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Discussion
4 Years Ago
Hi everyone! I am fairly new to expressing myself through various forms of media, I started with pen and ink, dabbled in paintand canvas and now created digital works of art... Is digital art really art?
Reply Order
4 Years Ago
"Is digital art really art?"
Create the kind of art that makes you happy and don't worry about the rest
4 Years Ago
ART , basically, is...Expression.
Whether that expression is Great,Good,Mundane,Predctible,Elegant,Average...is
entirely up to the viewer.
PLEASE YOURSELF ! Only.
4 Years Ago
Is it artistic?
Was creativity involved?
That's all you need to know as to whether it's art or not.
All the "digital" part implies is the medium you used.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia...
Art is a diverse range of human activities in creating visual, auditory or performing artifacts (artworks), expressing the author's imaginative, conceptual ideas, or technical skill, intended to be appreciated for their beauty or emotional power.
4 Years Ago
Dear Brian, yourself a wonderful all-rounder fine Artist.
I'd just respond with my own twist on the words you quote, about, intent.
to say..
I am always thriiledsomeone is interested,moved,to love/hate/whatever
but
Those are not my deepest intentions.
I have to stand by what I do, no matter others' response.
But,
Am eternally grateful for trusted,meaningful encouragement.
4 Years Ago
Creativity, artistic expression, whatever you want to call it has no limits, no boundaries and needs no one's approval...
I hate it that every time I say it that it may sell a pair of shoes for them, but Nike says it best... Just Do It!!!
4 Years Ago
As is often said - art is a response - the viewer/reader/auditor is persuaded to react to the drawing/painting photo etc in his or her unique way.
Art is "above the artefact!" The response to the paper, paint, metal, canvas, letters, notes ... it is the response which constitutes art.
Digital art such as your example Stormie, provokes a unique response in each and every viewer; in which case it is safe to say that
digital art - your art - is real art.
As Stanley Wells once said "The art artefact (i.e. painting, symphony, poem, statue, photo etc) is an occasion which gives rise to a unique event - the response.
And art - all art - is in the response!
4 Years Ago
https://fineartamerica.com/featured/ignis-jestephotography-ltd.html
My wife created this, I put it on my wall(metal print). Still stare at it every day. To me digital art can be very sublime and wonderful.
4 Years Ago
Sometimes I spend more time and effort on my digital art pieces, than I do when I play with real paint. But we are creating either way. Whether you choose to express through a digital program or real paint/pens/charcoal, it is the creative expression of how you felt at that particular moment. :)
Valerie Anne
Magical Light
4 Years Ago
Digital Art.
What you make out of 1s and 0s is somewhat unlimited. The point of digital is that you can constantly add and subtract 1s and 0s until you get it "right." Sometimes digital seems to lose it's soul in the hunt for "perfection" no line out of place.
Meanwhile, is this "Digital Art?"
It is a photograph taken with a digital camera and it is because of the digital technology that it can exist at all. I used technology to put all of those dashes where they are.
If when AI spits out works that are aesthetically pleasing will that be art? Unfortunately, Art is not Truth. Art (in all reality) is deemed "art" if the observer decides it is (usually because someone told them it is). Just like all writing is not literature (and I'm not even including the grocery list) all expressions of the soul are not art. Truth, on the other hand is something that is true regardless of the opinion of the crowd.
But that, also it true in every medium.
PLAU
UPD (Usually Plays Devil's advocate)
4 Years Ago
@ Uther
Truth is the opinion of the crowd
in that objective truth is the
democracy of subjective truths.
Truth has value. Value and truth
"is something done." Truth is
an active process.
4 Years Ago
Too many people label art and think only of painting and sculpture work and some actually believe digital is not art and somehow the computer is cheating. Some people also have the same views on photography and music. It takes a creative to make the image, song, painting or what have you. The computer can not do it without a person behind the scenes creating it. So yes digital is art taken to new levels and the canvas is the monitor.
4 Years Ago
anything you create is art - whether its a pie, a sculpture etc. the question isn't is it art or not - but would a customer want to pay for it? anyway, art can be anything.
----Mike Savad
http://www.MikeSavad.com
4 Years Ago
I simply LOVE digital art. It opens up vast new horizons in creativity.
Meanwhile, some of the best-paid artists use digital techniques in business, photography, marketing, and the art world.
4 Years Ago
My wife bought an I-Pad with an art program on it for me when I went in for a bone marrow transplant. I actually "painted" a few pieces. The process was fun and I consider those paintings a creation by me. Just like Mike says, a creation. Art has many forms and all things created by your hand and mind is art.
4 Years Ago
If a pig with a brush in it's mouth moving color to canvas is considered Art, then It's all down hill ..... HA.
I never had the skill to hand paint so growing up I would envy those that could. But I can spray paint so smooth , flat and glossy my clients cars would win 1st place year after year. I have a knack for street photography of capturing a moment....that's not as easy as it sounds ;>)
Some would consider Photography not a art...until they try to do it themselves.... So I guess work with what you have , show the World possibility through your own unique spirit. Maybe you start a new medium nobody has seen before.
Never let a purist limit your possibility to become you.
4 Years Ago
@ Jack
"Truth is the opinion of the crowd " That's Sophistry.
Truth is always based on facts, not all facts lead to truth, but truth is always based on facts. That's philosophy.
Art is valued as a result of the general (or, less frequently, independent) opinion. As pointed out, aesthetically pleasing and intellectually interesting sounds and images and objects can be created without any intent. (He chose his word given that it could be argued that the designer of the program that resulted in one of the above mentioned categories had a hand in the creation.)
Art is therefore not "truth" although truth can be divined from art. But that is a process of combining the data from the art's impression with facts known to the observer. The art itself needn't be regarded as "truth."
Meanwhile, "It's not binary" Just because one thing is truth doesn't mean all other ones are false.
Thank you for the conversation.
I apologize for its being off the original intended topic of the thread.
PLAU
UPD
4 Years Ago
Digital art is so ubiquitous now that it can often fall into the "craft" category and although aesthetically pleasing or visually stunning, thought provoking, etc., it can sometimes lose it's efficacy as art. What it boils down to is to what extent you are part of the work you are creating and what portion of it is just pushing buttons.
4 Years Ago
Orly Tony? Have a look at THIS guy...
https://fineartamerica.com/profiles/philip-straub.html
4 Years Ago
Digital is just a tool for creation. That said, many art groups are very ignorant and will not accept digital work while others have no issue with it.
4 Years Ago
Whether somebody will “pay for it” does not determine whether anything is art. Need I remind those who forgot of all the great artists who are now in museums, but did not sell in their time? Artists are not salesmen; they cannot be measured by quotas. Is digital stuff art? Based on the premise that anything is art, like making an apple pie, as one blog member asserted, I guess it is. But make sure you have the most expensive and sophisticated computer equipment, because if you have to rely on your own creative abilities, the lack of technology will cause you to fail.
4 Years Ago
The digital age is more expressive than past ages.
Dave Bridburg
https://Bridburg.com
4 Years Ago
David
Disagree strenuously with you.
Only the tools have evolved.
So has mankind.
ART is/as......expression.
o/o the Frat house,bye
4 Years Ago
in the end, while anything can be art, it takes an artists eye to make it look good, so that is really the difference. anyone can paint, but not everyone can paint well. everyone owns a camera, but not everyone has an eye to make or recognize what a good image looks like.
the balance of color and shape and how it harmonizes together, that's what makes it art worthy of buying. a good sense of color balance, i always found important. how the eye moves over the image.
others say it should evoke emotion... i don't ever get emotion in an image, so i use technical qualities that should simulate emotion in my pieces.
but to sell the work here you HAVE TO - MUST - have keywords and a description, its not optional. they won't find it if you don't. and so digital or not, you have to be able to describe what your looking at to other people, the boxes can't blank. and to sell they image should be very large, because abstract usually looks best on an object.
----Mike Savad
http://www.MikeSavad.com
4 Years Ago
I enjoy creating. Art is art, regardless of the method/mediums used. I want the viewers of my work to feel something. I think it is more difficult to produce a piece that makes an emotional connection using digital media than it is using conventional methods. To me, digital media is a much more forgiving way to make art, but I am less attached to it. Not everyone will get what you are trying to convey, so I don't worry about that.
Take a look at the first page of my images and let me know what you think
https://fineartamerica.com/profiles/robert-yaeger.html
Mike is right about the key words and description.
4 Years Ago
Not everybody does it well? Where in life is there a platform where everybody does all of anything well? We do things to the best of our ability, and maybe it catches on, maybe it does not. Please don’t measure an artist ability based on sales. That is the difference here. Do it well? There’s a lot of crap that sells.
4 Years Ago
Back 2000 my art was put on the box art for the Sapphire graphics radion cards. :). Who knows I may pick it up again. One never knows when the digital art bug bites again. :)
4 Years Ago
Brian,
"From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia...
Art is a diverse range of human activities in creating visual, auditory or performing artifacts (artworks), expressing the author's imaginative, conceptual ideas, or technical skill, intended to be appreciated for their beauty or emotional power."
That definition is already obsolete. It was adequate when only one - human - civilization exist on Earth. Right now, under our nose, another (non-human, and, even more, non-organic) civilization is taking shape. That is an AI civilization. And we need to take it into account.
I would imagine that a new definition of art would be like this:
Art is a diverse range of human or AI activities in creating visual, auditory or performing artifacts (artworks), expressing the author's imaginative, conceptual ideas, or technical skill, intended to be appreciated for their beauty or emotional power for humans or an equivalent AI feature.
It is especially important to take that into account if we are talking about "digital art". It is the type of art, which is easiest to be conquered by AI. I think AI would will get to and beyond top human examples in digital art pretty soon.
4 Years Ago
I can't wait to read the responses, but my art is definitely art and although I start with a painting, there is so much digital to my images here, that I consider myself a digital artist unless one is touching my painterly works. I sell my digital work easier than I sell original work, but I sell them both and love that...so yes...if people are buying it and want it on their walls, it's art.
Being an artist is a self proclaiming career. If you say you're an artist that produces art, who in their right mind can say anything different? What would be their source of proof?
Art isn't a degree or a statement of all your metals and awards, it's simply self proclamation. We are not doctors or scientists that require certifications...none of that is necessary. I paid over 100K for my son's art schooling and he taught me this because he learned it through his degree program.
4 Years Ago
And, with that, Lisa, we have come full circle, due to your perspicacity...........
so?
WHAT IS ART ?
expression,pure and simple,via myriad paths,old,new,yet to BE.
4 Years Ago
My opinion is that YES it can be art, as much as any expression in any medium can be.
I think that all creations are works of art, as long as they communicate something worth grabbing others attention and touching their sensibility (in a positive way).
* I want to mention that if something grabs my attention and touches my sensibility to just think "Ah, what a crap!" that's not art for me - Ha, ha :)
4 Years Ago
I also think that digital art is indeed art: laptops, desktops, tablets, even smartphones!, are just tools for creating astonishing pieces of art.
4 Years Ago
I'm also in the "of course it is" camp.
Take this photo:
(I hope this link works. I've put it in a private collection so as to not to appear to be offering this for sale.
If not: it's a badly lit shot of the tulips under a beech tree.).
The idea was not bad, the execution was shite - handheld with a point&shoot, overexposed sky etc. No real artistic intent anyway. Just a fun shot for myself.
What I really wanted to capture was more like this: the explosion of color in spring, the delight spring flowers bring after the long and dull winter.
Now Photoshop is allowing me to bring that emotion out. Yes, I used a PS Action to do that but A) I had to have taken the photo in the first place and be able to improve it, and B) I had to tell the programme exactly what to render and what not to render, which took 4 iterations with additional editing, and then I had to edit the result with a view to the desired outcome.
I greatly admire anyone who can paint something like this. But I don't see why this, as a visual representation and expression of what I saw with my eyes and my heart, should not be called art.
4 Years Ago
If conceptual art is considered "real art" than digital can certainly bare the same title.
4 Years Ago
I definitely think it is! I like the mix, you can do so much more with digital art. Photography and paintings are nice but it can usually be added to in a positive way.
4 Years Ago
I have tried painting on canvas but I find I am never happy with my work even before it is complete. I have just started doing the digital art and I find it so much fun. Hopefully, others will like it, but if not, that is ok because I am having a blast. And yes, digital art is art, because it is your creation.
4 Years Ago
Kenneth Agnello said -- "But make sure you have the most expensive and sophisticated computer equipment, because if you have to rely on your own creative abilities, the lack of technology will cause you to fail."
Uh-oh! I'm in trouble.
4 Years Ago
I started digital art after heart attacks and a stroke made it difficult to stand at an easel for hours with oils.
Is it real Art ? Yes in my opinion and for those who think not I ask if they make their own oils and use with egg white as in days past, Do they use social media ?
It is an advancement, progress and for those traditionalists I suggest the stop using social media and write letters to communicate.
Artists never had the chance to sell online until recent years as opposed to galleries and exhibitions alone, Progress again.
4 Years Ago
My most popular work is my digital work so yes, I am assuming people think it is art. And I have the cheapest of technology I could get. So yah boo sucks to whoever says you need expensive equipment. You need the same as you need with ANY art. An artistic eye and time to practice. End of story
4 Years Ago
Is digital art really art?
Yes
Digital art is sooooo much more unforgiving that conventional. There shouldn't be any fear with experimentation in any art form, but with digital there is no fear, because it is so easy to manipulate, return to a specific point and take a different direction. That said, I prefer conventional methods; pen and ink, watercolor, pencil, charcoal, acrylic, etc. I use both. Check my website if you want to. http://robert-yaeger.pixels.com
I really like digital for doing caricatures of political figures. I like having the ability to layer elements, blend their opacity and turn them on/off at will. Drawing on a digitizing tablet with a pressure sensitive stylus.
I have even done drawings using my finger on an app on my phone! I'm not a fan of filters that are applied to photographs to produce "painterly" effects. Still, my first love is conventional drawing/painting.
Thanks for posting!
4 Years Ago
True, true Abbie.
I'm sure my equipment came a lot cheaper than most traditional artists' materials.
Computer: 'fell off the back of a truck' after being replaced by a university library.
Canon EOS 60D DSLR: 350 bucks on ebay 2nd hand
Corel PSP X CD: 10 bucks on ebay
Photoshop CS6 CD: 15 bucks on ebay
A couple Photoshop actions: 15 bucks
Tutorials are free on youtube.
For everything else, I rely on my eyes, hands, and that grey neural network between my ears.
If electronics were gone tomorrow I'd probably go back to plant-dyeing wool and weaving landscape pictures. ;)
4 Years Ago
Of course digital art is art. I think the attitude toward digital art has changed quite a bit in the last 15 years or so. Being mostly a photographer, I only have a tiny gallery of digital art here, and some of those have gotten a lot of comments, but my digital art is nowhere as sophisticated as a lot of the rest of you. There's digital art on this web site that I would LOVE to have in a large size on my wall somewhere. Due to budgetary concerns, I'm contenting myself to buying a greeting card here occasionally, but there's a lot of good stuff to be found in the digital world.
4 Years Ago
I often wonder if it would sell better if you never told folks it was digital art. https://fineartamerica.com/profiles/1-roy-erickson.html
4 Years Ago
To me. what is difficult about Digital Art is finding my contribution to the process
Something that comes naturally with its own flow
..
Something like Vulture Sculpturing.
"Feral Coots" came very naturally, but. so far. hasn't gained enough impetus to have its own flow. ..
I had hoped that my "Pixel Pointillism" might be the answer, but when I discovered that there are digital programs that can do what I was doing by hand. far more efficiently, kinda put the "kibosh" on my efforts .
What to do? . What to do?
Who knows?
4 Years Ago
Digital Art is only art if an Arteest creates it. But the same goes for painting, sculpture, and photography.
4 Years Ago
Who are judges to say it is an art?
There are two kinds of judges. First - The artist who created that specific piece of art (or what he think is art). Second - everybody else, except the artist.
We (all?) think that what we create "is art". But ... the worst painter (photographer / digital output creator) on this planet could also think about himself the same.
The other judges - that is even more problematic. We need to do marketing to attract judges' eyes. If nobody see your creation - they could not judge it. Then we need to sort it out which of those judges' opinions should be taken into account. And so on, so on ...
And then there is an elephant in the room - there is no art definition to which everybody could subscribe.
The positive thing about this is that it is relevant to all arts - old art (painting), newer art (photography), even more newer art (digital art), and whatever will come next.
4 Years Ago
Right on, Abbie!
And Western Exposure.
And all you other progressive thinkers.
And my buyers and collectors.
And the curators, publishers, and others who have shown my work over the years.
May we all hold tight to the courage of our convictions. What is life, otherwise?
4 Years Ago
Digital art is just as legitimate as any other art form. Anything a person creates from scratch is a form or art, regardless of the medium.
Some artists are more skilled than others with any given medium; therefore, some digital art pieces are more sophisticated than others. So, there is good digital art, bad digital art, and mediocre digital art; there are those three levels of any artform. So, it doesn't really matter if a piece someone created is popular or not.
If someone brought something from their imagination into reality so that others can perceive it with their sense, it is art! :D