Tortrei Technique

The Tortrei Technique is a style of digital art that involves manipulating digital photographic images through a "twisting" and "pulling" method, wherein a new image, unrecognisable from the original, is made out of another. It is related to digital art, and photography. The technique was developed by Amanda Hartfree-Bright in 2009, through experimentation with digital image manipulation.
Background
The Tortrei Technique was developed by new media artist Amanda Hartfree-Bright in 2009 to use textures and colours from real world photographs as a pallet for completely new and often unrelated artwork. The resulting images are often abstract and colourful.
The word Tortrei was created by Amanda Hartfree-Bright in 2009 to describe the technique.
Technique
The technique starts by studying a digital image (usually a photograph) in abstraction. That is to say looking at the structures, patterns and shapes that make up the image, as opposed to the image as a whole. The object of the exercise is to let the artist's imagination identify structures within the image that can be developed in to a new, and often completely unrelated, image.
Following the identification of the elements the artist wishes to use, digital manipulation software such as Corel Painter, Adobe Photoshop or GIMP and a graphics tablet and digital pen are then used to pull and twist the image, or part of the image, into a new image. In effect the artist is using the source image as a pallet of colours and textures to create something new. The technique relies on the use of image processing software, but is not an automated process and requires a significant amount of time to master.
The resulting images are then printed on to a variety of substrates to provide the best possible medium for viewing the work. Most commonly used are metallic paper, aluminium sheet and acrylic glass also known as Plexiglass or Perspex due to the light and colour enhancing nature of these materials.
Artwork
The art produced by this technique is often very colourful, and frequently abstract, although there is no requirement to be abstract.
Pronunciation and Definition
Tortrei (to twist and pull a digital image as a basis for a new image)
Etymology
The word "Tortrei" is loosely based on a contraction of the root of two words:
* Tor ~ from the latin torqueo (as in torsion - to twist);
* Tra ~ from the latin tractus (as in traction or attract- to pull):
Proponents and Practitioners
* Amanda Hartfree-Bright

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