The debate between Digital or Traditional Painting

Is Digital painting a valid art form? Is using Photoshop or Corel Painter cheating? Would I ever sign my name to something created on the computer? If I digitally painted, could I say that I did it, or that I helped the computer do the rendering? Also, since there is no original after the image is done, could I ever feel that the image was ever more than just a color study? And what about using digital 3d models to slap my own costumes onto… to pose them a certain way and drop them into a scene and call it my creation? Would that be like building a real 3d model kit, painting it with model paints and photographing it and saying it was all me? Is that art? Perhaps it’s illustration? If so, what’s the difference between art and illustration and is one more valid than another – more important?

Here are some thumbnails of my digital art:

Now here are some Acrylic paintings I've done...

Regardless of the secondary debate of if something is art or illustration; the above mentioned questions tormented me for a very long time; ever since I first started witnessing digital art years ago. Obviously from what is in my portfolio, I have accepted digital painting enough to employ it, and addressed some of the concerns I’ve been harboring for so long.

For me, the debate went on longer than it did for others, and I suppose I am a late adopter to digital art merely out of the fact that I collect original art, and love creating it myself to either hang on the walls, give away or sell as a stand alone creation. While there was a time where I felt digital art was invalid, cheating, remote, transitory and just plain not for me, I have since come around to see that the end result is the highest standard by which I measure illustration. Is suppose, the ends do justify the means, so too, does the objective of the image being created.

For example, if I am undertaking a 60 by 180” landscape painting for my living room, I’ll use oils or acrylics on a real canvas, as the end result is a physical art object with no intention for mass market, internet or print and poster sales, although those are also very possible. In the next case, I am enlisted to produce a image for a book jacket which will end up measuring 6 x 9 inches, be printed on 5000 books and the client has no interest in the original nor the means in which I render it… so long as I meet the deadline and it is delivered as a 300 dpi tiff and in the style of previous works I’ve done or those by another artist they direct me to.

In this later case I’d go digital every time, since the ‘end use’ is multiplication of the image and having it digital in the first place will aid in getting it to the client, and the original file is something that I should probably duplicate to back up in case the client ever needs to recover their copy.

The above examples point out only a few aspects of the pros and cons of digital and traditional painting. As the debate within me raged over the last few years, and as I found myself doing increasingly more all-digital assignments out of necessity or demand, I gradually took to the computer graphics form, and found it had benefits and stylistic nuances which appealed to me. I realized, too, that I would have to have a closer look into going digital, weighing the pros and cons of each with a list. Below is what I came up with:

Pros and Cons of Traditional Painting

Pros

1. Originals to hang on walls at home, show, Conventions, events as unique promotions.

2. Original can be sold for the full commission price, if not more, as fine art at shows or online.

3. My kids can inherit my originals, and the art could stay in the family for generations, growing in value as well.

4. Hand crafted, old world masters ‘feel’ and respect. “You did that by hand!?”

5. I love my art supplies, brushes, canvases, boards, mixing the paint, experimenting.

6. I can paint upstairs or outside, with no power supply, getting away from the fricking screen.

7. No radiation.

8. Still feels like ‘real’ art… legitimate.

9. Can’t be deleted or corrupted. Canvas won’t crash or lock up.

10. Not cheating (no filters, dodge-burn, unlimited undos, saving versions, layers, etc.)

Cons of traditional media

1. Dying ‘Old School’ art form. Dated looking.

2. Messy.

3. Set up time.

4. Can’t bring painting to Starbucks or on holidays to work with on my laptop.

5. Can’t save versions or back up a copy.

6. Can’t move figures around on background or enlarge or shrink, flip etc.

7. Fumes with oils.

8. Heavy to move portfolio of originals.

9. Needs storage space.

10. Risk of fire or flood ruining entire collection.

11. No un-dos

12. Very slow (although I am considered a fast painter)

13. No ability to Zoom in to work on one area unless one wears opti-visors (magnification goggles for jewelry or model making work).

14. Not in Style! Therefore not in demand by art directors and thus I might not get any illustration work regardless of how nice an original might be).

Summery

10 Pros

-14 Cons

= -4 Score against

Pros and Cons of Digital Painting

Pros

1. No photography of artwork needed: already high resolution and ready to be flattened, converted to CMYK and sent to client via FTP or CD-ROM.

2. No Scanning color art (similar to photography pro, above).

3. Individual figures and elements can be used in other products or placements in a book or on a web site.

4. Twice to ten times faster to paint an image.

5. Increased productivity translates to more jobs and more income.

6. Way more options for effects, filters, brushes, tools, layers etc.

7. Pencil drawing could be considered the ‘original’.

8. Back up ‘master’ image can be stored in other offices or homes for safe keeping.

9. Hang prints at shows, Conventions, home, etc. (archival prints can be made on reasonably affordable printers these days).

10. Easier to make changes requested by client.

11. Paint anywhere, anytime on laptop.

12. no fumes.

13. Free painting supplies forever, once computer, software and Wacom tablet are purchased.

14. Almost no clean up or set up.

15. Style is current and sought after.

16. Digital art is not going to go away.

Cons of digital painting

1. No original.

2. Risk of computer crash.

3. Risk of data corruption by virus, error, glitch, or time degradation.

4. Risk of computer theft.

5. Must stare at a screen for countless hours.

6. Need larger screen (22” minimum for serious artist using software with a lot of pallets).

7. Harder on the hands using a Wacom pen or, god forbid, a mouse.

8. Need a ton of hard drive memory and RAM.

9. Everybody and their dog are getting into digital art, and maybe the demand for the style might not be strong enough to provide work for all these talented artists.

10. Perhaps in five or ten years, Art Directors might really crave a more hand crafted, old master look and feel.

11. In 500 years, you can bet that the originals by Frazetta, Boris, Brom, Vess, Parkinson, Easley, Caldwell, Elmore, The Brothers Hildibrant, (WILL increase list by ten more dudes), will still be around and considered among the great works of our civilization, and fetching prices at auction that are unfathomable to us in present day currency values. Even if your grandchildren can sell some of your works a hundred years from now, if they are oils or acrylics or some other hardy art materials, they too will fetch a tidy sum for them. How will digital art fare in a five hundred or even a more modest hundred years? Will the files be lost or corrupted? Accidentally deleted?

Pros 16

Cons -11

= +5 score in favor

So traditional painting gets negative 4 while digital painting gets a plus 5… the result strong enough to make me order a 22” Dell flat screen with which I have been doing a lot of new digital images. I cannot say that I have completely switched over to computer art, even though I tell myself that I have gotten around the whole originals thing by considering my pencil drawings in my sketchbook as the original, not the painting on the screen.

Within me, I debate the same issues I started this entry with; is it valid, is it cheating, is it mine? Can one continue to do cutting edge, even trendy work with non-digital media? I think anyone who takes a look at Brom’s work can have that answered for them. He uses oils to render dark fantasy imagery in a style which countless up and coming artists take inspiration and stylistic tips from. I’ll stop short of saying they are copying him because how can any creative person, especially a fantasy artist, not look at Brom’s stuff and have their own artistic expression not echo his? Said another way, he has been working for well over a decade, and his work does not look dated or old school at all. I am not sure he has switched over to digital or not, or if he plans to, but I hope he stays with the oils so people 500 years from now will have something left of this great age of speculative art.

For myself, the only solution is to neither fully accept nor fully reject digital nor traditional painting. Instead of forcing a choice, I’ll use either digital or traditional, based on the demands of the job, the end use for the image, the time line, scale, price, and even the subject matter. Even as I explore the possibilities of digital art, I will continue to delve into new styles, techniques and mediums with paint, clay, textured boards, and canvas. Perhaps my unique voice will find its best match in some as yet to be discovered medium, yet, as I am a fantasy freelancer with a family to support, the important thing is the best result for the image I provide to my client, on time, and on budget.

WM