Delving Back into Digital Art

In 2013, I was published in a book highlighting iPad and iPhone artists entitled Mobile Digital Art: Using the iPad and iPhone as Creative Tools. For a few years straight, I explored making art mostly on my phone using my finger. I mastered pinching and zooming.

After a while, I tired of the tedium and switched to making traditional, analog, tactile, messy, and smelly artwork. I still prefer traditional over digital for its physicality.

I like getting messy. The biggest downside of traditional art-making for me, though, is physical space. As in, where do I stack my hundredth sketchbook? Also, why did I buy another sketchbook when I haven’t finished three?

I can make an infinite amount of digital art, it is stored online with countless clones, and I will never spill coffee on it.

This isn’t an article about the pros and cons of traditional and-or digital art. It is a public journal entry to think through my recently revitalized interest in making digital art.

This past January, I drew a portrait of a different person every day. I posted highlights from that collection in another article.

That was challenging fun. After work, work out, eat, then draw, usually while watching some TV series. Small sketchbook, a few pencils, and a stretchy rubber eraser. Cathartic. Quick. Time for bed.

But, wait. I still, each day, had to take a well-lit photo of my drawing. I had to correct perspective since I’m human and don’t take perfectly rectangular pictures. I then had to adjust for subtle differences in lighting due to the room’s light being a lamp in one corner. And I had to adjust contrast and remove saturation to achieve fidelity with the actual drawing.

So much work after doing the work.

With digital drawing, I draw and I post.

I miss the intimacy of graphite smudges on my hands, but the upsides of digital are worth exploring, even if I will eventually tire of this medium, if you will, over time.

My goal now is to mentally compile a list of advantages of making digital art. Undo is huge. Mirroring halves the time. And that should promote less of a sudden switch between what are essentially different tools for doing the same thing.

Below are a few of the digital drawings I have created in the last few days.