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Traditional vs. the 21st century
We have to study traditional art and pass. Though all of my friends that have already graduated and are making a living doing art ~do it digitally except for maybe a rough sketch . An the way it looks I really feel we should have wacoms rather then charcoal in our young impressionable hands. Any thoughts to how you feel art is going to change do to the digital age?. . .
I mean look at photography it really was not that long ago before the first digital camera popped out and look at the changes it has bought .
__________________ "I count only the bright hours"
I have seen a demonstration on the internet of an asian guy who made sketches with a wacom, and he was very fast and the strokes he made had this swing and elegance, it really looked great. If one has such talent and abilities, I would say why not? But for me it is clear, I will never achieve with my digital pen what I can do with a pencil. (the real-world pencil has more than 1024 pressure levels. It has infinite pressure levels. And I don't even want to mention all those different brushes and techniques.)
In photography and film, I see clearly a change, definitely.
Hmm somehow i feel at the end of the day its just another medium. Digital or Analog, just another medium to get good at .... the real artist is the person behind the computer or the pencil =D.
For photography ... there are still some purists out who believes that film is better than digital, which at times its true but its just a matter of time b4 technology catches up. I used to work in the commercial photography industry, the biggest problem with high end digital cameras is its cost ... 40k for just a digital back and another 10 -20 k for a camera and 1 lens, and than you need a MAC environment to work ... its crazy i tell u.
well what i am trying to say is .... for it be digital or analog .. is just another medium to master .. thats all =D
In my opinion the past and the present shows diferents ways and tecnologies of the human creativity, and all are good, i ´don´t believe that oil painting will disappear with the introduction of digital painting. It a question of diferents feelings and textures...
I think Traditional art is better because it signifies the real human emotion and skill of an artist. with computer you have a Tool Bar...
I dont go for any of that for a hot minute , photoshop and painter are way more than a tool bar ,, they are definatly not a one click create breath taking art pony many think , they have a digital pallete more complicated and harder to master than any traditional means in the history of art , to create compelling computer art you still need to use the exact same skills of the traditional artist and follow the same rules of composition , perspective and color theory that he follows , yet you have unlimited scope to fullfill your imagination , I have seen digital paintings that are exploding with emotion that would have Rembrant standing in awe , computer art comes in many forms and styles , art will never change and will always be in the eye of the beholder .
I have seen crap traditional art and crap computer art and also brilliant works in both forms , art is art , it has no boundrys no right or wrong way , the mass viewer cares little as to how a moving piece is created for any brilliant piece of work is in the end still a one only unique expression of the artist and it stands on its own merit , how it was created means nothing !
Rod
Here is a digital painting I did in Photoshop ,I believe it expresses emotion
wow, that's an impressive photoshop painting. And it really expressed emotion. Not because of the tear, rather because of the eyes and the wrinkles. A moment in time, captured and put into a digital painting. Congratulations.
I will never be able to reach that realism with photoshop, although I have a very nice wacom tablet.
But I want to point out an elemental difference between traditional and digital art. In digital art, you have as a result a file, that can be printed. Printing, again, is an art for itself, and when you have the right paper/cardboard and the right colours, the result can be displayed.
In traditional art, you have a final result, which can be photographed, reprinted, multiplied, but still you have one single original. But it's not the uniqueness that I find important, it's the material language of an oil painting. Many masters applied several layers to reach a certain colour, opaque layers that let the light shine through the layer and reflect on the layer below, which produces a physical refraction effect.
A special layering effect is called "opalescence". To paint a blue sky, the artist applies 20 or 30 very thin non-pigmented layers, and the light refraction produces a slight blue hue, like you can see when you put your arm into deep snow and see the hole in a blue hue, or when you look at the sky.
Of course, the painter has to know very much about the different oils and resins and diluants, just as the digital painter must know all these different tools and actions in the program.
Walnut and poppy oil are known to be very colour-neutral (I never used them myself, but I know that lineseed oil has a strong tendency to have a yellowish hue; I always had to calculate that in my oil paint recipes).
When I started with digital art, I made a simple, rather silly experiment. I made a colour layer, and applied about 10 additional translucent colour layers, just like I was used in my traditional painting techniques. And the result was, of course, one simple colour, one simple RGB value. Not 11 different colours interacting with each other. That showed me the limitations of digital painting, that in the end you will always have one layer.
But I'm just explaining about the differences, I do not say that traditional art is better. Traditional art has also limitations, certain pigments are no more available, most pigments you can buy in a store are artificial from the petrochemistry, and it is very difficult and expensive to find really good earth pigments. So I stopped oil painting and learned digital art, more in the field of animation. Here I find the very big advantage in digital art. You can throw your multilayered photoshop painting into a compositing program and animate it! I love Adobe After Effects.
Well, there's much more to say about traditional oil, tempera and fresco painting, and also the quite new technique of plant colour painting, but we're not in a traditional art forum here, and I love to see the new digital world of art and expression. Ideas and inspirations will always be the key for powerful paintings, the method or technique is less important.
I agree with what you are saying , although it can be said there are many differences in all artforms from oils to airbrush , the old ways are not essentially the best ways just the ways they did things with the resources they had , you can have your T model ford and I,ll have a Maclaren :)
Its the question or notion of which is better that anoys me and the notion that great digital art is at the click of a button , in a sense belittling the talent needed to produce it , I believe many renoun recognised traditional masters of 100s of years ago would not get a mention today , some of thier art is actually mediocre , its only that they were in a time where it was much easier to stand out and become a fashion and so immortalized in history , fashion and being famous is so fickle and dependant on being in the right place at the right time , and being famous is no guarrentee of being a great artist , today many fantasic talented artists get lost in the numbers and ease of modern mass viewing , its so hard to stand out today .
I absolutely agree. All of my old friends say "Phil is just sitting in front of his computer, he doesn't work anymore", and then I try to explain them that CG is also hard work, and also manual work. You can't push a button and everything's is done!
Many traditional artists are indeed mediocre, or less. Many, especially the modern artists, just painted their nightmares and personal problems, preferably in big size, and then they became famous. Of course they were unique, of course nobody did that before, but being unique or special is not art.
An example is Amedeo Clemente Modigliani. He definitely was not very talented, but got very famous. Sometimes I think you just have to lead an excessive life, take many drugs, die young, and then you will be famous.
The funny thing about Modigliani is, that some Italian art students made some sculptures, and threw them into the river. The same students "found" those sculptures, and presented them to the professors and experts, wrapping the whole story in a myth that Modigliani threw them personally into the river while under drugs. And the experts acknowledged those sculptures as genuine, and they got exposed in a gallery as rediscovered, precious, previously unknown pieces of art. Later, the students confessed the hoax, and had severe problems to do so, as at the beginning nobody wanted to believe them.
But I think, today, it is not hard to stand out in the modern mass viewing. When I look at the modern art and graphics (traditional, but especially digital), I find it rather easy to make good artwork, because almost everything out there is very bad and primitive. It's like in electronic music. When you switch on the radio or the tv, you hear electronic music, or with electronic elements. But I know only a handful of really good electronic musicians.
So I think the time to produce good quality digital art is very good, you have almost no competition.
Traditional vs. the 21st century 
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