Sebastian Del Grosso is a digital artist who creates composite pieces by combining portrait photographs and sketch-like illustrations. By combining his two passions of photography and drawing, he has found a way to create works of art that are not that different.
“Actually this is quite easy if you know Photoshop but a nice idea. Not pure art but the sort of thing copy writers do every day across the world for promotional things. I know because I do this sort of thing myself. All he has done is taken a photo, made another layer copy and converted it to a pencil drawing in part and erased the portions of the original photo to marry up at the edge plus a bit of blending and dodge and burn to give the photos an artistic look. Maybe an hour to do each one.”
‘I have included people who are important to me, such as my grandmother who taught me to draw,’ said Sebastien.
‘But I have also included a couple of humorous images such as the ‘sketch and fight’ picture which shows the battle of two artists – myself and my friend Cal Redback’ – each with our own technique.’
‘I find it’s good to take a break when I’m creating these images,’ he said. ‘It suddenly brings a new look, and I can find mistakes that I didn’t necessarily notice before.
The drawing is done by hand on a sheet of paper, scanned and cleaned, before being added to the photo using Photoshop.
From the shooting to the final image, it can take Sebastien a few hours to several days to complete.
