How I went from Analog to Digital: Adapting to a Changing World
I remember some of my earliest experiences with drawing, back when I was quite young, in the early 1960s.
Some of my first scribblings were attempting to stay within the lines of the line art provided in my early coloring books. This was back in the beginning stages of my perfectionism, so staying within the lines was very important. Equally important was using the correct colors in the correct spaces. My first coloring sets were eight to sixteen color boxes of crayons. Oh, what an amazing joy it was when I received my first 64 color box!🖍️
It wasn’t long before I began to discover that I could actually mix two or three different color crayons within a space to achieve an even better color - and in the process, I began to explore the effect of color to create the illusion of texture. 🎨It was not long before I was quite bored with the silly outlines published within the coloring books my parents gave me and I decided that I didn’t need to be limited by someone else’s drawing - I would create my own, and color those in!
‘Spirit Lake’ ©️2020, R.C. Smith
I also remember laying on the floor during the Saturday morning cartoons, on TV, and attempting to draw the characters of some of my favorite shows. 🖍️ Again, my perfectionist chains bound me to recreate exactly what someone else had drawn. My imagination seemed to have a mind of its own, and it was not long before I was creating my own characters and objects– houses, cars, landscapes– out of my imagination. But, it was not until I was introduced to some of the “Fine Artists” of Modern Art that I began to open my mind and experience my art to flowing through me, from the depths of my thinking, outward to paper through the movement of various implements of artistic communication.
“Similar to the way in which the digital camera accelerated my exploration and understanding of photography, Art Set has allowed me to go places that I may never have reached with traditional “analog” artists tools.”
🖥 Decades passed, and suddenly, we had at our fingertips the tools of creating without paper, pencil, pen, pastel or paint, but a new world had opened up in the emergence of “computer art.” My earliest experience with digital art was with my Atari 512 ST computer. It was able to display up to 512 colors out of an available pallet of thousands. I began to explore this new medium more and more over the following 25 years, or so. And then it happened: The iPad.
👨💻🎨 The iPad has been my creative tool of choice since 2019; most of my visual art is now created through the iPad and a relatively unknown app called Art Set (which, I believe, is only available on the iPad). This little app has opened up worlds of creative expression for me. Traditional looking drawing and painting tools and effects, without all the mess and storage space. Similar to the way in which the digital camera accelerated my exploration and understanding of photography, Art Set has allowed me to go places that I may never have reached with traditional “analog” artists tools.
Another app that I quite enjoy is, Rebelle, from Escape Motions, which is only available for desktop computers—although, it has been announced that an iPad version is “coming soon.” Rebelle excels at its realistic watercolor experience, but includes a whole lot more, that I look forward to accessing via my iPad, someday. 🖌
In the meantime, I’ll be whiling away the hours, iPad in hand, allowing my imagination to ebb and flow through the universe of my mind.
What is your artistic tool of choice - what medium do you find most comfortable in your creative journey?
Until the next brushstroke,
RC @ Made to Create 🎨🖥️🧑