This has been brewing in my feverish little brain for a while, and today I saw something that prompted me to start this thread. A bit of this is a mild rant, but mostly, I am putting my finger in the air and asking for more information on this topic.
Today I saw a Bryce artist’s very lovely site today. (Bryce is a 3D graphics program.) Very nice, until I got to their “drawing” section. Truly dreadful, amateurish, awkward drawings showing almost no recognizable artistic skill. They must like and want to draw, or else they’d have never put in the effort, or put the drawings up on their site. But they have so far to go in that area! They need intensive classes, practice and study! And I get this impression that they are so pleased and contented with their Bryce work that they may not feel the need to ever study other art techniques so intently. They may feel that they’ve already “arrived” as an artist.
Do people still want to learn how to draw and paint anymore? I know some do, I’m sorta being facetous. But since I started getting into digital art (Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.) I have discovered that the possession of traditional art skills are not a given anymore. I frequent some graphics/digital art message boards, and discover that a lot of graphics “whiz kids” have never learned the nuts-and-bolts art skills. For instance, my 18 year old nephew is a Bryce whiz kid, and wants to get into graphics professionally. I think he’s pretty good at rendering space ships, and making landscapes with his 3D software. But he’s having trouble with color, and I find that he doesn’t know ANYTHING about color theory, not even what a color wheel is! And he doesn’t seem desperately keen to educate himself at this time. He thinks he’ll “learn as he goes along”.
Also, I am treated with some astonishment because I actually know how to DRAW, and I don’t have to copy or trace every image I create. Now, I know there are plenty of artists like me, I am not that remarkable of an artist. And I know that there are digital artists out there who do know all the traditional skills, and that the drawing classes and color classes in colleges everywhere are still getting plenty of students. But I am getting the impression that with the help of some of this “rendering” software (“Poser”, “Bryce”) that some people can create rather sophisticated looking artwork, without any real artistic skill to back it up. And while they may feel really great about what they do now, depending on where they want to go in the future, they may end up regretting never learning the basics. I know that sometimes you can get pretty far being “self taught”, but if someone doesn’t even know what skills they are lacking, or where to look for help, I think they’ll end up regretting it later.
Am I wrong? Am I out of the loop? (I probably am.) I went to art school before Photoshop, so certainly I’m out of the loop about the current trends. I feel like I am just now starting to catch up with what’s going on. So, what is your opinion about this? I personally think that some of this software is really nifty, but I don’t think I’d ever enjoy using software that does the rendering or drawing for me. And I don’t think a software program can ever replicate what a human being can express with their own understanding of line, and color, and pen to paper (or, digital tablet… :D)