There is no doubt that this view is simplistic, and indicates a misunderstanding of what digital painting really represents, in addition to the fact that its owners, who have not experienced this type of drawing, have no experience in this field. However, as with every type of art, it remains that the aforementioned genre has its own merits, and it has what it is, and is subject to controversy by workers in the mentioned field, as well as by the audience of recipients. We cannot define digital arts as we used to define fine arts such as painting and sculpture, but The artistic practices of our time cannot be separated from the technological developments that have revolutionized the world. Like every human activity, art is subject to this digital revolution, while supporters of the digital revolution stress the need for classical art to reconsider the way it exists and its methods, without contradicting the initial goals for which it was found. After all, digital painting is a form of digital art. It appeared in the nineties of the last century, and applied traditional drawing techniques, such as watercolors, oils, and impasto, and is based on the use of digital tools such as a computer, graphics tablet, electronic pen and software. Digital painting differs from other forms of digital art, especially computer generated art, because it does not involve computer reliance on a model. The artist uses drawing techniques to create a digital painting directly on the computer, and as in traditional drawing, there are various movements of digital drawing that require knowledge of the techniques. It's not a cheat or a shortcut that will let you know how to draw better, if you're not improving your drawing assets in the first place. This technique has been used, for example, by classic cartoonists such as Siné, Plantu, Wiaz, Georges Wolinski or Cabu.
As Christian Paul, associate professor of media studies at The New School in New York, points out in her book Digital Art, it is first necessary to “distinguish between art that uses the digital method as a simple tool for creating more traditional objects, such as photography, printmaking, sculpture, or music.” and art that uses it as a medium in itself. In the second case, the work is produced, stored and presented in digital form only, exploiting its interactive or participatory potential." Here, it must be mentioned that the roots of digital arts, which are subject to careful instruction, go back to the Dada movement of the 1920s, more specifically what we see in the work of Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray. OULIPO members have adopted strict fusion processes from Dadaist poetry, and many authors of computer-generated environments are still inspired by this type of synthesis. In the 1960s, the contemporary art movement Fluxus, influenced by Dada, influenced mainly the visual arts, but also music and literature, and aimed, through destructive humor, to break the boundaries between the arts and build a connection between art and life.
It can be said that the concepts, characteristics and aesthetics of this new technology are often inspired by science fiction novels. The transition from the industrial age to the electronic age was accompanied by a growing interest among artists in the intersections between art and technology, which was supposed to develop in the seventies and eighties with the emergence of new technologies (video, satellite). During this period, digital arts have evolved to bring together a great variety of practices, from creating "object-oriented" projects to works aimed at developing "action-oriented" virtual objects. However, we will have to wait until the 1990s to see digital arts gradually enter the art world. This relationship, between "digital arts" and "contemporary art", has become complex today for many reasons.
However, digital technologies and interactive media are already helping to challenge traditional notions of artwork, audience and artist. The artist is no longer the sole creator of the work, but often the mediator or animator of the interactions between the audience and the audience. It is also not excluded that the creative process itself is the result of a complex collaboration between an artist and a team of programmers, engineers, scientists and graphic designers, after a number of digital artists were trained to carry out the mentioned tasks. Beyond that, with respect to information, for example, and since art is also a medium, the whole concept of status and hierarchy of speech is decentralized. This concept is inseparable from the idea of testing, which is dear to the souls of artists, and raises the question about who takes the decision? Who is speaking? And in the name of what? In addition, other central questions revolve around who is more important in this process? Is he the artist or the technician? Or is he a spectator or an actor? This “confusion,” inherent in digital arts, is not a sign of product devaluation, on the contrary, it is a sign of fusion and hybridization from which digital arts derive their value.
Strictly speaking, the digital arts are a source of real "interaction", by seeking and envisioning the movement of the work towards the spectator and, conversely, also, the attitude of the spectator to the work. We can mention the work called Lotus 7.0 by Dutch artist and designer Daan Roosegaarde. The artist has built a creative world away from stereotypes in which details lead to perception, in which the "reader" explores the mixture of particles at various levels of reading, according to the degree of his curiosity. The above-mentioned work is made of aluminum plates, and it reacts to the movements of the recipient, Then it becomes full of life and performs the artistic goal for which it was made. This equipment was based on the adoption of functional units that are similar in shape and size, but they change in terms of their mechanisms, depending on the position of the viewer, as indicated by the sociologist and lecturer at the University of "Lille 3" Jean-Paul Formanto, who classified them in his book "The New Personalities of Creation".
The David Hockney Phenomenon
English artist, born David Hockney in 1937, in Bradford, United Kingdom, is a portrait and landscape painter, practicing engraving, interior designer, photographer, and art theorist. He has been living and working since 2019 in the French Normandy region. Hockney is considered a key figure in the Pop Art movement and hyperrealism, and one of the most famous British painters of the present, he used in his works bright and strong colors, sometimes combining drawing and photography.
Hockney paints traditional subjects such as landscapes, portraits, and still nature, in his own style. He is one of the artists in the mid-eighties of the last century, through the use of special programs on the computer, and even on phones. "The drawing was outdated, and in fact, I'm amazed that a phone can draw," he said in a joke. Using touchscreen phones and tablets, the artist continues to embrace emerging technology, digitally recreating the people and places around him. Hockney began experimenting with drawing apps on Apple devices in 2008, starting with Brushes for iPhone, and eventually moved to the iPad, saying that it's capable of drawing on the device anywhere or light, with color that doesn't fade, and endless layering possibilities. His tablet is a lightweight virtual canvas, perfect for the artist whose primary focus is outdoor observations and scenery.
Now 84 years old, Hockney embraces most new types of technology, making him a contemporary and creative artistic figure. With each new device and software, Hockney says, the artist must embrace his technique and processes. This challenge paid off and breathed new life into the style for which Hockney was famous, however, he did not lose his commitment to traditional colours. Switching between analog and digital, Hockney continues to paint on canvas, roving between France and his studio in Los Angeles.
Mimosa Al-Arawi paints her diary
In order for our words not to be limited to foreign artists, and to give everyone his due, we wanted to deviate towards fellow artist and writer Mimosa Al-Arawi, without there being any kind of comparison or contrast with the above. Mimosa digitally draws daily, and sometimes, or often, produces more than one work per day. Contrary to the above-mentioned experiences, it does not resort to ready-made materials or photographs, but rather paints it as if it is in the process of building a traditional painting with the help of computer and special digital programs.
The artist's topics are highly personal, and contain a lot of directness, without diving into philosophical or metaphysical issues, except in some specific situations. On this basis, she draws her diary, and the accidents she is exposed to, or the thoughts and feelings she experiences. Since Mimosa has experience in the field of color basically, her work came with clear transparency, combining separate or overlapping color spaces, and graphic line. The artist’s experiments began almost a long time ago, and her techniques developed with the passage of days in a remarkable form, which helped crystallize the intensity and diversity of production, due to the abundance of disturbing incidents that plague us all, and which are reflected by mimosa images and colors.