There’s so much about how we live and work and play in the early 21st (almost wrote 20th!) century where stark, arbitrary, and meaningless contrasts are staked out. Mostly this is done to create division, drive web traffic, and stir up emotions.
A few examples:
- Work from home, or return to the office? Who cares where you work, as long as you’re productive and hitting all your deadlines and deliverables, frankly. Oh right, we have to think about all that business real estate that might go bust if we stay at home in our jammies.
- Paper or plastic? Hmmm paper is bad because the very existence of a paper bag, meant cutting down a tree… but plastic is worse (right?) because it can’t easily be recycled and ends up in our waterways etc. Here, I’ll tell you what, I’ll buy a reusable bag (and then forget it in the car, and then buy another).
- Dogs or cats? Dogs, clearly. Cats make me sneeze, and are very likely to eat their owners post mortem (post owner mortem, not cat mortem)(zombie cats are the subject of another blog entirely).
- The greatest British rock band of all time? Some say Beatles, others say Rolling Stones. They’re both wrong answers, because clearly the greatest Brits to ever hit the stage is/are Led Zeppelin. I’m sure that will start a fight or two, but you know I’m right. (I will also accept Queen, Def Leppard, Iron Maiden, and Black Sabbath as correct answers, BTW.)
Anyway, with the advent of digital tools like Procreate (which is super cheap, super powerful, and super versatile) on the iPad, you see a lot of artists adding digital to their existing art practice. Hell, some of the younger kids don’t know anything but digital, as that is their only world.
The question then arises: as an artist, should I embrace traditional/analog tools, or digital ones?
Here’s my take – it doesn’t matter what path you take in art. Stick to traditional. Blaze a trail with digital. Switch back and forth. As long as you’re able to make your art, just do your thing.
I started out with analog/traditional tools like brushes and scrapers and acrylic paints and pencils and pastels. The immediacy is terrific. So is feeling that feedback – how the pastels hit the tooth of the paper, for example, or how wet-on-wet paint blends and layers as you apply pressure with a palette knife.
What’s not so terrific? Storing all the paints and tools and canvases. Waiting for layers to dry. Messing up and having to gesso over huge portions of canvas to start over again (and waiting for gesso to dry while you stew on being a general f*ck up).
Oh and there’s more: having to pay huge buck-o-las to ship canvases to galleries and art buyers. Cleaning up brushes and hands and dammit I got paint on my nice jeans even though I wore an apron, how the hell did that happen??!?!?!!?
On the digital front, I can take an entire studio with me by carrying an iPad, Apple Pencil, and (optionally) a glove. All my colors, brushes, canvases, previously made artworks? Right there on a neat compact system. And no matter what I do, I never get pastel dust or paint splatters on me.
Do I really love the way I made the clouds on a certain digital painting and wish to reuse those clouds in other works? Copy that layer onto a new piece and voila, there you have it. (If you’re not working in layers, then you’re really missing out!)
Want to make a bunch of variations of a single painting, say with different background colors or what have you? Copy/paste and change layers, voila.
Want to experiment quickly without having to wait for stuff to dry? Digital is your jam. Want to try out new brushes? Instead of schlepping off to the art store or ordering from the web and waiting a week, simply buy a set of brushes online and download to Procreate. Bam. Ready to go.
Downsides to digital? Well, for one thing, at some point, a buyer is going to want a physical piece of art to hang on their wall, so you’ve got to work with a reliable printer who will give you the quality your art deserves and the kinds of materials your buyer wants (wood, canvas, metal, etc) and who will also drop ship for you, because handling all of that is a super pain.
Another downside? Sometimes technology just fails. Software crashes and there goes hours of effort and work. Backups fail, or get corrupted. And sometimes your spouse or significant other puts a nice big jug of hot tea on your desk and you forget about it and turn and tip that sucker over onto your equipment and watch it die.
Finally, if you work only in digital you hit the same creative shortfalls that any artist hits if they stick to just ONE medium (be it sculpture, painting, sketching, charcoals, whatever). I’m talking about getting into a creative rut. And no matter how good people think your art is while you’re in that rut, YOU know you’re in a rut, and ruts suck.
With digital you are always working on a screen, with a stylus of some kind, sitting in a room somewhere. To break that cycle, grab a sketchpad and a pencil and go sit in a park and sketch people flying kites. Or grab a camera and go for a hike in the mountains or on the beach. Or take up a metal sculpting class and see how that acetylene torch feels in your hands.
So that’s my take on it. What are your thoughts?
