Traditional Art Leads to Digital Art?
Digital Art has the same beginnings for everyone. I started creating artwork with a humble pencil and paper Developing onto watercolours and acrylic paint.Culminating in what I consider the most accomplished form of traditional art, oil painting. Technology and software continued to develop. I found myself creating art by sketching, then scanning this into to Photoshop. Developing the piece further electronically. My new methods caused me to look back at my more traditional techniques. To think about how I have advanced my skills and capabilities. At the same time not allowing my PC to do all the work for me. I create crude sketches and art on paper, then refine these pieces using computer software. The beauty of digital artwork is you can undo elements you aren’t completely satisfied with. A little more difficult and time consuming when developing completely by hand!
This got me thinking, can digital artwork be considered as ‘art’? There is nothing that I can personally think of that could not be replicated from digital to traditional means.
Cutting Design Time
If you had the skills, you could develop a piece from scratch. Achieved in half the time on a computer. Is this ‘cheating’? I don’t think so. Being good at traditional art and digital art are two very different skills. Though the mindset and inspiration are in many ways the same. Give a traditional artist and a digital artist the same brief. Both would achieve a fantastic final piece, without a doubt. However, put a different spin on this. Ask the digital artist to revert to traditional methods to replicate the digital art. I don’t think they’d have a problem, but asking the traditional artist to digitize their piece? May be asking too much.
This makes me think that an artist, like myself, who has honed both techniques to a high standard. Does this make me more of an accomplished ‘artist’ than someone who can only paint by hand? This also applies to sculptors. Although sculpting is a difficult art form to master by hand. Sculpting and modeling using a 3D program is in itself a very unique. An equally difficult form of art. You ask the 3D computer modeler to create their sculpture by hand, they would have a fairly good chance of achieving a similar effort. Ask the traditional sculptor to carry out the same task, they would not know where to start on computer software!
Advances in Traditional Art
In my opinion, digital artwork is just taking traditional techniques that little bit further. Not restricted to the ‘real world’. I believe that accomplished artists are the individuals that can be given a brief, and can develop the same idea both traditionally and digitally. By utilizing and exploiting technology, artists can develop their techniques and be inspired on new levels, harnessing what technology and software have to offer, working with and not against it. It’s not only artists, but all areas of profession have taken the leap from manual tasking to computers and IT. I think that if Picasso or any great artist could see how art has developed, they would be in awe of digital artists, just as today artists admire and respect the masterpieces of the greats.
