Roger Godbout
Photographe -
Abstract art
Address :
Neuville, QC, Canada
Phone:
+1 418 909-0611
Email:
Facebook:
Biography
Born in Gatineau in 1951, Roger Godbout has been living in the Quebec City area for over 50 years.
Self-taught, he has worked as a cameraman, soundman and editor for various television networks. He has also worked as a director for educational and community institutions. In the 80s, he was in charge of filming and editing courses at Laval University.
Already in the seventies, Roger Godbout was fascinated by the experiments of fusion of the classical techniques of plastic art with the new technologies that were called at the time audio-visual. A great admirer of the filmmaker Norman McLaren, he did his own experiments with painting and engraving on film. At the same time, he explored the use of chemical and thermal processes on slides or the stamping of objects or body parts, replacing ink with developer on photosensitive paper.
After a detour into textile arts, he put graphic creation on hold to devote himself to his career as a video artist. It is only in the last ten years that he has recovered his creative freedom, which he exercises particularly through photography and digital art.
Artistic approach
Roger Godbout uses the term photopainting to describe this new discipline, a form of mixed media that combines classical photography and digital painting.
At the beginning, he does what any photographer does: find a subject, frame, choose a focal length, adjust the exposure etc. It is thereafter that he forks towards a more graphic approach by reworking this photograph on computer with various software of treatment of the image. (Photoshop of course but several others are at his disposal. These are his brushes, his color tubes, his stamps).
From the original image, he applies different filters either to the whole or to parts of the image with fusion masks. Then he makes these different layers react to each other by choosing the blending mode and the degree of transparency.
The use of filters often induces undesirable artifacts in certain areas of the image that he corrects with the correction and cloning buffers. It also refines certain details with the brush and pencil tools.
So it's not a matter of applying a filter like you would find on any cell phone. It is not the computer that does everything by itself. It is a continuous series of choices, inspiration, failures and successes.