Traditional art vs. digital art by Chukadrawer
I am both a traditional and digital artist and I find it very difficult to determine what medium I love the most. Digital art has come a long way since its birth and it can now easily compete with traditional art. Like all media, digital art has its advantages and disadvantages and it’s important to keep those in mind when looking at art.
Advantages of digital art:
- It’s faster than traditional media. When painting an aquarelfor example, you will need all kinds of tools like paper, water, paint, paintbrushes, tissues. It takes time to prepare all of this and it takes time to maintain all of the tools. When painting digitally, you don’t need to worry about your water turning a funky color, or your paintbrush accidentally falling on your painting. Everything is already there and you only need to get comfortable in front of your pc and you’re good to go. On top of that, digital art doesn’t need any more extra editing for online publishing.
- It’s more forgiving than traditional media. Once you make a mistake you can just do Ctrl + Z or click the undo button and you can try again. Traditional art cannot be deleted like that, everything you put on paper or canvas or wood will most likelystay there. There isn’t a lot of room for mistakes when working traditionally.
- It can be duplicated with precision. Digital art is perfect for publishing since it will always look the same, it will not be affected by the physical world in any way.
- It provides endless possibilities. Digital art can be explored endlessly, there are so many different kinds of brushes or functions that it would take you forever to try them all out. Digital artists can easily create things that traditional artists would never be able to do.
Disadvantages of digital art:
- It can be duplicated with precision. This the biggest disadvantage of digital art. Many people don’t consider digital art to be genuine or authentic since it can show up anywhere in exactly the same way. There is no original copy, no real physical thing to touch. It can be printed but even then it is not the same as a painting done by hand. This also means that it is a lot easier to ‘steal’ artwork or to violate the copyright laws.
- Since it’s so forgiving it is considered as being too easy because it doesn’t demand any artistic skills. In most cases this is not true since digital artists still need that typical artistic feeling to create good work, but in some cases this is sadly the truth.
- It’s faster than traditional media. This is also a disadvantage because it takes away the magical feeling while working on a painting or a drawing done by hand. When working traditionally, you’re creating something tangible and real with flaws, digital art takes this authentic feeling away for the most part. It is in the progress of an artwork that the real magic happens. Imperfection is what makes traditional art so valuable and charming.
- It provides endless possibilities, but one still needs the creativity to to something with those possibilities. It doesn’t suffice to simply copy things from other artists. You need to be able to think artistically and be original yourself even when it seems like everything has already been done.
