I have been a digital artist since it was a thing! I grew up in an age before computers were in every household… in fact, before TVs were!

Since kindergarten, I’ve thought of myself as an artist. I took art lessons when my parents realized I had a talent for art.

My mother, although never considering herself an artist, showed her creativity in everything she did… designing and sewing clothes for herself and her family, creating visually exciting meals every day, painting wall art and decorating each and every house we lived in when moving every couple of years.

Her father was an artist and teacher of woodshop and ceramics in the public school system, so I came from creative lineage.

A Lifetime of Artistic Exploration

Early on, I tried my hand at Crayons, oil pastels, and watercolors. By the time I was in second grade I created mosaics by crushing eggshells and mounting them on board, then painting scenes on the irregular surface. I tried my hand at most everything I could get my hands on.

Camping was a weekend pastime, and I would spend the days whittling sticks or building architecture with whatever I could find laying around (mostly sticks, rocks and pine needles) when we were at our campsite between our hiking adventures.

Learning From the Masters: My Early Training

The summer between my 4^th and 5^th grade years I was introduced to oil paints from my art instructor, Frederick W. Reiniger. He was a well-known and respected artist in both the Philadelphia area and in Paris, France. His wife, Josephine was a graphic designer. Together they gave art lessons in their home studio. I stayed with them until I graduated from high school.

The Process Behind My Oil Paintings

The Sketch

It is there that I learned how to paint in the same method of the Renaissance masters, starting with drawing on canvas with a vine charcoal stick. It had to be affixed with turpentine to the canvas so the charcoal wouldn’t wipe off when you applied the paint.

The Underpainting

The first layer of paint is called an ‘underpainting’. Usually starting with mixture of Raw Umber and Burnt Sienna, a thin wash of the paint mixed with turpentine was applied over the entire stretched canvas surface. Next, shadows and highlights were blocked in by adding white to the brown mixture in the lighter areas and adding black for the shadows. It wasn’t actually black paint. The Reinigers would never allow it! Black was always a mixture of Ultramarine Blue, Viridian Green and Alizarin Crimson. According to them, black was a dead color, where mixing it yourself was rich and vibrant. That holds true today for anything I paint. I NEVER use black.

By now the composition is well thought out and there is a strong visual of what it is to look like. Now is the time to adjust before carrying on.

Adding Layers of Color: Fat over Lean

Color is the next process and is applied once the underpainting is dry. Since the underpainting a thin application, it won’t take more than a couple of days. I would usually be working on a few paintings at the same time, so it would take days before I got to it anyway.

The colors are applied with the ‘fat over lean’ rule. Lean paint is paint that is thinned with turpentine. Fat paint is the paint straight from the tube or paint that has more oil added to it. If you follow this rule you won’t have any adhesion problems. When working in layers, adding a higher ratio of oil to the paint as you layer and letting each layer dry at least a week between, will make sure that one layer won’t react negatively to the next layer…like wrinkling and crawling.

Thin layers of colors give an incredible depth to your painting that you cannot get with any other process or medium. I absolutely fell in love with oil painting specifically for this reason and had never planned to move away from it. But life happens.

The Switch to Acrylics: College Challenges

When I got into college, I switched to acrylics because the studio deadlines were not conducive to working in oils. I would have to finish a painting within a week, in time for Friday’s critique. Acrylics were the ‘go to’ medium for class. It was far less complicated, dried within minutes (or hours if you applied it heavily), and didn’t have as strong an odor. Only needing water as your medium was cheaper. Dirty water was not as big an environmental problem to dispose of than a glass jar of dirty turpentine.

Discovering the Unexpected

Through college, I was surprised that I no longer cried through my creations. I was a very sensitive and troubled child. I would cry through every painting I created. I felt deeply as I worked on one artwork after another, pouring my whole heart into every piece.

Was I growing up? Becoming less sensitive? Not as connected to my paintings anymore? Was it that I didn’t enjoy the acrylics as much as working in oils?

No. None of that. I was allergic to the turpentine! Can you imagine, after all those years, when I switched to another medium I found out that it was the turpentine that was causing all that emotion. Isn’t it funny how you just know everything about yourself and then find out it’s all wrong.

Now that I knew, I still didn’t switch from oil. Of course, the acrylic painting lasted through college, but oil painting was my love and I went right back to it once I graduated.

A Career in Art and Design

Soon out of college, I became a graphic artist for a fine art printing press. Sadly, this company no longer exists, but Thorner-Sidney Press created printed catalogs and advertising for companies that needed perfect colors. Food Company brochures and Art Exhibition catalogs were our forte. This was when mock-ups were done by hand! These are a few of my artworks while working as one of their graphic artists. When not at work, I would be commissioned to create formal portrait paintings in oils for corporate presidents and their families. Pet portraits then became a thing for me.

After a time, I had a young growing family of my own and a husband with a heart condition. He urged me to find a job that wouldn’t take the nearly 50-60 hours a weeks’ work I was finding myself in as a graphic artist and had a regular paycheck that my portraits weren’t providing. He was concerned that I would find myself a widow with two small boys and wanted me to have the ability to survive without him, if necessary. So, I went back to college for my master’s in education and became an art teacher at the high school and college levels.

A lot happened in the next 14 years, including opening a studio (while I was still teaching) that designed and manufactured hand-painted dinnerware, but that is another story.

Becoming an Art Educator and Teaching Digital Art

In the mid to late 1990’s, Photoshop became popular as a digital tool for creating art. I learned how to use it and in 2000 I began teaching digital imaging to my students using Photoshop, DSLR cameras and flatbed scanners.

This coincided with becoming an adjunct professor with Kenyon College through a program of theirs called KAP (Kenyon Academic Program) for high school students. They would receive college credits for certain courses taught at their high schools through this program. Claudia Esslinger, an art professor at Kenyon would teach a weeklong program each summer to keep the Digital Art KAP teachers up to date on the latest and greatest that the Photoshop program had to offer. Along with this being a think tank on curriculum planning, video production, and giving us time to create just for us, it ended up being more of a retreat than a workshop for us teachers.

Applying Traditional Methods to Digital Art

I taught a lot of different systems using computers to create artwork, but at home, for myself, I never gave up the system I used as an oil painter to create digitally.

• I still start with a sketch, although not with vine charcoal. I use a tinted page on the screen and sketch out my ideas with a variable brush that reacts to pressure as I sketch.
• I still plan out my highlights and shadows before determining the composition is what I want, to insure that the composition is balanced, will allow the eye to move around the “canvas”, and show the depth I’m looking for.
• I build up layer upon layer as a develop my digital artwork.
• I work on the artwork as a whole, rather than developing one area before the next. This allows me to see what the final result looks like, if I stopped right at that point.

Why I Chose to Stay a Digital Artist

Thirty years later I retired from teaching and found myself wanting to get back to my roots of painting. I thought of getting back into oil painting… a thought that reoccurs often, but after thirty years of being a digital artist and teacher, there were a number of reasons that kept popping up to stay with the digital arts.

Here’s my list:

• I’m still sensitive to turpentine.
• It takes a year for oil paint to totally cure.
• It cannot be finished with varnish until then, so cannot be sold until a year after it is created.
• It is a one-by-one process. I would have to sell my original work for thousands of dollars, which would make it unavailable to most.
• I can create the same compositions digitally, without the drawbacks listed above.

So here I am, a digital artist…still.

I invite you to explore my digital art series and discover how modern techniques can still capture the timeless beauty of nature and the importance of protecting it. If my journey resonates with you, or if you’re curious about how digital art can align with your love for the world around us, I’d love to connect! Sign up for my Priority List to stay informed about upcoming releases, exclusive offers, and behind-the-scenes looks at my creative process. Together, we can continue to celebrate our earth’s wonders through art.

Conclusion

Transitioning to digital art has opened a new world of creative possibilities for me, enabling me to blend tradition with innovation in ways that fuel my passion for nature, animals, and storytelling. My work remains rooted in the same values that guided me through traditional art—celebrating the beauty of the natural world and raising awareness about its preservation. Digital art allows me to share these messages more effectively while keeping the quality and depth of my pieces intact. This shift has not only helped me grow as an artist but also provided a means to connect with a like-minded community that shares my passion for the earth and its creatures.