It turned into a mini-essay. But it's good, so the actual blog post will be separate.
As an artist, I thought it would be good to discuss my own definitions of and the distinctions between traditional art and digital art.
Traditional art would be the hands-on media forms: drawing, painting, sculpting... acrylic, graphite, charcoal, crayon, oil. Particularly drawing/sketching and painting. I consider sculptors to be their own little sub culture, (though this is due largely to my dislike of sculpting and horrendous inability to produce anything decent.)
I feel that photography and filmography can be placed in a subcategory.
Digital art pretty much mean anything that was created using a computer, be it an interactive piece online, a rendering from Blender, or a picture created through photoshop. Digital art may also include computer generated music, as opposed to music directly from an instrument, which would be traditional.
But where does traditional stop and digital begin? especially when we consider photo-editing.
As a photographer, I say that changing a digital picture from color to black and white does not make it digital art. It simply makes it edited. Modifying the brightness and contrast or saturation does not make it digital art, it makes it retouched. The same applies for drawings that are scanned into the computer and have slight edits.
Taking elements from two different pictures and putting them into one however, that I consider digital art.
There is also the term "mixed-media," which can probably be applied to digital work that uses traditional art as it's base.
As a traditional artist (primarily graphite and ink drawings) I would ask "Is digital art actually art?"
The answer to that really depends on your answer to "what constitutes 'Art'?" Which is different question. Which I am not going to address.
Is photography art?
Well, to the grandmother who takes a hundred pictures a day of their first grandchild, no, it's not really art. It's more like archiving .
To the chick trying to take a sexy picture in their bathroom mirror with their camera phone for their profile picture... it's not art. I'm not sure what that is.
To the Best of Show winner of the City of Richardson's photography contest, it's definitely art.
Photography can be art... or not, (although I'm noticing the word itself has an artsy connotation.) The same can be said of other mediums as well. I.e. there is a distinguishable difference between a full blown graphite still life and a doodle in your notebook.
A non-photographer artist might think "psshh. Anyone can take a picture, what makes that art?" I did. Truth is, taking a balanced, well composed, aesthetically pleasing picture is a helluva lot harder than you'd think. Unless you've tried.
We tend to think the same way about digital art. As if using a computer program is cheating. But, that's how it goes with all the new stuff.
We stop thinking like that and appreciate the product much more once we have a glimpse of the process that produced it.
As an artist, I find that there is overlap in the primary skills. The over arching artistic ability is the ability to see. Being able to see the shapes and value changes in a still life. Being able to "crop with your eye" to take a well composed picture. Yes, a lot of it can be learned, but some people have a stronger inclination towards it... an instinct. Putting together a well balanced picture, using the colors (or lack thereof) to achieve a certain mood, the over-all ability to compose... is the same whether you are painting or photoshopping.
The fine-tuning comes with the medium and with knowing your tool. I've done some excellent graphite and ink work. My painting fails epically. Holding and swapping between three different pencils in one hand is a habit of mine. I'm clumsy as can be with a paint brush. Drawing with a homemade quill pen has a bit of learning curve compared to store bought metal pen tips.
Similarly, software is another tool and one has to learn to use it. Photoshop has a lot of buttons. Blender has A LOT of buttons. Learning to use either one was like learning to use the dremel, or the wood burner, or the airbrush...
The digital realm is just another medium for art.
Nice reflection on digital vs. "traditional" art. I particularly like that you stop at one point and question your own assumptions about what constitutes art. You say you aren't going to get into the topic, but it is implicit here in the post.
ReplyDeleteNice job on the photo, too. While it was interesting to read about your approach to your own piece, I would have liked to have seen how you approached a piece of digital art by another artist.