The walls of my home are covered in paintings, my own for the most part. Some will move on to other people’s homes but it’s way too easy to fill up the available space. On the other hand my computer’s memory will take a lot longer to fill up than those walls did so I’ve been looking at digital art and thinking that maybe here lies the wave of the future. Maybe even my own future as an artist.
Lately I’ve been curious about what other artists are doing with digital art so I’ve been browsing through images in photography, looking at some videogame cover art, and checking out digital art of all kinds. Trying to find a common thread. A style of art that is growing maybe, or some sign that all this digital artwork is leading to a stylistic trend. But I can’t see it. There is just too much there, too many artists, too much variety in the imagery.
When I compare those digital images to each other the only thing I can see that they all have in common is a smooth, cool look. There’s a kind of manufactured perfection about them that is the only common thread I can find.
Even when some of these images are printed on canvas or paper I still see that there. There’s a missing human hand. The give and take of the human touch. The wobble, the excitement of the moment, the distraction or the drip of paint from an overloaded brush. The human element just isn’t there and I suppose that’s why we still paint and draw and make art of all kinds of artwork by hand. To leave an obvious map of our creativity behind.
Paint or digital art? Maybe it depends on what you want to leave behind.
Like many artists I’d like at least some of my work to survive me so I’ve always tried to be careful and use light fast pigments and acid free grounds so my paintings will last.
The same caution often goes into creating digital prints too, but I can’t help wondering how long the digital files so many artists are now creating will survive? How will digital images be preserved for the future? Do you think that the digital art being created now with photography, video and image manipulation programs will last as long as some of our traditional forms of art such as painting have? With the sheer volume of digital art being created will it matter?