Digital watercolor - Fresco

[Ms. Toad]

2. Valid question - but I'll challenge you a bit about "real thing," with the implication that electronic media isn't.

The short answer is that I'm using it as a means to an end.

I'm pursuing a BFA in photography, so I need to be able to edit photos using digital media. Most photographers use a drawing tablet. I've been editing photos (and retouching old photographs) since the 90s using only the touchpad on my laptop - or earlier in my editing career - a mouse. I briefly tried a tablet and didn't like it.

One of the three photography instructors at my university is pushing me hard to give drawing tablets a fair chance by using one exclusively for a few weeks. It's far too easy if I'm just editing photos to fall back on my old habits. (Even when I'm working with a different program, doing digital watercolors, I catch my hands on the touchpad.) So I decided to use the break between classes to give the tablet a fair try by using it on something other than photo editing to build a bit of muscle memory with the tablet - with less temptation to go back to old habits. I started out thinking I'd use it for sketching (which I have to do a ton of for one of my classes this fall), but at least for now the most dramatic difference I've found between my touchpad and the tablet is in drawing lines. I'd have tossed it after about a day if I was just sketching with it. So I decided to give watercolors a try since I find them fascinating.

The longer answer is that I don't define "real thing" by whether I am using physical materials or electronic ones. Photography has traditionally - some would say still - been viewed with skepticism by "real" artists - after all, you just point the camera at something which already exists and push a button - where is the artistry in that? Within the time I have been making photographs, similar discusions have taken place about black and white - v. color, physical darkroom v. electronic darkroom, and now AI. With the latter in each pair being viewed with skepticism as not real art, or as cheating somehow.

I do both physical and electronic darkroom work. It didn't take me long to recognize that the vast majority of tools available in the electronic darkroom are named after their physical darkroom equivalent - so what I do in the electronic darkroom can, for the most part, be done in the physical darkroom. So why the artificial distinction, and the dismissive "you just photoshopped that" when I use one tool versus another to accomplish the same image?

I expect I will eventually come to the same position on AI - but I'm still processing that. Short hand, using AI seems to me similar to the distinction between using a toss-away point and shoot camera and using a fully manual camera (either digital or film). You can create art with both: point, shoot, and toss is a lot faster - but you also don't have as much control. With AI, it's also a lot faster (with less control). But you have the ability to refine whatever is created by successive renderings. Ultimately, both the throw-away camera and AI will create proportionally more junk than using a manual control camera and a darkroom. But in the hands of a skilled artist, it is possible to create art with both a point-shoot-toss camera and AI.

Right now I'm not using generative AI on principle. Most available software has been trained by stealing the works of others, without permission or compensation. I'm relatively certain, however, that I will be required to use generative AI in one or more of the classes I take as part of the BFA. At that point I'll better be able to assess whether it is just another tool - or something different. But in my non-classroom work, I won't use AI until I can do so without stealing from other artists.

But partly because of my experience in photography, I don't draw hard lines between "real thing" and not the real thing. I am careful in how I talk about my work, so that my descriptions are honest. As to the work I've posted here, I've labeled each a digital watercolor. As to my photography - as long as I've used only tools I can also use in a physical darkroom (even if I've used an electronic darkroom), it is a photograph. If I go beyond that, I indicate it in whatever label I give it (digital restoration, electronically altered image, etc.). As long as I'm not deceiving anyone about the nature of my art, I think it's all real. It is my eye and skill in rendering the image with whatever tools I choose to use which make it (or fail to make it) art. (You'll notice I didn't suggest above that AI, or extreme manipulation in photoshop can create photographs - but I did suggest they might be used to create art.)

And - it is likely that in one of the studio classes I take I'll be doing watercolor with physical brushes. Not this semester - but I've got roughly 19 more studio/history classes to go, on top of another 4-5 classes in photography. That's thanks to the skepticism about photography not being real art. My school doesn't offer a BA in photography - so to earn a degree I have to pursue a BFA (to satisfy the art world that graduates in photography are real artists). So instead of the 30 hours it would normally take to earn a second bachelor's degree, on top of the 30 hours for a major, I have to take about 60 extra hours in "fine art."

But that's OK - I'm having a lot of fun with it. And, as a retiree of the university, it's nearly free (I just have to by class supplies) - and, as a retiree, I have plenty of time on my hands.