Doing it digitally

Well, I really seem to have gone from one extreme to the other over the past couple of weeks - from 19th century Mosaicon-style quilling to 21st century digital art (with just a little detour by way of 'beehive' coils in between!)

This week, I felt in the mood to start dabbling with Photoshop again, using the 'virtual' quilling shapes that I developed earlier in the year for my Coils By Quilliance page. When I first created the shapes (in conjunction with an article I was writing for Papers and Pixels magazine), I experimented with using them to create various 'digitally quilled' backgrounds for traditional quilling, which certainly generated some interesting shadowing effects.  I've decided, however, that maybe it's time to start bringing this particular technique a little bit further 'out of the shadows', and explore the potential of digital quilling in its own right.

So, today I created this digitally quilled motif:

Which has found its way on to a new card design here:

I've also played around with creating these designs, which were fun to develop using the various resizing and colouring facilities that you get in Photoshop:

Digitally quilled images like this are certainly easy to reproduce in bulk - all you have to do is print them out!

Clearly, this digital approach will never be able to compete with the depth, texture and sheer versatility of real quilling - but I am beginning to wonder whether digital methods might eventually find a place alongside traditional techniques as our art continues to evolve.