dozen marine animals that are very accurate and realistically painted. Our print collection will include several of these fish singly and in small groups.

Method:

The fish and turtles were digitally painted in Adobe Photoshop. Like all my digital "paintings", they are not created from photographs or other computer shortcuts. Most subjects are hand drawn with paper and pencil. The drawing is scanned into the computer only as a guide for what follows. Just as with paint and canvas, I brush and spray color over the drawing. Unlike canvas, I am able to paint on many separate layers and can easily reposition elements to create different compositions.

The original mural was designed to be reproduced in very large sizes (over 20 feet) and would have been impossible for Adobe Photoshop and printers at that time. Our solution was Adobe Illustrator, a "vector" based drawing program. Vectors can be enlarged to any size and require very little computer demand. Vectors, however, are not very good for realistic effects, so just the background corals and water blends in the mural were created in Adobe Illustrator. The realistic fish painted in Photoshop were later combined without making the document size unmanageable.

The Caribbean Reef Portraits in our gallery have entirely new realistic coral backgrounds and detail.