David Asch began his journey in the mid 90’s when he picked up his first computer. These were the days when computers only had 8 colours to play with and you had to move one pixel at a time.
He never got into drawing and painting because he loves the immediacy of digital art. He described himself as a restricted artist because until he found computers and photoshop, he would become impatient and think ‘sod it’ when things went wrong.
David believes everyone needs a creative outlet of some sort, he says; “If you don’t have creativity there is a piece of you missing.”
He is currently working within the Council and says that he uses every ounce of time to fuel his creative side. A side which includes photography, and digital art but also writing books about photoshop.
‘If it is digital and vaguely creative, I’m there,” he told us.
A lot of his artwork begins as drafts on mobile apps, when he used to walk to work in Hove he would create pieces on his phone, layering and cutting things out.
He says you can’t be too snobbish when creating art, he does more complex stuff on photoshop but sometimes he doesn’t know when to stop layering and adding more bits.
David would chose digital art if he had to chose a discipline because he has so much control over it, he has the ability to compose things how he would want them to be and not necessarily how they are.
“The beauty of digital is you can erase things, move things around after the fact and you can always recover something,” he says.
He describes his work as ‘album covers that never were’. He likes working with a square frame because of its symmetrical components. He gravitates towards surreal and fantasy themes in his work such as bowler hats and missing faces.
He gets lots of inspiration from Instagram, his dreams but also things that just pop into his head, like a line of a song or a poem or phrase that will then be transformed into a quirky image.
Mostly though, his art is an extension of himself and how he is feeling; sometimes it can be quite dark or rainbow balloons.
David gets a sense of fulfilment from making art, when people appreciate his work and likes what he has created it really spurs him on. The response doesn’t always have to be good as he says, “Art hasn’t done its job if it hasn’t had a reaction.”
If you would like to see more of Davids artwork or read one of his many books on photoshop elements you can visit his website here.
