The Art of Canvas competition winner and multi-discipline artist Jim Wynne talks to us about his use of Canvas over the years to create precise, intricate and highly realistic drawings.
To describe Jim Wynne as an artist active in a range of disciplines doesn’t quite do him justice. Photography, painting, screen printing, etching, ice sculpture, and even pumpkin carving are among his many creative talents. To top it off, he’s also an expert user of Canvas graphics software and now the winner of our first ‘Art of Canvas’ competition.
Now retired, and living at the southern tip of the Canadian side of Lake Huron, Jim maintains a prolific artistic work rate. Of all the work that was submitted for the competition Jim’s stood out for its combination of precision, intricacy and realism. The fact that his highly detailed drawings of insects and vintage cameras were created from scratch in Canvas X speaks volumes about his expertise with the software and reflects the power and versatility of the software itself.
Even seasoned users of the software here at Canvas GFX assumed Jim had used the Autotrace feature as the starting point for his camera art. But the reality is that he generated every one of the images starting with a simple shape in Canvas X.
“I wasn’t working from photos of the cameras,” says Jim. “I was working from the actual objects themselves. I own every one of those cameras. And in fact I didn’t even measure them, it was all by eye. I drew a box in my Canvas document and that became the back of the camera. And then I just built it forward, making sure my light was right, and the F-stops were right and everything else.”
The most complex of the camera images have over 200 individual objects in them and use multiple Canvas layers. Jim has perfected a number of tricks over the years enabling him to show curvature and light on the lens, and to represent the lens bellows.
Jim was working as an information manager and public relations junior, doing freelance art and photography on the side when he first discovered Canvas at his place of work. At the time it was a Mac-only product and he was a “dedicated PC-guy”. He used Canvas at work to create presentations, marketing artwork and was drawn to its ability to handle vector images.
Over time as his skills grew he began to use it in his own artwork, eventually buying his own copy when it became available as a PC product which was delivered on a stack of floppy discs.
While Canvas is renowned as a technical illustration tool, Jim is focused purely on artwork. “The capabilities of Canvas go well beyond what the engineering types use it for,” he says. “For me it replaced Photoshop and Illustrator; I didn’t need either of them. I’ve got my text, my photographs, vector images, everything I need. And it’s a hell of a lot less expensive than buying Adobe!”
We have seen some fantastic Canvas artwork produced over the years – David Rumfelt’s iconic Ferrari drawing is famous in its own right – and David shared some other impressive work as part of the competition.
We would like to thank everybody who sent in their work. In the end, the breadth of Jim’s Canvas art and the incredible, hand-drawn attention to detail made him stand out.
We hope he continues to create in Canvas for many years to come and we look forward to sharing more of his work.
If you would like to share any of your Canvas creations or participate in the Canvas Originals series, please email mike.hibberd@canvasgfx.com