Man oh man. I tend to find inspiration for my paintings all over – in different kinds of media. Recently I've been obsessing over an artist named Nicola Samori.

He's an Italian painter and sculptor that mainly focuses on human subjects. He works with some really interesting materials, where he usually paints with oil on copper plates. Which creates a really cool surface. 

A Master of the Surreal

The man is a master when it comes to mixing the abstract and surreal with something more realistic. Many of his paintings have a renaissance feel to them – but he distorts the images by "ripping" some things apart. This leads to feelings of dread and anxiety, where you really aren't sure of what you're looking at.

In the painting I'm working on right now I'm trying to incorporate elements that I've learned from studying Samori. Mostly when it comes to the backgrounds and "the ripping of the image". We'll see how it turns out.

Anyways, I just wanted to share my brief thoughts on this modern master painter.

I get this question a lot. Like all the time. Why do you paint digitally?

The reason is quite simple. Time efficiency. I have a day job, and I can't work with oil paintings that need two weeks to dry up inside my small apartment. Working with oils is really fun – but time-consuming.

When I paint in Photoshop I can make one painting per day, pretty much. That is my goal anyway. And if I were to switch to oil maybe I'd be able to produce a painting per week, at max.

That's not going to do it for me, anyway. And working in Photoshop also makes it easier to be creative. You can play around with different layer effects, and try to create something truly unique – that'd be really hard to achieve on an analog canvas.

Most of my art is mimicking some sort of analog media, but I always try to add some sort of distorted effect that would be impossible – or really hard to achieve with real oils.

What is your opinion on digital art?