Painterly Mobile Artist - Maarten Oortwijn

Here's another highlight on one of the many talented members of the Painterly Mobile Art Flickr Group.  I love Maarten's style and was eager to find out more about his life and work.

Please visit the group to see more of Maarten's work along with that of all of the artists. If you are a mobile photographer who enjoys editing in a painterly style, we'd love to have you join!

The Artist 

Maarten Oortwijn - I live in Amsterdam, have two daughters and work as a software engineer in the centre of Amsterdam. I'm a music addict, playing guitar (Flamenco, Bossa Nova) and I like to create images. It all started at the age of two, when my parents gave me a Bic pen to draw. Soon I began to draw everything around me (and on everything around me when running out of paper). Gradually, I learned other techniques and used other materials until I was painting big murals at the age of 25. At the moment, I'm into more modest sizes, switching between analogue and digital. The digital part started when I got an iPhone and Hipstamatic. First I was focusing on photography, but gradually started to use other apps for further processing. The next step came with the Paper 53 app. It's a wonderful and simple drawing app, very responsive (most other drawing apps are too slow). My work evolved to a seamless blend of photos and drawing. In the meantime, I'm still shooting straight black and white Hipstamatics and creating analogue paintings from time to time - and sometimes feeling the mural itch.

The Work

© Maarten Oortwijn

Maarten's Commentary

For this image, I started with a background pattern. It was created from a picture of stone ornaments taken in Portugal this summer. I used Diptic, Image Blender, Tangled FX and Painteresque. At the bottom, I added some plants from another picture. Next step were the faces. These came from a drawing I made with Paper53. The spiral structures were made by mixing a drawing and a variation of the background pattern (inverted the colors). After adding the red figures, I felt something was still missing. As a finishing touch, I added the cracks and holes with the Grunge app and some clouds (Paper53). I hardly ever plan a picture, and when starting with a plan, I never stick to it. Images just evolve.


Find Maarten: Flickr / Wijnworks

Links to apps mentioned:

Diptic
Image Blender
Tangled FX
Hipstamatic
Painteresque
Paper53
Modern Grunge