Traditional Painting vs Digital Painting; Which is better?
- Corpsies
- Feb 7, 2022
- 2 min read
A recent trend on Tik Tok was people finding digital artist’s videos and commenting “digital art isn’t real art”, “it’s not the same if you can get a brush to do it for you”, “this is just poor man’s paint”. And while everyone is entitled to their opinion – Let’s talk about why digital art is still, in fact, a valid creative process.
Clip Studio Paint, Photoshop, Procreate, Paint Tool Sai. All of these are programs that take extensive knowledge to use properly. You need to learn every feature, then figure out how to best use that feature in your work. A common example is layer modes, like Multiply (to take the white out of your shadows), or Hard Light, Overlay, saturation, or color. There are nineteen modes that carry over to every art platform and learning how to utilize each to their best ability can be a pain in the butt. Just like how learning different brush strokes or ways to add oil to oil-based paints, it takes time and patience to learn these platforms.
The brushes remain one of the biggest focal points in the argument of this vs that. When you can get a brush that adds checkers for you, stamps of flowers, or frames – is that a cheat? Or is that similar to how traditional artists use stencils in their work? It’s definitely a perk of drawing digitally, but that doesn’t negate years of study or talent.
What’s your view on it? As a digital artist, my hackles get raised every time this topic comes up, but there are sound arguments for both sides. And at the end of the day, does it even matter what’s said about digital techniques?
Marta Dasic wraps it up perfectly:
So to sum up, those two types of painting are very different and it would be unfair to make them compete. In many ways digital art is an imitation of traditional art. They both use the same art concepts, such as balance, color theory, harmony and contrast. It is only natural in the 21st century for art to evolve too, along with modern technologies.
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