Staff Writer

 Stuart Letizia creates fantasy worlds through the tip of his stylus.

Letizia, July’s Kennebunk Free Library featured artist, exhibits several of his adventure-, western- and action-themed digital illustrations in the library’s Speers Gallery.

Despite similarities to traditional works of art, Letizia paints illustrations through gestures of a stylus on a Wacom graphics tablet. The results appear on a digital canvas in Photoshop on his computer.

Letizia, 28, of Biddeford, has focused on this media since 2007, midway through his Master of Fine Arts program at Pensacola Christian College.

“It really grabbed me because it allows me to be able to use my imagination in a way that I just can’t seem to unlock with traditional media,” Letizia said.

Letizia said he went “hog wild” with the new media after discovering it in a course that focused on the emerging technology. He found he could capture the subject matter he enjoyed without getting bogged down in the restrictions of traditional media.

Letizia said he was drawn to the digital process because of the way it “cleaned up the process” of making art.

“I tend to be kind of a neat person when I’m working and acrylics are nice in this matter because they are a lot neater than oils, but this even more so because you don’t have a palette with a lot of colors that can accidentally touch you here and then spread there,” he said.

“For me that was a major road block for getting stuff done,” he added.

He said he also appreciates the ability of digital media to “achieve a color spot on instantaneously.”

Despite the modern equipment, digital painting replicates traditional media in many ways, Letizia said. Formal artistic qualities including lighting, atmosphere, color and shading and questions of realism and abstraction all come into play.

“Basically this is my digital canvas,” Letizia said of the Wacom Graphics Tablet. “And I work on it just as you would work on a piece of linen.”

Letizia said his favorite freedom of the digital process is the ability to undo mistakes.

“Control z is the best,” he said of the computer shortcut. “If you go back to other media after this you find yourself going ‘control, z, control, z,’ and you just can’t.”

The Kennebunk Free Library exhibit is Letizia’s first since his solo exhibition to complete his Master of Fine Arts.

The exhibit showcased his passion for adventure and western themes.

“What I appreciate and find most inspiring about a lot of these genres is the fact that it’s such a classic return to some good old-fashioned storytelling and elements of self-sacrifice, truth, love, justice and good versus evil,” he said.

Letizia puts hours of research into each illustration to ensure authenticity and powerful storytelling.

For a series of three images based on the Normandy invasion Letizia researched the time period, clothing and detail to achieve historical accuracy. He bought gear at military surplus store and dressed up, posed and photographed his friends emulating battle poses in one of his classrooms. Letizia then used the photographs as source material.

The series of three images, currently on display in the Kennebunk Free Library exhibit, took Letizia more than 80 hours to create.

He uses the source material photographic process to create proper lighting and realism for many of his illustrations. But, he said, the process remains creative.

“It isn’t tracing, it’s completely freehand … and there’s still so much creativity because you have to imagine a lot of your lighting as you set it up and you have to add a lot of elements of costume and storytelling that were not there in the source image,” he said.

Letizia said he has had to defend digital illustration as an art form. He and his wife Ashley, a fellow Pensacola Christian College art graduate and oil painter had to defend the legitimacy of the media in school as they sought their degrees.

“(The school) didn’t feel it was really on quite the same level as the traditional approach and to be honest I understand because we were the first two to really pursue it,” he said.

For many viewers, the distinction is blurred between traditional painting and Letizia’s digital illustration.

“I find that many people wouldn’t know that that’s how I produced it. Even though I say it’s a digital show and describe the process, they will probably just think it’s a painting or a print of a painting. Which is great, because to me that says legitimacy,” he said.

Letizia’s background in digital illustration has fueled both an artistic passion and a career.

Letizia, as a graphic designer for Briggs Advertising in Bath, focuses on both design and illustration projects.

“It’s a great job, I love my crew there and it’s a wonderful balance. Illustration takes up so much time that I’m grateful to have the graphic and Web design work. I appreciate both pretty equally. It keeps me refreshed to come home and dive into a creative project in the evening,” he said.

Letizia said in the future he’d like to delve back into larger-scale illustration projects such as the Normandy invasion series.

“I’d like to accumulate costumes and lighting equipment and approach a giant project again,” he said.

“Really,” he added. “The sky is the limit.”

Letizia’s exhibit “Realms of Adventure: Digital Illustration” hangs in the Speers Gallery at Kennebunk Free Library through July. A reception for the show is Tuesday from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. and is open to the public.

Staff Writer Rachel H. Goldman can be reached at 282-4337, ext. 233.