Digital Lochs and Glens

Rendered Landscape Series

Artist Statement

Digital Lochs and Glens by The Visual Aye is a series of digital renders that presents the Scottish landscape as a distilled and minimal atmospheric form, capturing its immensity, raw presence, and tonal depth with a surreal painterly quality. Crafted entirely through digital construction, the series moves beyond photographic representation, embracing a refined sense of scale and solitude, culminating in a Romanticist abstraction of landscape. Rather than documenting specific locations, these works evoke the elemental weight of the terrain—the convergence of land and water, the monolithic clarity of rock and loch, and the quiet vastness that defines Scotland’s western landscapes.

Concept

The collection interprets the defining features of lochs and glens as recognisable yet subtly abstracted, minimal compositions, distilling the land into its purest structural and tonal form. Defined by homogeneous terrain, atmospheric weight, and spatial tension, the landscapes retain a recognisable foundation but move beyond documentation, emphasising scale, material presence, and atmosphere over literal representation.

The monolithic clarity of the terrain amplifies a sense of absence and detachment, stripping away excess detail to reinforce the landscape’s uninterrupted stillness. Elements of surrealism, minimalism, abstraction, and Romanticism shape the aesthetic, heightening the landscape’s sense of scale and restrained intensity. The images function in a post-photographic space—they are not captured or replicated but entirely constructed, allowing for total control over composition, light, and depth, reinforcing the landscape’s immediacy and structural clarity.

Technical

Each landscape is manually modelled and rendered using Cinema 4D and Corona Renderer, ensuring absolute control over form, light, and composition. The digital process does not mimic traditional media but moves beyond both painting and photography, constructing landscapes that exist without physical constraints.

Textures are built manually, reinforcing material weight and spatial accuracy. The balance of diffuse and direct lighting enhances depth, while calibrated material properties—such as the granular detail of rock and the reflective stillness of water—contribute to a heightened sense of realism within the abstraction. The artist does not use AI in any part of the process. Every element is deliberately constructed by hand, ensuring that composition, light, and atmosphere are precisely controlled. This approach prioritises intentionality over automation, maintaining a level of craftsmanship that is both digital and highly specific.

Cairn of the Glen

A solitary stone cairn punctuates the stillness of the glen, its presence both subtle and deliberate. Set within a landscape of uninterrupted terrain, the cairn remains static and unmoved, an interruption in the landscape’s fluidity, a quiet assertion of history, presence, and the weight of time. The glen extends in rolling gradients, meeting the loch in a seamless reflection of scale and depth.

Sentinel Pine

The pine stands alone, its presence shaped by absence. In a land where trees do not thrive, its survival is its distinction. Below, the valley recedes in layers, stretching into distance. The grass is thick and restless, in contrast to the sky, which settles over the landscape without variation. The tree remains rooted and exposed; a marker of endurance in an indifferent landscape.

Lochside Crag

A composition that emphasises the land’s imposing scale, where rock, water, and sky converge under distinct conditions. The saturated twilight casts a diffuse glow across the terrain, intensifying the junction where land meets water. The loch seamlessly reflects the looming landscape, merging with the moon’s subdued atmospheric light.