Mobile Digital Art: From Pastel To Pixels

Every artist needs a pad of his own to paint in, but in lieu of that, an iPad offers alternative pixelated perks. Jaime Sanjuan tells Carol Cooper about the day mobile digital art set him free

“A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.” So said Virginia Woolf in her 1929 essay on the artist’s need for space and detachment from the daily grind in order to create. The writer needs a room; the painter, a studio – or at least an attic somewhere.

In 2006, when Spanish artist Jaime Sanjuan graduated from studying fine arts at the University of Castilla-La Mancha, he had neither the cash nor the attic. “Unfortunately, in Spain there are many graduates who are unemployed. When I finished my studies, I had no job and not enough money for a studio or materials for painting. To pay bills I had to work from 8am to 9pm on small, underpaid jobs. It was very difficult to create art – so I stopped painting for four years.”

For a man born to paint, this was not an easy time. “If you’re an artist and you don’t create, you die inside. Since I was a kid, I’ve always known I wanted to devote my life to art – while the other kids played soccer, I was drawing.” After high school Sanjuan went to art school in Zaragoza, his hometown, before going to university. He’s now writing his PhD thesis on art and new technologies. “You might say I’ve been studying art for over 15 years!”

After his four-year painting hiatus, everything changed when a friend gave him an iPad. “With the help of this tool I didn’t need a studio, and didn’t have to buy art materials,” he says. “I still didn’t have a job, but I felt alive again!”

In the last issue of shots, we explored the revolution in visual arts that mobile digital devices and painting apps have brought about, enabling amateurs to rediscover drawing and painting, while professionals, most famously David Hockney, have been developing the new medium with relish. Though he’s a fan of trying new techniques – “I’ve done printmaking, etching, photography, sculpture, video, 3D, sound art…” – Sanjuan had always preferred painting in oils and pastels, until the iPad came along. Following his own personal digital conversion he began honing his skills, developing photorealistic images with a twist.

His paintings are created from a laborious amassing of layers and fine strokes that seem to defy all usual notions of what a human digit can do, some taking up to 100 hours to complete. “I usually use two apps, Procreate and Pixelmator, and I only use two pieces of hardware – the iPad and my finger!” Already a fan of painting with his fingers when using oils or pastels, Sanjuan had an easy migration to swiping a screen. “Digital finger painting is incredibly similar to traditional painting. I use the same techniques I’ve always used in oil or pastel paintings, but what I like most about digital – apart from not needing a studio – is the cleanliness and immediacy of it. Also, the use of layers. Thanks to this tool you can take more risks than you can with traditional painting – you can just undo a bad stroke.”

His work has been steadily attracting attention, buyers and awards, including first prize in the People’s Choice Awards at the second annual Mobile Digital Art and Creativity Summit in California last year. In February, Zaragoza’s IAACC Pablo Serrano arts centre hosted a solo exhibition of his finger paintings entitled Digital2. “It’s rare for a traditional museum like this to host an exhibition of this kind of art and it was a surprise for me,” says the excited Sanjuan. “I’m happy because hundreds of people are coming every day to see my work and they love it!”

Beauty in the digital eye

Sanjuan’s paintings not only intrigue the viewer with good old Dali-esque metaphors, but they also enthral with the level of detail he achieves. He spends a lot of time in zoom mode, working on fragments of a composition. Close-ups of his rendering of an eye in Almost Human reveal miniscule clumps of mascara on individual lashes, atom-thin capillaries on the cornea, skin rendered at an almost cellular level. The first indication that this is a less-than-human eye is the triangular pupil, but zoom in on the iris and you’ll find it circled by a chain of zeros and ones – the eye’s digital identity.

He’s a fan of still life, but his objects rarely remain still, often exploding, melting or morphing from solid to liquid, from one matter to another. “My paintings are filled with objects from my daily life: flowers, bottles, cups, sugar bowls… Many of the elements are in my house. My paintings reflect my reality, and if you think about it, life is very surreal,” he explains. “Many of my paintings speak about the relativity of existence, everything that exists now will cease to exist sooner or later. Even the highest mountain is not eternal.”

So in what way might mobile digital art start morphing? “Any new art needs time to find its own language… and this medium is just beginning. In the coming years you are going to see true masterworks created with mobile devices. At this moment in time we are experiencing a cultural revolution: the democratisation of culture. In the case of painting, thanks to mobile devices, any person in the world can create masterpieces if they have the skills to do so, and that’s wonderful.”

I ask him if the blurring of boundaries between professional and amateur might affect the commercial value of artworks? “I don’t think so. The art market has existed for centuries and new techniques have always found their place in it. I believe that now, anyone capable of creating a quality artwork has to be considered a professional artist.” He likens this shift to the revolution in photography that digital has brought about and says it is up to art institutions to lead the way on how digital media is considered. “Art galleries and museums will have to learn how to deal with this new art… and they will have to do it soon!”