Time Lapse educational video by Merrill Kazanjian Step 1- Sketch of the structure of the human face. Step 2- For step two, I am using a computer scissor to cut out the features of the face from various photographs that I have collected. After I cut them out, I digitally juxtapose them over my simple facial sketch. Artists have called this a digital collage or a photo-manipulation, but I like to say that I am Frankensteining the face together. This process has evolved from a need to work faster. My main area of expertise is oil painting but some of my paintings have taken me over a year to complete. In addition to being an artist, I am also a full time teacher and a new father. So free time is truly a luxury; I had to come up with a creative way to do my work and this is one of several techniques that I use. In my opinion, there is no artistic medium that can compete with the surface beauty of an oil painting. Hand made items will always be more beautiful than manufactured ones. I have seen a lot of Digital art that is mechanical and inorganic. But making digital art is a much faster process than making traditional art. I have a lot to say as an artist and not a lot of time to say it, so, for this piece, I am using this digital collage as an underpainting for what I will do later. Step 3- In Step Three, I am lightening the areas that I plan to rework. Step 4- For step four, print at maximum dpi and on the thickest paper that you can fit through your printer Step 5- For step five we will cover the traditional part of tradigital- I am using prismacolor (prisma) pencils and illustration markers and decocolor paint markers. Prismacolor sells great colored pencils. Their covering power is very impressive. Their marks lie somewhere between translucent and opaque. They can be used to mimic scumbling and glazing. In order to glaze mix the color pencil with the prisma marker blender. Decocolor markers have a type of paint inside which is very similar to acrylic paint and has a similar covering power to acrylic paint. Whenever I need to make opaque marks, I use the decocolor markers. Years ago, I would have considered a method such as this, cheating. I no longer feel that way because art is so much more than just drawing. Drawing is a way for an artist to communicate but it is not the only means that an artist could use to communicate. I feel that while this method is unconventional, it has allowed me to work faster and leave a human fingerprint on the artwork that I produce. The digital collage allows me to Frankenstein interesting facial features and come up with new imagery in a manner similar to the cutouts of Pablo Picasso and Romare Bearden. I have made bodies in a very similar manner. It can be even more fun to digitally collage a body together. After I finish making a character, I like to use the character multiple times. Since I took my break from oil painting, exactly a year ago, in December 2007, I have made over 500 different characters. My characters are saved as digital files and are used multiple times in my artistic compositions. A sample of my latest work is at the end of this video. Thank you so much for watching!