Traditional or digital art?

Tequila

New Member
Hello everyone!
Do you think that traditional art can still be used in illustrations or is digital art only now accepted?
 
It totally has it's place and there's been a big resurgence in hand crafted pieces.

Only thing is with traditional looking, painterly illustration is that the technology to recreate it and even excel at it has come on leaps and bounds.
There are countless brushes available for programmes like Photoshop and plenty of other great drawing and painting app's out there and they can give you more freedom that traditional methods and of course you have the history window and Command + Z.

The other thing that digital has over traditional is its ease of reproduction and delivery.
A larger piece of traditional illustration would need to be scanned on specialised equipment where as digital is ready to go and can be e-mailed to a client.

I think trad illustration is more of a niche area now unfortunately but with traditional methods come traditional skills that can transfer over to digital should you wish.

I'm not arguing that digital is better than trad (Mac v PC) as I try to use it wherever I can and I know the value of sitting with a sketchbook and pencil gives you and I dabble with traditional sign painting myself.
 
Half of my work is still done in the traditional way, but that's because I do a lot of children's book illustration and things like
illustrated maps, where a more organic and painted style is still preferred. Even most of my digital work starts out with hand-drawn
line work etc and vice versa - I sometimes finish off a painting in Photoshop where an airbrush effect, for instance, is a lot easier.
 
Both have their time and place! Although I see a lot of people complain that their "traditional art" isn't as popular as digital-- typically the people who complain about this haven't presented their traditional art in an appealing way. It's poorly scanned, maybe it's a raw scan, etc. Displaying traditional art in digital medium takes some extra effort in Photoshop and a lot of people won't or don't know how to do that, and then blame society for not appreciating it haha.
 
hi @KPrinceArt yes, I think it's true. The presentation sometimes becomes fundamental. It can destroy or bring out a work. I do not know many people who deal with traditional drawing or illustrations so I wondered if it was because it is no longer so used.
 
Yes @scotty and @Wardy :) thank you for the answer. I'm not a professional illustrator, but I prefer traditional art. it's not that I do not like digital art (sometimes it's much more beautiful), I just do not like working with it. It's strange?
 
Yes @scotty and @Wardy :) thank you for the answer. I'm not a professional illustrator, but I prefer traditional art. it's not that I do not like digital art (sometimes it's much more beautiful), I just do not like working with it. It's strange?
I don't think that's strange. I go through phases. Sometimes I like to work digitally pretty much exclusively, sometimes I don't even want to LOOK at my tablet, and I'll pick up my liner pens again. I think it's important to be familiar with and know both.
 
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