I haven't done a digital painting in months...

[Blue]

I noticed something recently. I've been doing a lot more traditional art over the past 2 months; mostly oil paint, white ink on black paper and good old fashioned h2 pencil on 18 x 24. But for some reason it feels like nothing. Almost like.. i don't know, like I'm not being productive. I keep a calendar and 'X' out everyday i draw, and have been only missing 1-2 days a month but.. still, feels so empty.

I feel like there is some kind of draw towards digital. If i tell someone i finished a drawing, I get a fairly standard reaction, kind of like "cool. lets get some coffee" but if i put in the same time / effort and do the exact same piece in Painter .. i grab the attention of everyone around me.

Does digital have a greater Mystique to it? Doing traditional I make unique art which has greater value, but with digital it is copied multiple times over and anyone can drag-and-drop to their computer, so the value is reduced to just an interesting image. Maybe it is due to getting less exposure or less feedback but, traditional art doesn't seem to feel the same, even if it looks the same.

[Homeless Foxman]

If you're just dragging and dropping I think you're going about digital wrong. It may be because your digital pieces are from real life pictures? Digital is the same as traditional, it's just easier to add details and manipulate colors and sizes. Digital should be painted the same way any other piece is.

[Ilaekae]

I'm having exactly the opposite problem, Blue. I haven't done a finished piece in nearly ten years--painting, drawing in ink, sculpted piece... It's caused by my closing down my business and getting my personal life rearranged, which takes one hell of a long time, and the fact that the mess I'm working on (remodeling, repairs, cleaning, family deaths and salvaging after nearly 40 years of storage damage in some case) has plugged up nearly every single piece of my home where I can work. That leaves only the comp. I do more work digitally now, but it's only because i have to. I really don't feel all that satisfied, though--something's missing, and it's the physical touching that I had with my previous work. I was raised with dirty hands, not a keyboard.

I checked your profile, and I'm roughly 2-3 times older than you. That's a lot of baggage to drag with you, and a lot to change when you're trying to adapt. What I did all my life had to be REAL--solid. Digital isn't that solid for me. It isn't real inside my skull. So I'm feeling a bit...unsatisfied...

I think maybe you're going through a version of the same thing, only from the other direction. So far, you've learned most of what YOU consider your important art on the comp probably, and it brings you a feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction because you feel you're really doing something. All that other stuff was to make you better at what you do, so it's secondary somehow in your mind's eye. Not a bad thing, just different somehow.

It's like we're two sides of the same coin. It's just a question of which one of us lands head's up or on his ass first... :P

[Moai]

If you're just dragging and dropping I think you're going about digital wrong. It may be because your digital pieces are from real life pictures? Digital is the same as traditional, it's just easier to add details and manipulate colors and sizes. Digital should be painted the same way any other piece is.

By "drag and drop" he was talking about saving images onto your hard drive, not his digital painting method.

[Sady]

I feel like there is some kind of draw towards digital. If i tell someone i finished a drawing, I get a fairly standard reaction, kind of like "cool. lets get some coffee" but if i put in the same time / effort and do the exact same piece in Painter .. i grab the attention of everyone around me.

I would say that art should please the artist first and foremost, pleasing the viewers is just the consequence.

Or so I hope. Drawing without depending on praise from others is kind of hard. 8(

[J Wilson]

I've done precious few "real" works of art in the last few years. I sketch nearly daily, but paint is very very rare. I think I tried and abandoned an oil painting last spring (too many tubes of paint missing atbthis point and no desire to spend a couple hundred dollars to get set up properly again). At Christmas I painted a wooden box as a gift for a friend. And that's about it. While it's really nice to have something to hold in your hands when you are done, and I think real physical art IS more impressive, I feel just as satisfied doing work digitally.

[Blue]

Great point, Ilaekae. Perhaps it has more to do with what you hold to high standard individually then there being a global superiority of one medium towards another. I do miss it though, My computer doesn't feel the same without my wacom plugged in.

But with 2 ink pieces and an oil painting all mid progress, seems it will still be some time till i get to use my good old graphire again.