There has been a dispute in the SL artist community over the use of digital programs like Photoshop, Painter, and other digital applications to produce “paintings” and calling them, for example, oil paintings.
Before defending this, I will establish my credentials, since some have claimed that those doing this digital art do not have artistic backgrounds in RW, like going to art school. I went to the Cooper School of Art and also took painting courses in College. I was doing oils, watercolors, pastels, and colored pencils before the desktop computer, and before most artists in Sl were born. This is not to say I am right, but since I also do digital art, I am informed on both sides of the issue.
First, for perspective on this issue, consider photography. There is no question it is art. And even when Photoshop is used to alter a photograph to enhance it, the photography is still art. And the photographer-artist can hang and sell the digital result without mentioning that it was altered in Photoshop. That is simply never done.
Now, why is this expected of a digitally produced or altered oil painting, watercolor, pastel, etc.? Such paintings can be done off a photograph, or as a creative painting in Photoshop and Painter. To say this is false is to define art by the approach, which forces me to ask why what is done on the easel, table, floor, or by tossing a bucket of paint on a canvas, is art, while what is digital is not. Art should be defined by the skill involved, and the effect on the senses and the mind. To dismiss a painting produced digitally as not art is to define out of existence a vital area of human creativity and beauty, and the same way traditional artists considered early photography and modern art unart.
Ah, but is it not misleading to claim a digital painting is an oil painting? No, in Painter, for example, one uses oil brushes, thick oil like strokes, and a canvas. It is in many ways a better way of painting in oils to me then actual oils (the smell, cleanup, and wait for the oils to dry is gone). One has then only used a technology to improve the art.
And in the history of art, the master artists also did this. They used light boxes and proportionate lines and calculations to well reproduce on canvas what it was they were painting. Now, we have photography and the computer. And this is a tremendous advance for the artists, and with the digital applications, makes new kinds of art and the representation of beauty in all its forms possible. Need I mention fractal art? Three Cheers for digital art in all it is variety, even if the results annoy traditionalists by calling the result a pastel, oil, or watercolor.
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I too am an artist who has long worked in more traditional mediums and today the computer is my tool of choice. But that is what it is, a tool. I also believe that the end result of an artist's endeavor is the important part but the tools we choose are part of our process and that is also important. I believe that labeling a digital artwork as a traditional medium does injustice to both terms. It seems to me that someone calling a digital creation an oil painting is somehow ashamed of their chosen medium. I would no more call my digital images oil paintings than I would call a Second Life sculpture cast bronze.
We need to be more brave and identify ourselves as creating in a given medium and not be afraid to call it what it is. The sooner we do this the sooner art made on or from the computer will gain more serious acceptance in the art world. The state of digital art today is like the state of photography 100 years ago. Too many people do not recognize it as a legitimate art medium. Stand up for your diigital work, call it what it is!
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