Fine Art or Graphic Design?

The images represented above are self portraits developed on Adobe Photoshop CS. These are the concept pieces for a oil painting. I find this method intriguing, the various filters and my combinations of them, the various corrections and distortions from the original photo, all present me with unique starting points for my work. I find this very exciting, although I suspect a traditioal oil painter would object to the work-up of a concept with a digital image instead of a oil sketch. The oils sketch doe not need to be excluded, but it probably will be. I like the immediacey, the certain element of happenstance which occurs, and the short trime involved in the concept's development. The major artistic drawback I can imagine is a series of works which could lack growth in depth and bereft of intellectual stimuli creating instead a dependancy simply on stylistic prowess. A prowess which could be credited to the machine rather more than to my abilities... We shall see what happens.