Category: How To

Digital Filters & Syntax Forms: Visual Experiments from 2019–2025

Digital Filters & Syntax Forms: Visual Experiments from 2019–2025

***I recently published a new blog post on my main site that showcases a body of digital illustrations created between 2019–2025. These works emerged from teaching sessions, daily experiments, and ongoing studio play. They explore the relationship between analog marks and digital transformations, filtering, bending, glitching, and compositing with layered tools and apps. The result is a vibrant series of portraits and abstractions that reveal how our creative processes are evolving alongside the technology we carry in our pockets.

As you explore the visuals and narrative, take note of the hybrid process, how drawings, sculptures, and design sketches can morph into completely new digital works through a multi-platform creative workflow. Then, you’ll take on the assignment prompt at the bottom of the post below!

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This newly resurfaced series of digital illustrations spans a transformative period from 2019 to 2022 (but I added a piece from 2025 too) a stretch of time marked by constant teaching, ongoing experimentation, and the subtle blending of analog intuition with evolving digital tools. Many of these pieces were created live during class demonstrations, quickly composed to illustrate technical skills, yet unconsciously embedded with deeper currents of form, rhythm, and future direction. What began as spontaneous visual riffs soon became syntax carriers, vessels for line, color, and glitch-based logic that I would later expand into more intentional works.

Each piece was created intuitively, emerging from the moment rather than any predefined plan. Many are derived from my own hand-drawn sketches, paintings, or prior illustrations—while others pull directly from 3D paper sculpture maquettes that I scanned, photographed, or digitally reassembled. The digital environment allowed these forms to shift, distort, and transform as data bending, glitch renderings, and filter experimentation introduced unexpected visual mutations. These glitches became collaborators, not errors, an essential part of the language forming within the work.

Across this body of work, we see a layered interplay between traditional design principles and raw digital texture, pixelation, compression, AI distortion, vector smoothness, and painterly overlays. Some forms hint at architecture, others at human silhouettes or mechanical beings. Several works appear fragmented, paused mid-sentence. Others pulse with 3D illusion, nostalgic halftones, or faux-physical layering. Together, they chart the growth of a digital aesthetic language that has since matured into recent projects like the JFK mural, sculptural commissions, and augmented reality filters.

Revisiting this series now not only shows me where I’ve been, it reminds me of how teaching and making often become one. These pieces are a kind of visual byproduct of instruction, yet they stand alone as artworks with their own voice and vibrational frequency. They feel like early mutations of what is now my more developed style, still experimental, still unconcerned with rules, but rooted in intention and momentum. They are syntax loops from a moment of visual evolution. They continue to speak, even now.

Yes, that is a portrait of Kurt Schwitters above, he continues to be an artistic inspiration of mine!

As I reviewed this group of works again in the process of formatting them for this post, one detail stood out immediately: the prominence of portraiture. Whether abstracted, distorted, or fully symbolic, the human face, or the suggestion of it emerges as a recurring thread throughout the entire collection. This fascination with portraiture has long held my interest. It serves as a portal to identity, emotion, memory, and communication across time. Even when the face is fractured or obscured, it remains a central force, inviting interpretation, reflection, and story.

Each piece shares a common pipeline of creation. The process almost always begins with drawing, painting, collage, or physical sculpture often quick gestures or maquettes that capture a moment of form. I document these raw pieces by photographing them on my phone, and then I bring them through a series of mobile apps where filters, color palettes, and digital layering tools introduce new aesthetic directions. From there, some works are refined further in Adobe Illustrator for vector treatments, then routed into Photoshop for deeper manipulations, before being exported back to mobile for additional filtering or glitch-based experimentation. It’s an open loop, nonlinear, playful, and deeply intuitive.

What excites me about this workflow is how it accommodates mobility. I often find myself editing in transit—on the subway, walking through airports, or sitting in cafés, engaged in a fluid creative dialogue between analog marks and digital alchemy. This rhythm says something larger about contemporary creativity and our emerging relationship with tools in this technological renaissance. We carry powerful studios in our pockets, and the line between artist and interface becomes increasingly blurred. These works are evidence of that evolution, a set of portraits not just of subjects, but of process itself.

Altogether, this series stands as a visual meditation on transformation of media, memory, and method. What began as tactile marks or sculptural forms evolved through digital touch-points into layered visual stories, each piece a hybrid echo of both hand and machine. The portraits reveal not only imagined characters or archetypes, but also my own evolving language as an artist navigating the space between traditional practice and emergent technology. In sharing these works now, I’m not only documenting a timeline of experimentation but also inviting others to see how accessible and open this kind of creative flow can be.

The archive expands, and with it, the conversation continues.

 

LETS MAKE SOME ART!

STUDENT PROJECT: “Analog to Digital – Portrait Filters & Forms”

  1. Create a portrait-based drawing, collage, sculpture maquette, or even a quick sketch (physical or digital).

  2. Document it with a photo using your phone.

  3. Transform the image by running it through at least three different mobile apps or software tools (e.g., Glitché, Procreate, Snapseed, Adobe Fresco, Illustrator, Photoshop, etc.).

  4. Layer, bend, glitch, filter, remix — play with form, color, and abstraction. Push it far.

  5. Present your final image along with a short paragraph describing your process and what surprised you along the way.

  6. Publish your work on a class blog (or otherness) and share the URL in the comments section!

Bonus: Compare your original and final image side by side in the same post to show your transformation pipeline.

NET-ART Rolling Submissions Forever

NET-ART’s Rolling Open Call for Submissions!

It’s that time again — and it’s bigger than ever!

The NET-ART Open Call is now officially live and accepting submissions on a rolling basis. This is your invitation to create, experiment, and share your work with a global audience through our open education platform.

What is NET-ART on the Commons?

NET-ART on the Commons is a living, breathing archive of digital creativity, experimental pedagogy, and collaborative innovation. We celebrate works that explore the possibilities of the internet, emerging technologies, and contemporary digital tools.

We’re seeking submissions in the following categories:

  • Experimental Electronic Media and Pedagogy
  • Animated GIFs and Motion Graphics
  • Digital Art and AI-Assisted Artwork
  • Video Art / Experimental Film / Short Form Storytelling
  • Browser-Based Net Art Projects (interactive websites, web experiences)
  • Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) Art
  • AI-Prompted or AI-Generated Projects
  • Digital and Analog Zines (single artist or group collaborations)
  • Class or Course Collaborative Projects
  • Curatorial Projects (curate and present a group exhibition)
  • Solo Digital Exhibitions
  • Other Interdisciplinary “Otherness” (surprise us!)

Need a spark to get started?

Explore our growing library of Free Digital Tools and Resources that can help you create, publish, and share your work across platforms.

Curious to see what has been done before?
Dive into our Past Projects and Submissions Archive for inspiration.

Submission Guidelines

Submissions are welcome from:

  • CUNY faculty, students (all levels), alumni, and community members
  • CUNY classes and courses (collaborative submissions encouraged)
  • CUNY-affiliated artists collaborating with others beyond the CUNY network

Each submission should include:

  • A clear written description of your project’s vision, context, and meaning
  • Supporting images, links, or media files as needed

Accepted projects will be:

  • Published as feature blog posts
  • Showcased in relevant online galleries
  • Exhibited as individual pages or archives depending on project scope

Participants should be willing to engage with comments, feedback, and public conversations across our platform and social media extensions.

This open call is an opportunity to build a living digital anthology — a shared resource for teaching, learning, reference, and creative exploration across time and communities.

Send your questions, proposals, and submissions to:

📧 [email protected]

The Ultimate Free Digital Art & Creation Tools List (2025 Edition)

The Ultimate Free Digital Art & Creation Tools List (2025 Edition)

Welcome back creators, artists, students, and digital explorers!
As part of refreshing and expanding the resources at The NET-ART Website, I’m excited to share this updated collection of free digital tools you can use to create, experiment, and innovate across many forms of media.

These tools are accessible to all skill levels and are meant to encourage playful exploration, bold storytelling, and creative growth.

Every tool on this list is active and has been verified as of May 2025.

🎨 Free Digital Art and Design Tools

  • Photopea — Photoshop-style online image editor (no download needed!)
  • Pixlr E — Powerful browser-based image editor, great for quick graphic design
  • Kleki — Simple and intuitive online drawing app
  • Canva Free — Graphic design templates for posters, social posts, and more
  • Autodraw — AI-assisted sketching tool that guesses and cleans your drawings

🤖 Free AI Art and Creative Tools

🧩 VR and AR Art Creation Tools

🖼️ Free Image Remix and Experimentation Tools

🎥 Free Video Editing Tools

  • Kapwing — Online video editing for trimming, effects, captions, and GIFs
  • Clipchamp (Free Tier) — Microsoft’s web-based video editor
  • Canva Video Editor — Free simple video editing inside Canva
  • VEED.io — Quick browser video editing for reels, shorts, and presentations

🌐 Research, Remix, and Exploration Resources

  • Internet Archive — A treasure trove of public domain and creative commons media
  • Are.na — Visual bookmarking and research platform
  • Open Processing — Explore creative coding artworks and make your own
  • Rhizome — Explore the history and future of net art

Final Thoughts

The tools listed here are only starting points. The best way to learn them is by playing, remixing, experimenting, and building your own mini-worlds of art and communication.

Your creativity is the true software!

Keep exploring, keep pushing, and stay tuned — we’ll be publishing more resources and challenges soon here at the Net-Art website!

 

Net Art 2.0: Expanding Creativity Through AI and Open Access

Net Art 2.0: Expanding Creativity Through AI and Open Access

If you’ve found your way here, welcome!
You’re stepping into a platform that’s always been about more than just “art.”

When I first created Net-Art as an Open Education Resource for the CUNY Academic Commons, it was with one goal in mind: to offer an accessible, flexible, and creative space for anyone, anywhere, to experiment, express, and connect through digital tools.
We explored early web making, animated GIFs, vaporwave aesthetics, glitch art, augmented reality experiments — all fueled by the same spirit: freedom to create!

For the last year or so, I took a natural pause..
(Artists know — evolution happens in cycles.)
During that time, my creative life expanded in ways I could never have fully predicted: major commissions, deeper explorations into virtual and augmented reality, and a whole new relationship with artificial intelligence as a creative partner.

Today, it’s time to officially evolve Net-Art into its next form:
Net Art 2.0.

What stays the same:
The mission remains, open access, creativity, experimentation, and joyful exploration.

What grows:
We are welcoming AI as a new ally in the creative process!

AI is not here to replace artists, designers, educators or art and design educators..
It’s here to expand our reach, help us prototype faster, spark unexpected ideas, and bridge the gaps between imagination and reality. Just like when we first explored glitching GIFs or remixing early memes, AI is simply another tool to push creative frontiers.

In the coming months, you’ll find:

  • New assignment prompts that integrate traditional net art practices plus AI co-creation
  • Resources on using AI ethically and creatively
  • Explorations of how machine learning intersects with human storytelling
  • Open dialogues about where technology and art-making meet (and clash)
  • Lots of new experiments (because that’s the heart of this place)

This isn’t about abandoning the past.
It’s about taking everything we’ve learned from graphic design, digital art, blogging, storytelling, HTML experiments to animated GIF narratives and adding powerful new dimensions.

Net-Art was always a living, breathing, evolving organism!

Now it’s ready to breathe a little bigger, dream a little wilder, and reach a little further.

Thank you for being here.
Thank you for continuing to explore, question, and create.
The next chapter is going to be even more amazing — and you’re already part of it.

Let’s keep building it, together!

Assignment – The Keeper of Crossroads – Reimagining Analog & Digital Fusion

A Reimagined Analog and Digital Fusion image of abstract shapes and forms composed in harmony - values of reds, blues, oranges and yeloows are presentAssignment Title: Keeper of Crossroads – Reimagining Analog and Digital Fusion

Assignment Introduction:

Every so often, an artwork finds a way to call itself back into your life.

While traveling and reflecting on a new chapter of growth, I stumbled across an image from my archive, a digital illustration I originally created back in 2013. I had almost forgotten about it, but somehow, it kept resurfacing, almost demanding my attention. The artwork, which I now call Keeper of Crossroads, started as a physical cut paper collage, full of bold shapes, raw energy, no rules, just pure intuition, forms, and color.

After scanning or photographing the original, I spent hours playing with it digitally. I intentionally “degenerated” the resolution in Photoshop, pushing it into that gritty world I loved so much, the feeling of vintage offset lithography from the 1960s–80s, like the textures you find in old comics and mass-printed magazines.

At the time, I was simply following my curiosity. I didn’t realize I was making something that would eventually feel like a visual prophecy. Now, more than a decade later, I recognize this piece as a fusion of timelines, mediums, and energies, a symbol bridging the analog and the digital, the remembered and the reimagined.

 

It feels only right to now turn this discovery into an invitation for you to create your own “Keeper of Crossroads.”

 

The Assignment Prompt:

  1. Create a piece of digital artwork that begins from a physical, hands-on medium (for example: a collage, a drawing, a painting, a sculpture, even a rough paper cutout).

2. Then, digitize your piece — either by scanning, photographing, or documenting it with your phone.

3. Once digitized, use Photoshop (or a digital app of your choice) to “degenerate” and transform it.

Play with resolution changes, filters, color distortions, and texture overlays. Let the imperfections guide you. The goal is not to polish the image — the goal is to merge the analog spirit with digital experimentation. Let the unexpected surprises that happen through the process become part of the final piece’s story.

 

What to Submit:

•A digital version of your final artwork (JPEG or PNG format preferred).

•2–3 sentences reflecting on the process.

 

Some questions you can answer:

•What was your physical starting point?

•What surprised you when you moved into the digital world?

•How did it feel to let go of “perfect” and embrace imperfection?

 

Optional Bonus:

Share a side-by-side image showing your original physical piece and the final digital piece.

Have Fun!

How to Create Paper Cut-Out Art: Tips & Techniques for Beginners

Back again with another lil’ series of 2D wall relief paper cut-out forms. Both of the pieces below follow the same process and technique. Im really happy with the process and outcomes. Im working on animating them as we speak. I’ll add them to this post later, so be sure to check back! My paintings inspire my drawings, and my drawings are inspired by those same forms found in my paintings. It makes sense that every so often I want to make those forms “pop out” and off the surface of a flat plane. Alas, it all starts with a quick sketch. See below, just a series of light loose free flowing lines take the lead, forward ->

Here we have a dude posing for a profile style portrait. Most likely, this is inspired by the NYC B-Boys from the years 1983 – 87ish. Either way, it’s nostalgia for me. Once the sketch feels good, I’ll break out the paper and x-acto knife. I keep telling myself that one day Ill work with another material other than paper for these works, perhaps wood or metal.. It will happen, I can foresee it for sure, hang in there. Im using a white bristol paper for the cut outs, I believe is the vellum type and not the glossy, but either or will work just fine. I love to cut paper and the whole medium of paper art in general.

Paper cut-outs, also known as paper cutting or Kirigami, is a traditional art form that involves cutting shapes and designs out of paper. The history of paper cutting can be traced back to ancient China and Japan, where it was practiced as a folk art. The Chinese and Japanese would create intricate designs, often featuring animals, plants, and mythical creatures, and use them as decorations for festivals and special occasions.

Using the sketch above, I apply the “map” of the shapes and forms that I see. Sometimes I redraw those forms on the paper that I will cut out, and sometimes I just “draw” with the x-acto knife to recreate the forms. Sometimes, it’s a combination of both of those techniques. There is also a series of “out-take / byproduct” cut outs that do not make the final piece, those can be saved and used for the next piece, obviously!

More history, for context – the art of paper cutting spread to other parts of Asia, including Korea, where it evolved into unique styles and techniques. In Japan, for example, paper cutting was used to create delicate and intricate designs for paper lanterns and screens. In Europe, paper cutting was popularized during the Renaissance and was often used to create elaborate decorative patterns for books and other printed materials. Check the bottom of this post for a list of other artists that work with the medium.

I layer the forms on top of each other to compose the arrangement as a whole, its fun to watch it all come together, in the next phase, you will need some kind of durable tape or you can make little paper forms that can be pasted to both sides of the forms as they stack, this will create the gauge and depth of the piece once it is placed onto the wall.

This is the final composition above, I love it! I used a roll of duct tape to make small cylinder forms that connect the pieces together, the piece as a whole comes “off of the surface of the wall” by about 1.5 – 2″ inches – you can play with this a bit but keep in mind, the tape makes the piece heavier and it will want to comply with gravity 🙂

I hung the piece (also temporarily adhered via the same duct tape) for the photoshoot and to also get a good look at how it will function on the wall. I have an old painted fire place in my studio that is a great surface for hanging things, I love the contrast of textures between the bricks and the paper, as you know, the shadows will be super cool to see too.

Once I had the whole piece constructed I took a few pictures of it. I immediately wanted a clean vector line drawing of the whole character. I brought the photo into adobe Fresco and used a vector brush to draw this lovely variation. This is how my brain works, I switch paths because I know they are really pipelines to the “next thing” that I will push this to, so forward we go. I can see this potentially becoming a new logo for an aspect of my design biz, or at least a new t-shirt in the classic newyawk series

Then, it was light source and photo shoot time. Im not really happy with these picture as traditional “photographs” as I know I can do a much better job, but, as a series of “sketches” for a planned photo shoot, these will really help to make those plans a reality. I love neon colored lights. I have a bunch of them from various places and spaces that I found on the internet. Amazon has a great selection of flashlights with various colored light options. Get a few and play around with how the light can effect your work and the shadows that it creates. This is where the depth and gauge of your pieces play a role. The photos below are also a part of the same session, which all took place over a few days. What do you think? Shall I make more?

In the 20th century, paper cutting experienced a resurgence in popularity as an art form in its own right. Notable artists who have contributed to the art of paper cutting include:

  1. Béatrice Coron: A French artist who has created intricate and expansive paper cut-out installations for public spaces and galleries around the world.
  2. Yoo Hyun-mi: A South Korean artist who creates paper cut-outs that explore themes of identity and cultural heritage.
  3. Hina Aoyama: A Japanese artist known for her intricate paper cut-outs of animals and natural landscapes.
  4. Elsa Mora: A Cuban-American artist who creates whimsical paper cut-outs that often feature fantastical creatures and characters.
  5. Hunt Slonem: An American artist known for his large-scale paper cut-outs of birds and butterflies.
  6. Xiyadie: A Chinese artist who creates intricate paper cut-outs of traditional Chinese motifs and landscapes.
  7. Hari and Deepti: An Indian artist duo who create mesmerizing paper cut-out scenes using layers of intricately cut paper.
  8. Karen Bit Vejle: A Danish artist known for her intricate paper cut-outs that often feature patterns inspired by nature.
  9. Nikki McClure: An American artist who creates minimalist paper cut-outs that often explore themes of motherhood and nature.
  10. Wu Jian’an: A Chinese artist who creates paper cut-outs inspired by traditional Chinese art and mythology.

 

Welp, if you got this far, many thanks! Much more to come!