The importance of traditional media for digital artists
These days we are living an art revolution, powerful tablets in the market like Wacom Cintiq, Intuos and the iPad Pro with the digital pencil are making art accessible for most of the people. For someone who has been trained in traditional media all this seemed something impossible time ago, but not anymore.
I have been painting for around 15 years now, and I think I probably heard about “concept art” and “digital painting” in 2007. At that time it was kind of artificial to me and a bit snob: using a piece of plastic as pencil and drawing on a glass surface seemed that in no way could this be comparable to the pleasure of touching the paper grain and feeling the pressure with my own hands.
Well, all changed. Now it is possible. The tablets and software apps in the market make it possible. You can make whatever you want with them: from imitating real media to creating beautiful environments and characters from imagination. Well, you may say that it was possible too with a pencil and a piece of paper, but now with digital media a project can be finished ten times faster and creativity is too multiplied.
But let’s never forget, tablets and Photoshop are just TOOLS. Painting does not exist on the tool, whatever fancy is the tablet you can never learn just having the best tool in the market. This is like buying the brand new Nike shoes and hoping to play basketball like Michael Jordan. Same goes for digital tools.
The only way to really master drawing and painting is by first using traditional media: charcoal drawing, graphite, oil painting, acrylics, etc.
It is only in the brain where art is created, and it is only by the brain that we can choose the design tools:
- Tone
- Composition
- Form
- Edges
- Movement
- Color
- Texture
Without them, there is no art.
Those design tools can only be developed thanks to years of practising with real traditional media. There is no shortcut but many years of practice, getting your hands dirty with pigments till you really master each one of them.
Don’t believe you can make a beautiful drawing just purchasing the latest digital tablet. You’ll never learn like this.
And yes, after this training you can approach digital painting and enjoy.