I'm experimenting lately with digital versus traditional medium and the verdict finally came after hours of sketching and testing. The real pencil is still...king! No matter how many digital tablets and brushes you'll gone get, nothing compares to the real feel of a pencil on paper! The feedback, the whole aspect, the speed, the control, the tonality and the logic way of archiving your ideas. I've spent many time trying to create a convincing pencil look in software but in the end, it was so much easy to sketch on a real paper.
It's always tricky with digital, you always tend to think it's a more flexible way of doing things... But this isn't always true ! If you want your tool to look and feel like a real pencil there's no substitute via computer apps, or at least I cannot find a satisfying one that has a great dynamic control, one that has a good tilt angle to behave like the real deal and one that has the right amount of grain with no repetitive and boring gradation. Not to mention the way that pencil interacts with the paper textures, which is another topic in it's own right. On almost all the aspects I'm writing here, the digital emulation somehow fails to deliver. To simplify, I'll say a real pencil has more dimensions and depth compared to the digital corresponding one. Some people may say I'm wrong, but keep in mind that using software you always need some kind of skills for "how to get there", where real tools are more generous right from the start and dictate their own behavior to the artist. This makes ideas travel faster between mind and execution, because there is no need to reinvent the wheel.
That's being said, maybe there's a reason why many artists today, still prefer to draw with traditional mediums instead of using software. They choose apps more for coloring tasks, for layout or for post processing. Strange words, especially when it comes from me, a person who seems to create vector images, isn't it? True, but not entirely true. Creating vectors is a honest task if you ask me. There are some advantages when printing, the format is versatile and you can do a lot of things with your design and even other people can do something new with your artworks. It's a great way of thinking the illustration and also it gives more creative power to your clients. As long as I'm concerned I've always try to achieve some real feel in my vector drawings, something to keep them away (when that's possible) from the sterile look of digital.
My initial purpose with this blog was to make it a place where traditional and digital mediums coexists. Now, I'm thinking this article will be the cross step to a more traditional way of doing my works. I will post here more sketches and real paper drawings in the future, that for sure!
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