A Study of Conventional and Digital Drawing

Drawing is the process or technique used, while the medium is the actual material used to create the artwork. Drawing is one of the major forms of expression within the visual arts. It is generally concerned with the marking of lines and areas of tone onto paper or other material, where the accurate representation of the visual world is expressed upon a plane surface. The history of drawing is as old as the history of humankind. Drawing is one of the oldest forms of human expression, with evidence for its existence preceding that of written communication. It is believed that drawing was used as a specialized form of communication before the invention of the written language. Drawings like pictograms, depicted objects and abstract concepts demonstrated by the production of cave and rock paintings which is created by Homo sapiens around 30,000 years ago. The sketches and paintings produced in prehistoric times were eventually stylized and simplified. During Renaissance the term ‗disegno‘ meant drawing both as a technique to be distinguished from coloring and also as the creative idea made visible in the preliminary sketch. In a period of artistic flourish, the Renaissance brought about drawings exhibiting realistic representational qualities, where there was a lot of influence from geometry and philosophy. Initially, artists used wooden tablets for the production of their drawings. The use of the drawing in the art increased with the widespread availability of paper in the 14th century. Since the beginning of the 1900's, art has been liberated from past traditions. This means that the definition of drawing has also been expanded. Drawing is also used to express one‘s creativity and therefore has been prominent in the world of art. Drawing is also regularly used in preparation for a painting, further obfuscating their distinction. Traditional drawings were monochrome or had little color, while modern colored-pencil drawings may approach or cross a boundary between drawing and painting. A quick, freehand drawing, usually not intended as a finished work, is sometimes called a sketch. There are other several categories of drawing that includes figure drawing, cartooning, doodling, free hand and shading. There are also many drawing methods, such as line drawing, stippling, shading, the surrealist method of entopic graphomania (in which dots are made at the sites of impurities in a blank sheet of paper, and lines are then made between the dots), and tracing. The medium of drawing has been a popular and fundamental means of public expression throughout human history. The medium is the means by which ink, pigment or color are delivered onto the drawing surface. Most of the drawing media are either dry like graphite, charcoal, pastels, Conte, silverpoint or they can be use as a fluid solvent or carriers like marker, pen and ink. There are lots of drawing techniques that give you different results and effects. Watercolor pencils can be used dry like ordinary pencils, then moistened with a wet brush to get various painterly effects. Some other medium are Acrylic paint, Airbrush, Chalk, Colored pencil, Conté, Crayon, Gouache, Graphite (can be pencils which are small or large sticks similar to charcoal), Human finger (with ink or paint), Oil paint, Pastel, Ballpoint pen,

We are living in an era where the meaning of digital continues to change over time as new technologies and user devices are invented. It is interesting to witness the effects of the speed of change in art and design and more specifically in drawing. It is a fact that a lot of traditional things that we take for granted will slowly begin to disappear as computers and the internet have overtaken the world. The internet has also brought to light amazing factions of creators in different pockets of the globe. Now days, there are vivid types of technologies and techniques which came to improve new styles of drawing. Modern artist are moving away from conventional pen and paper to graphic tablets which allow them to achieve the same results on their computers. Often, when people hear the word ―Drawing‖ they think of a simple sketch, usually drawn by pen or pencil on a paper. In digital art, Digital inking, Wacom tablets are replacing pens and vectors are overtaking hand-drawn artwork and a strong reliance on Illustrator and Photoshop. In addition to its more artistic forms, drawing is frequently used in commercial illustration, animation, architecture, engineering and technical drawing. Technically, digital art was born when the first IBM computer was used in conjunction with a digital printer to make a photo out of asterisks. Digital painting is when you draw or paint directly into your computer. The idea has been with us for quite a while, with older programs like MS Paint which occurred in the late 1960s. Since then many other programs and mediums came out, until the first graphic tablet officially was presented in 1964. Graphic tablet is a hardware input device that enables an artist to draw or sketch digitally using a pen or stylus. They are helpful because they provide a more natural and precise feel than a standard computer mouse. The computer will convert the drawing strokes into digital form, displaying them on the computer screen. Graphic Tablets are used by professionals and people like Architects and Engineers, Artists, Cartoonist, Fashion designers, Graphic designers, Illustrators, Photographers and Teachers. Nowadays, artists are creating digital drawings using graphic tablets for posters, book covers, illustrations, video games, and even matte paintings for Hollywood blockbusters. There have been some efforts to produce caricatures automatically or semi-automatically using computer graphics techniques. For example, Computer graphic system requires quite different skill sets to design a caricature as compared to the caricatures created on being a simpler method of caricature creation, it can be a more complex method of creating images that feature finer coloring textures than can be created using more traditional methods. Now that we have seen some historical and practical information about conventional and digital drawing with their tools, we can easily analyze the positive and negative consequences of each of these tools and methods. The benefits of traditional drawings are not much but the fundamentals of learning process of drawing is essential for any new artist. It is important that artist must have the skills and quality to draw on paper. Artist should have the maximum control over the medium which he or she is using. The biggest benefit of drawing on a paper is the sense of working with natural materials such as paper, pencil, and watercolors etc which are much more accessible to humans. When artist draw something on paper, it feels more organic. The artist has actually created something and brings it into our world. Undoubtedly, it takes lot of time to perfect the artistic skill for the quality of drawing and painting but practical works allow us to learn so many things related to drawing, whether it is figuring out how to perfectly sharpen your pencil or the exact pressure needed when drawing lines with a dipping nib or technical pen and so on. It is true that Paper is one of most portable storage format therefore; an artwork on a paper can survive for decades. We can also work on a paper without any size limitation. We can choose as much as bigger canvas for our artwork. On the other hand, there are some drawbacks of traditional art. It is very easy to ruin the drawings when you draw on a paper. Mistakes are often difficult to correct on canvas which consumes lot of time. A big challenge is the fact that colored drawings becomes dull after some time and that could be a disaster for an artist. After it has been used a lot and as time passes, you might lose some details of the original artwork and that might affect your final work. It may be very difficult to carry the bigger size artwork sometimes. A risk of damage is always there while transporting the artwork from one place to another. We are living in a modern era where the evolution and use of digital technology became prevalent and of common use throughout the world. In art world, Tablet PCs and portable drawing devices make it easy to draw at any place. The technology grants the opportunity to make quick edits or sketches to store and share the work for free. Computer graphic are somehow helpful to save the paper and other

The major reason to support digital is that the Computer drawing software enables to use only one device and achieve thousands of different results. There is no need to carry different tools with you, such as pens, pencils, inks and charcoals if you draw with a computer or laptop. Another useful feature of graphics tablets is that they are usually pressure sensitive. Many graphics programs (such as Photoshop, Photoshop Elements or Illustrator) have been designed to detect this pressure difference and express it on the canvas. With the graphic tablet, we have the ability to create foreground and background drawings at the touch of a button. We are also able to delete each layer at any given time and add it at later stage. Also there are more details in the digital drawing experience than that of traditional methods. You are able to pick the quality and zoom in and out to see and draw more details. Furthermore, with the pen tablet you are able to correct your mistakes easily by just pressing the undo button and go back as many steps as you want. When you draw a line, that doesn‘t mean that is your final line in your artwork. You are able to draw a line as many times as you want, until you get the result that you want. Computer graphic system requires quite different skill sets to design an artwork as compared to the artworks created on paper. Thus using a computer in the digital production of work requires advanced knowledge of the program's functionality. Rather than being a simpler method of artwork creation, it can be a more complex method of creating images that feature finer coloring textures than can be created using more traditional methods. Of course, digital painting and pen tablets have some negative consequences. In digital painting, sometimes you might feel limited by the size of the digital drawing tablet and the computer screen, as well as the tools within the tablet and the computer, which may feel overwhelming sometimes. Another fact is that computer hardware and software are expensive and require people to spend lots of money to buy good equipment in order to have the desired result. When we draw, we look at the screen while drawing in front of us, that might may lose the sense of drawing, and it can also damage the eyes because of spending many hours in front of a computer. Many artists who use natural materials can create masterpieces while traveling which differs from the graphic tablet, as this needs constant power for artists to create a graphic piece. You are not able to draw for many hours without electricity, because even if you have a laptop and even if the tablet is portable there is only a certain amount of time before the buttery runs out which is a major drawback of digital equipments. We live in a century that is good for us to be open-minded human beings. We are living in an age of shortsighted about what tools we use. Especially an artist should be open to any new mediums, technologies and techniques that are presented in front of him. He should try to experiment with them and try to create something different, something new and unique. An artist can scan a traditional drawing and finalize it with digital drawing or vice a versa. A something miraculous artwork can be created with the creative mind or imagination by joining their forces.

We are living in a modern world where computers and the internet have overtaken the world so there are chances that a lot of traditional things, we take for granted will slowly begin to disappear. The internet has also brought to light amazing factions of creators in different pockets of the globe. To conclude, the principles of great art stay the same, but there are lots of differences in the medium you choose to work with. This paper will give a good sense of the differences between traditional media and methods. Today, every new artist is moving towards digitalization leaving traditional art behind. This fact can never be ignored that every medium has its own benefits and drawbacks. Every artist or designer might have to make a decision in his career whether to choose between traditional drawing and digital drawing. The decision should be depends on different facts and circumstances. Whatever medium is used, user should feel comfortable and satisfied while creating graphics. The things might change during in the artist medium but it is good to know that towards what direction they are moving. We hope that this paper will provide the basis for more research for the artist to choose between digital drawing techniques and the conventional drawing art in the future.

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eRdQ Timo (2009). ―Digital Painting compared to Traditional Media‖, Digital Paint Magazine, [online] available: http://www.digitalpaintmagazine.com/blog/117/digital-painting-comparison-to-traditional-media/

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