Digital Artist Charles Jawor on 3D Modeling, Glitch Art, and Dark Surrealism
Artist spotlight: Charles Jawor
Though my professional career is filled with numbers and spreadsheets, I have always maintained creative outlets to stop myself from going crazy. During the COVID-19 lockdowns, I found myself in a pokey flatshare with a live-in landlord, and the need to minimise mess and operate in a very small space led me away from tubes of acrylic paint and large drawing pads, and into 3D modelling software on my laptop.
And just like that, I had found my medium.
Contemporary 3D modelling software has limitless creative potential, but it’s also highly technical and mathematical. As such, this medium tickles both sides of my brain in equal measure. My eureka moment came when I realised I could use image manipulation software to take my precise, and rather sterile, 3D renders and turn them into more expressive, experimental, and abstract pieces.
Though I’m still learning, after several years of practice I have finally begun producing pieces I am proud to showcase.
In each piece, I strive to create atmosphere first and foremost. I begin with an idea of composition and assemble my 3D scene accordingly, using geometry nodes and physics-based simulations to literally pour bones and other assets over my scenes. It’s all mathematical, but the outcome feels organic. After lighting my scene, I then render and export it into image manipulation software, where I distort, glitch, and tear the image until every pixel is packed with texture, noise, and hidden detail.
The result is painterly, yet still unmistakably digital.
My work centres on constructing dense structures that merge skeletal, architectural, and organic forms into composite figures and monuments—invoking the idea of the human body as infrastructure. My process explores accumulation and erosion, whereby I build complex and detailed scenes and then degrade and bury those details in digital abrasion until they feel almost excavated from, or etched into, the screen. I also explore body horror, transformation, and corruption. Though I don’t seek to create any specific narrative in my work, themes of post-humanism, entropy, and death appear throughout.
Artist bio
Charles is a digital artist based in South London. He creates apocalyptic digital renders in a style influenced by dark surrealist artists such as Zdzisław Beksiński and H. R. Giger.
Follow the artist on Instagram to see more of his work, as well as behind-the-scenes images and videos showing his process.
Instagram: @charliescene___
