on the web makes for a lot of material to work from. I think the Art Community looks upon this as some sort of a
threat: that because these wonderful tools that will do, in minutes, what used to take weeks or months to accomplish
in skilled hands -- and ANYBODY, any Joe or Jane Bloe, certified artist or not, can do it -- that somehow the fact
that a computer was involved in the creation invalidates the quality of the art.
"Well, anybody can do that ... that's not art!" That's snobbery. Artists who claim that CGI (computer generated imagery)
is not art are simply snobs who hold themselves in such high esteem that they are frozen in time, like dinosaur
skeletons in petrified mud. Last time I checked, the purpose of the artist is to communicate, to evoke emotional responses,
to encourage the Robots in the world to wake up and enjoy life (or to detest things that take away from it). The computer
has put the ability to create art into the hands of Everyman, Everywoman, Everykid, and the artists who fear this explosion
of creaivity are hypocrites.
I challenge their notions! I claim it takes all of the skills of a traditional artist to create art on a computer (and I speak
from experience, I was creating work in every medium available to me long before I saw my first personal computer)
but in addition to the discipline and training it takes to become an accomplished atist and illustrator, the computer requires
a world of additional skill sets and training and disciplines. (I think that's half of the resistance mentality ... "What, are you
suggesting I have to go back to school again? Look how far I've come! I graduated so I wouldn't *have* to learn anything new...")
Yes, the traditional artists have to go back to school again, and they have a whole new set of skills to learn, again,
and those who refuse to progress along with the flow of time will inexorably be left behind as relics of an interesting
past. Important, yes! Contributing, yes! Brilliant, exciting, all of the things Art is and can be, yes! But I imagine that in
some cave in Fontechevade, France, during the last ice age, when some clever Neanderthal invented the airbrush
(and frisket, too, don't forget!) by filling his mouth with pigment, putting his hand on the cave wall, and spewing on it
(leaving a perfect impression of that hand for us to marvel at today, and accomplishing it in mere seconds!) the older
Nanderthal artists pooh-poohed the act and said, "That's not art!"
The computer is a tool, no less than a pencil or paintbrush. (It's just harder to fit into the pencil sharpener.)
In a non-artist's hand, a pencil is simply something to write or scribble with. The same is true of a computer. In
the hands of a hack, it can still be coaxed to create images that challenge the traditional artist's "Right To The
High Ground", and this threat to their eletist position leaves them feeling like Shipwreck Kellys (most of you are
probably too young to know who that was ... 'way back when, there was a series of cartoons centered around a
lone survivor of a sinking ship clinging to a mast sticking up out of the water with noplace left to go).
But in the hands of a trained artist, the computer can be played like a musical instrument, and the work thus created
is no less art than a piece created using egg tempra. It's just a different medium.
Another point in favor of the computer: When I was creating the piece above, I made a mistake. I'll show you:
Notice the difference? The funny little guy in the foreground is an object called a Sufflator which, I discovered by
"using my computer" to do research, was a small spherical object one would fill with water and place into the hearth
while the evening bird was turning on its spit. When the water boiled sufficiently to blow the little guy's stopper out,
the steam would temper the fire and it alerted the eager diners that dinner was about to be served. Well, I worked up
this image and spent some time getting the look of the rusty, flame-scarred iron texture on the sufflator *EXACTLY*
the way I wanted it ... and then I did (as I usually do) a quick read-through of the story again, to make sure I hadn't
forgotten anything.
And sure enough, I had ... the Sufflator was specifically described in the story as being made of brass, not iron.
Well, my bad, I missed that on the first read-through, but now I had a virtually (no pun intended) completed piece with
a glaring error. If I had created this in opaque watercolor or oil or pen and ink, I would have wept at this point. "WEPT"?
I would have thrown a tantrum, got roaring drunk, fumed for a while over my own stupidity, and started the whole
damned thing over! Or that part of it, anyway. I'd have been looking at a fix measured in days.
Instead, I went "Oops! Gotta fix THAT..." and I created a new "shader" (an element or property you can apply to a
3D model that includes values for color, bumpiness, reflectivity, what-have-you) so the piece looked like hammered
brass instead of rusty iron. I think it took me about an hour to make the correction.
I saw the potential of computer art back in the 1980's when I first laid eyes on a Commodore Amiga 1000 -- which
I could scarcely afford but managed to. (My first computer! I still own it!) And I created several illustrations for
ANALOG on that beloved little device, and still hold it in high esteem. I even talked Kelly Freas into buying one
and served as his "computer guru" -- not in the Amiga sense, hee hee hee* -- as he learned to use it. If computer-assisted art
was good enough for Kelly Freas, I can't understand how people more than two decades later are still saying that
real artists don't use computers.
Kelly and I disagreed with that point of view. But we also agreed that a computer doth not an artist make. If you
understand art and its history, if you can grasp the necessary concepts to create art and illustration using
traditional tools and media, if you understand light and shadow, perspective and composition, the difference
between hue and chroma, and the importance of "air" in a piece -- in short, if you can create artwork with
a pencil or paintbrush and it doesn't look like something you'd usually see stuck to a refrigerator door with
a magnet -- you can probably appreciate the tool offered through the use of a computer to an artist.
AND MAKE NO MISTAKE! I have some "refrigerator art" that I have been given as gifts or have purchased
at conventions over the years by aspiring kidling artists, and they give me hope that the future of art is bright
and promising! Imagination and skill knows no bounds, children (of all ages!) need support, guidance, and
encouragement when they exhibit the urge to express creativity. My personal gallery proudly displays some
of these pieces, alongside greats like Tim Kirk, George Barr, Steve Adams and Steve Gallacci, Monika Livingston,
Tim Hammell, H.R. VanDongen, and Kelly Freas.
If you think using a computer will make you an artist, you are in for a rude awakening. Sorry, but there it is.
But to claim that real artists don't use computers -- or computer-generated-imagery is, by definition, not art --
this is effete and haughty and snobbish and has no place in the world of art. (I mean, Bob Dylan eventually
used an electric guitar --- give me a break and stop bustin' my chops!)
Further, affiant sayeth not. (Well, I bet this will get debated when I open up a page for feedback, so no bets.)
*On a Windows system, a fatal exception error results in what is colloquially known as a BSOD ... "Blue
Screen of Death". Someone wrote a lovely poem parodying Edgar Alan Poe's "The Raven" talking about
the BSOD (I should find it and attach it here, it was hilarious) that, in place of "Quoth the Raven, 'Nevermore'",
it said "Choose 'Abort', 'Retry', 'Ignore'." ROTFL! On the Commodore Amiga, a fatal exception resulted in
the appearance of a little window that offered useful information: a numeric error code that would
precisely pinpoint what went wrong and suggest how to avoid or fix it, if you understood the code.
This code was called a "Guru Meditation Error" in that little window, and it was responsible for major
improvements in software for the Amiga in very short order, because end-users were able to report highly
technical information to the software developers by communicating that fairly cryptic combination of numbers
to them. Sorry if this sounded like an inside joke -- it was -- but when you talk about a "computer guru" to a
roomful of middle-age-to-senior technophiles and a couple of them involuntarily cringe, I'll bet they owned Amigas.
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