Random thoughts and bits of life of a coffee loving artist

Thursday, April 19, 2012

Mechanical vs Man Made

Often I'm asked if I would do anything such as use a graphic arts type program to do my work or even enhance it since "computers are the future" and I would be lying if I said I hadn't played with the notion in my head. Let's just be honest here that my line of work is slowly dieing out which is sad. There is a bit of a revival happening in the arts (painting, drawing, paper arts, sculputer mainly) which is wonderful to see though it's not as big of a movement as I would like, especially when a lot of great local masters are getting closer to the end of their time and have so much to teach us.

There are the people who are so used to programs doing things for them such as painting and drawing that when the real thing is looking them in the face, there's usually two responses: Appreciation or complete disbelief. Every couple of months I do get a message on my deviantART account asking me what kind of paint system I used and said commenter goes into shock when I let them know that I had done everything by hand. In a way I see it as a compliment since a handful of my watchers are aspiring artists and often don't know that you can get detailed with a brush. With that said, I don't have a problem with people using digital or computerized media in order to enhance their art. I also don't have any qualms towards those people who completely use a program for what they do because honestly there's some amazing pieces out there that just blow my mind.

You're probably wondering why I'm rambling about how people do their art and the future of the field. Peoples' styles are their own and I'm not about to say one way is better then another.The whole thought actually happened when I saw a commercial for the new ad campaign directed towards the Chevy Sonic. With this particular one, they had paired up with street artist Jeff Soto. Watching it made me suddenly wonder how other street artists felt about adding something like robotics into their work or just digital media in general.


5 comments:

  1. oO Do you mean 'aspiring artists'?

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    1. :P Only trying to help it look clean dear.

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    2. Yeah I know but dear lord. I shall sip my coffee now in retaliation.

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    3. To actually reply to the thing. To me, using digital media or a robot is just using another tool, which is what a paint brush is. You still need to have the understanding of how to use that tool, and more importantly, how to use that tool to create the art. The thing that he did won't be done by just some average joe that just picks it up. He has to know not only how to program the robot to do what he wants, but how to work everything else in his collection of tools in order to create what he wants.

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