Showing posts with label 2025. Show all posts

December 26, 2025

Bekir Baba
PHD/Proficiency in Art Thesis – Gaziantep University / Institute of Social Sciences / Department of Painting – Advisor: Prof. Dr. Mustafa Cevat Atalay
Baba, B. (2025). Digital painting applications in the interaction between technology and art (Thesis No. 989476) [Proficiency in Art thesis, Gaziantep University, Institute of Social Sciences]. Council of Higher Education National Thesis Center.
This study, which examines the structural transformation generated by digital technologies in art production practices with a specific focus on "digital painting," centers on a contemporary art environment in which technology has evolved from being a passive tool into a constitutive component of aesthetic construction. Conducted within the framework of classical qualitative research, the study has been structured and expanded in alignment with Practice-Based Research, which positions the artist's own production experience as the primary data source. The research process has been carried out along two interrelated and mutually nourishing axes: theoretical grounding and artistic practice. In the first axis, the historical origins of digital painting, pixel-based aesthetics, and human-computer interaction have been analyzed through relevant literature. In the second main axis, 10 original digital painting works produced by the researcher using Adobe Fresco (version 5.70) have been evaluated through qualitative content analysis regarding technical proficiency, layer structure, and surface simulation. Throughout this process, the stages of creation—from the preliminary sketch to the final design—have been systematically recorded to make the artist's relationship with the digital interface visible. The research findings demonstrate that the material, compositional, and expressive conventions of traditional painting discipline give rise to a hybrid aesthetic model intertwined with the affordances of the digital environment, such as undo, iterative variation, layer management, and AI-assisted tools. This flexibility offered by the digital interface transforms the artist's perception of time and space, converting the artwork from a "finished object" into an updatable data form that can be revised and regenerated throughout the creative process. In this thesis, digital painting practice is therefore positioned not merely as a technological innovation, but as an autonomous, process-driven field of expression that reopens discussions on the ontology of contemporary art and the viewer's experience.
BEKİR BABA

Abstract

This study, which examines the structural transformation generated by digital technologies in art production practices with a specific focus on "digital painting," centers on a contemporary art environment in which technology has evolved from being a passive tool into a constitutive component of aesthetic construction. Conducted within the framework of classical qualitative research, the study has been structured and expanded in alignment with Practice-Based Research, which positions the artist's own production experience as the primary data source. The research process has been carried out along two interrelated and mutually nourishing axes: theoretical grounding and artistic practice. In the first axis, the historical origins of digital painting, pixel-based aesthetics, and human-computer interaction have been analyzed through relevant literature. In the second main axis, 10 original digital painting works produced by the researcher using Adobe Fresco (version 5.70) have been evaluated through qualitative content analysis regarding technical proficiency, layer structure, and surface simulation. Throughout this process, the stages of creation—from the preliminary sketch to the final design—have been systematically recorded to make the artist's relationship with the digital interface visible. The research findings demonstrate that the material, compositional, and expressive conventions of traditional painting discipline give rise to a hybrid aesthetic model intertwined with the affordances of the digital environment, such as undo, iterative variation, layer management, and AI-assisted tools. This flexibility offered by the digital interface transforms the artist's perception of time and space, converting the artwork from a "finished object" into an updatable data form that can be revised and regenerated throughout the creative process. In this thesis, digital painting practice is therefore positioned not merely as a technological innovation, but as an autonomous, process-driven field of expression that reopens discussions on the ontology of contemporary art and the viewer's experience.
Keywords: Digital painting, technology-art interaction, human-computer interaction
Published in: Council of Higher Education National Thesis Center
Type: PHD/Proficiency in Art Thesis
Advisor: Prof. Dr. Mustafa Cevat Atalay
Cite (APA): Baba, B. (2025). Digital painting applications in the interaction between technology and art (Thesis No. 989476) [Proficiency in Art thesis, Gaziantep University, Institute of Social Sciences]. Council of Higher Education National Thesis Center.

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Sergi Afişi

The series In the Recess of Time: Ancient Ruins and New Migrants consists of digital paintings that bring together the landscapes of ancient cities in Anatolia and flocks of flamingos. Archaeological sites such as Letoon, Side, Pergamon, Amastris, Knidos, Zeugma, Assos, Priene, Blaundus, and Alahan Monastery are presented as stone remains representing historical continuity, placed side by side on the same surface with “new migrants” that shift from one place to another.

The scenes in the series are not merely touristic landscape images depicting a single moment. They are constructed as hybrid scenes in which different layers of time intersect within the same frame: the historical trace of ancient ruins and the fragility of contemporary ecological reality. In this way, the viewer experiences a simultaneous encounter with both the archaeological past and the present-day mobility of migratory birds; the tension between the settled and the nomadic becomes visible.

These works demonstrate that software-based tools such as layers, masks, texture, and color management in the process of pixel-based digital painting are not merely technical conveniences, but active components that shape the aesthetic construction itself. The multilayered surfaces built using Adobe Fresco and a graphic tablet combine light, color transitions, and texture with a labor-intensive process of handwork and decision-making, similar to brushwork on canvas.

The series is positioned in the practical section of the proficiency in art / doctoral dissertation titled Digital Painting Practices in the Interaction of Technology and Art as a concrete example illustrating how digital painting redefines the concepts of originality, craftsmanship, and aesthetic value. In the Recess of Time invites the viewer to reconsider, through digital painting, both ancient cities and their present-day ecological and visual reality.

Alahan’s Silent Courtyard Opening to Light
Alahan’s Silent Courtyard Opening to Light
The Time Waiting for Amastris
The Time Waiting for Amastris
Stones Waiting in the Falling Light of Assos
Stones Waiting in the Falling Light of Assos
Shadows Waiting on the High Threshold of Blaundus
Shadows Waiting on the High Threshold of Blaundus
Knidos’s Threshold Facing the Light
Knidos’s Threshold Facing the Light
The Fragile Silence of Letoon
The Fragile Silence of Letoon
The Stones of Pergamon Speaking with the Wind
The Stones of Pergamon Speaking with the Wind
In Priene, in the Traces of the Silent Wind
In Priene, in the Traces of the Silent Wind
The Silent Witnesses of Side
The Silent Witnesses of Side
The Reborn Light of Zeugma
The Reborn Light of Zeugma
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