The Traditional Art vs Digital Art Debate
Why Can’t You Do Both?
It is fascinating to see how technology changes a whole industry. Digital art changed the art world, but it didn’t make traditional art obsolete. Traditional and digital art can happily coexist together, because they are different to each other. But you can learn both, no matter what your goal is. In fine art, original art is a requirement, but it means that you only earn money when you sell art or make a commission. In Illustrative art, the hope is to work as a freelancer or for a company. Here, you have a job to design video games, children’s books or.comic books. You have a deadline and are required to finish as quickly as possible. In digital art, you make a mistake press ctrl z and your mistake disappears. In traditional art you may spend hours fixing a mistake. This is why doing both can be advantageous. An illustrator named Jake Parker, who started Inktober, sketches out his art on his Cintiq tablet and then prints it out. He then precedes to ink his work in by hand and colours it traditionally. He now has an physical artwork, that he can sell and can easily send his sketches to his publishers. Painting traditionally can be a fraught process because there is the reality in the back of your head that you can ruin your artwork. Walking this fine line improves your fundamental skills. Instead of moving a small imperfection in Photoshop with the lasso tool, you have to sketch or repaint the artwork while moving everything around. This teaches you more by learning from your mistakes then Photoshop can.
The Pros and Cons
There are pros and cons to both forms. In Photoshop, it is difficult to blend paint, drawing a line feels more difficult then in real life and you have to learn how to use Photoshop. Instead of learning two skills at once, learn one. Photoshop is an exciting tool, there are things that are easier and quicker to paint in Photoshop. You don’t have to worry about mixing paints or waiting for paint to dry. But you are dealing with technology. Ironically I had to spend the last five minutes figuring out why I was overtyping while writing. If I had written this blog by hand, I would have already been finished. It may not look as perfectly laid out as it does here, with my previous mistakes hidden from view, but I wouldn’t have been sidetracked. That is the reality of working on a computer. It is easy to become sidetracked because there is a disconnect caused by technology. When working with a canvas you can touch and interact with it using your hands. You feel connected to it. With digital art you are constrained to the size of your screen. It is why photos do not adequately capture traditional artworks. When you see a traditional artwork, you see the correct size, the authentic colours, you feel the emotions the artist put into the painting and you see the brushstrokes. You can see the imperfections which add character to the work. With digital art you can make your artwork perfect, but in the end it is a computer that is laying those brushstrokes for you. This brings another point traditional art has many distinct and versatile mediums, digital art creates a similar look no matter how hard you try to mimic the different traditional mediums. It should be viewed as its own medium, digital art can do impossible things that you would not be able to do traditionally. Traditional and digital differences are the reason why you should learn both. They can both be used to make beautiful art, by learning both you have many more possibilities.
Coauthored with Francesca Darcy who has more experience with Photoshop and learning both forms of art. Twitter @francesca_darcy
