turn your holiday snaps into Van Gogh like images in seconds. There is then a tendency to look at any digital painting as if it's got no artistic value. This is despite artists of the stature of David Hockney producing iPad paintings.
My work does, admittedly, use photographs - but then it did when I was painting with acrylic on canvas - I'm not able to paint freehand or just create without some already existing visual source. That doesn't negate the value of the work. If it did, Warhol would be discounted, as would many artists over the years who have created work using photographic originals.
I 'paint' digital pictures using 'brushes' of different kinds, sizes, shapes, and do this by hand and individually. These can take between a few hours to a few days to do, depending on the complexity and nature of the picture. Faces are easy to do, but I've recently done one which has horses, people and buildings in it, and this took a great deal of time and effort. It is quite normal for me to redo a picture, sometimes several times, before I get one I am happy with - and often I am never truly satisfied with the end result (even if others are). Earlier this year I did a portrait, had this printed and sent to me. When I saw it full size and 'in the flesh' I realise that there was a issue with it. No one else saw this, everyone told me that it was great. I ripped it up and redid it. It didn't matter how good others thought it was, only what I thought.
Running a photo through an app might well get you similar or even better results, but it's impersonal, the end result will have nothing of you in it, and above all else, I want my pictures to reflect what I feel and what I see in a picture. Otherwise there's no point in doing them.
Did you know your librarian is an Artist? artist?