From Sketch to Screen: Bringing My Art to Life Through Digital Manipulation

By Lissia Fraser

In my last blog, I discussed how my creative process often begins with loose sketches, quick scribbles, and layers of playful experimentation — the first sparks that help me shape new ideas. Today, I’d love to take you a little deeper into another part of my process that’s just as important to how my work comes to life. This is digital manipulation.

Finding the Balace Between Traditional and Digital

Many of my pieces begin with photographs from my own collection — images I’ve taken over the years and stored in what I think of as my personal photo bank. These photos often serve as inspiration or as raw material that I can layer with hand-drawn or painted elements when needed.

I’ve always been fascinated by the space where the hand drawn meets the digital — where brushstrokes and pixels start to talk to each other. For me, that’s where the real magic happens.

For the piece of work “Sleepy Forest” featured in this blog, everything started with a series of instinctive free flowing scribbles that slowly took shape into more refined scribbles. These were then further developed into compositions using acrylic inks.

When I completed two acrylic ink paintings of the forest theme, I made a bold decision to cut up the one that felt less successful and reassemble its fragments over the other. I kept tweaking, layering and building up textures and details until I had a composition which felt balanced and alive.

This spontaneous act sparked excitement in me which resulted in a completely transformed composition. A breath of new life made this painted image more unique in its own right.

Now satisfied with this stage, I photographed the piece and moved into the digital stage of my process.

Initial scribble using a pen

Further development using a black marker pen

Acrylic inks - Forest Tree

Acrylic inks - The Forest

Forest - fragmented

Transforming Through Digital Layers

This is where the artwork magic really starts to evolve. I experiment with filters, colour levels, and layered imagery, adding new details — in this case, vibrant orange fruits intertwined within the composition. Each digital adjustment is intuitive but intentional and builds on the textures, colour and depth of the original, adding emotion and meaning with every step.

At the heart of this piece is a tree which has long been a recurring symbol in my work. For me, it represents, abundance, protection, a place of serenity. The surrounding intertwined leaves and branches provide this insular protection from the chaos outside it. In this case the harmful elements of its natural surroundings.

I added touches of gold and silver to highlight the leaves giving them a tactile shimmer, almost like they’re catching the light.

If you look closely, you’ll notice a face with closed eyes hidden in the trunk. It’s still and peaceful, almost meditative — an invitation for the viewer to pause and reflect. The oranges that weave through the branches symbolize vitality, strength, and the richness of life. Finally, I added more gold and silver details to bring a sense of warmth, luxury, and the quiet beauty of nature reimagined.

Sleepy Forest available for purchase

Bringing It All Together

This piece is a perfect example of how I love to blend traditional and modern techniques — paint, collage, and digital manipulation — to create something unique, textured, and layered in both form and feeling. Each stage of the process adds a new dimension, building a bridge between what’s hand drawn and what’s digitally transformed.

A Reflection

For me, creating art this way is about more than technique — it’s about transformation. I love that I can take something familiar, like a photograph or one of my old drawings, and rework it until it becomes something entirely new. It’s a conversation between the past and the present, between the tactile and the digital.

Each piece is a reminder that creativity has no fixed path — it’s a journey of exploration, risk, and discovery.

You can see this New piece, along with others from my collection, at

👉 www.colourandash.com