I consider myself an artist, and I don’t think I’m being conceited by saying so. Artistry is, for me, a flexible concept, and being an artist does not necessarily mean being a genius. I prefer to think of artistry as having the eye—and the heart—to see the inherent beauty of this world and of the cosmoses that exist in realms unseen. Hence, I believe that artistry entails an open-minded attitude to the different ways by which beauty may be expressed and brought to perceivable actuality.
I draw, maybe not as much as I did years ago when I had valuable time, and when I considered the trails left by my pencil as the sole magical bridge that joined the world and my imagination, but I draw, and that’s it. And just a few years ago, I taught myself to color my drawings digitally, and you can see my progress in my deviantART page. The thing is, I came to love digital art, and actually considered using pixels as my permanent medium. So you can pretty much imagine how I felt when a friend of mine rebuked me for not being a “real” artist.
An artist, she said, should have his hands get dirty—with paint, with coal, with whatever. Digital art is so easy, she said, what with the artist’s capacity to erase his mistakes and the presence of all the tools that rendered a certain effect at a single click. For her, it’s not real art, and will always be inferior to her canvas and cans of acrylic.
I will not get into details about the argument that followed because I’m telling you, it got pretty intense. As an artist, I felt insulted. I felt the same way when I submitted an entry to a fanart contest organized by Perfect World PH and people complained about entries like mine—which were colored digitally—for not being real art (but I won the contest anyway *evil laugh here*).
Art, I think, is one of the most rapidly evolving aspects of humanity. It is always changing, altering with time and with the currents of human sentimentality and intention. It would be against the nature of art to reject the concept of pixels and stop embracing new mediums. Art is one of the last bastions of true human freedom, and to constrain it within a certain established set of techniques would strangle it and the human souls that depend on it for their sanity.
Moreover, just to be fair—and I will not sugarcoat my words here—digital art is no friggin’ piece of cake—heck, even cake is a piece of art and it’s darn hard to make one that you can call a masterpiece. Sure, digital art’s definitely easier than blending colors and applying several layers of paint, but it doesn’t make it a walk in the park. The differences pretty much end in the tools and the method, but anywhere else, a digital artist and my friend’s concept of a “real” artist are on even ground.
Most importantly, any piece of art takes time to make. It requires that the artist invest a part of his or her soul to bring life to the masterpiece, and insulting somebody’s work by calling it fake just because it doesn’t smell like paint (don’t get me wrong, I also paint) is an insult to the person’s soul itself. Art is not dictated by medium, it never was.
Artworks here too good to be mine. They’re done by a friend, and you can find more of his works here. Uploaded through Imageshack.
Silent Ryouji 