Overheard someone say digital art is "cheating" at a gallery opening

I was at this small gallery show in Austin last Friday, and this older guy was telling his friend that using a tablet and stylus isn't "real art" because you can undo mistakes. It took everything in me not to jump in and say I spent 8 hours rendering lighting on a single character last week that I could have painted faster with oils. Has anyone else run into this weird gatekeeping when showing digital pieces next to traditional work?

3 comments

3 Comments

river32024d ago

Oh man I read this great article in some art magazine a while back about how Renaissance painters used optical tools like the camera obscura and everyone back then called THAT cheating too. It's literally the same argument recycled every generation (people love to gatekeep what's "real" art). Digital art takes just as much skill with color theory and composition and form, it's just a different set of technical challenges. The undo button doesn't paint the piece for you, it just saves your wrists from carpal tunnel when you make a mistake at hour 6. I bet that guy has never tried to blend colors on a tablet screen that has way less texture feedback than actual canvas.

davis.adam24d ago

My buddy's an oil painter and he joked that at least my "undo button" saves me from having to scrape paint off the canvas and start over lmao. Real art is about the result and the effort, not the specific tools you used to get there.

grace60724d agoMost Upvoted

Yeah, but your buddy's paint scraping sounds like a form of meditation honestly. My undo button just lets me make the same MISTAKE five times in a row until I finally give up and eat a snack instead. @davis.adam I'll trade you my Ctrl+Z for some of that canvas scraping focus any day.