Why are we still Painting?

[elainep]

My personal favorite is "digital painting" to separate my work from photo manipulation. Unenlightened traditional painters often feel that the computer does all the work, that no drawing and painting skills are needed and then there was that digital artist I knew, who made abstracts out of her photos, using photoshop filters. She kept referring to them as paintings, when I know some of them were created in minutes with a few different filters. I have no problem with photoshop filters, but it is painting techniques, it's photo manipulation.
I tell people that the program handles paint, pastels etc, in the same way that the "real thing" works and requires drawing and painting skills, so therefore it is painting.

I still enjoy the feel of real painting traditionally, and won't give up on it. However, I do feel I have more control with pixels, the unlimited undos, the ease of working on my laptop wherever I happen to be, and no clean up give me the opportunity to do more than I can with traditional paint. One of my students is taking a trip which will involve a very long flight and lots of airport connections and wait time. I suggested she take her laptop or iPad and paint, paint paint!

Elaine

[Caesar]

Dear Gary and mates, Your stimulus is quite interesting and poses an absolutely meaningful point indeed.
I wouldn't discard the word painting though, as a general category comprising also a virtual kind of visual composition, insofar it's a somehow artisanal and unique production. The only problem is rather if we should separate what exist in one piece only (as for the handmade, physycal, visual art) or can be reproduced several times or without any limit by printing or storage in memories etc.
For Latin and Italian language pictura or pittura, respectively, is a no issue, since it fundamentally means you represent an image by means of shapes, lines, colors etc. on a surface (2D), usually flat, but not necessarily so. The corresponding english word picture got a quite different meaning and refers mostly to photography. The term imago or immagine (Latin and Italian) is a category comprising the former one, since it's a visual object, image in English, which says nothing about how it's produced. Finally what is common to any visual art as a fundamental pillar, including photography and photomanipulation in case, is composizione, from Latin cum ponere, put together, composition in English, apart from other features making them define as art. This is the mind creating and ordering activity which generally forego, captures and/or drive along the execution any technique to rendering tones, textures, colors, patterns etc. It's very much connected to a style, a recognizble signature to I think, to a personal identity somehow, to uniqueness.
So we may say that dipingere, different from pitturare would be still valid in Italian (incidentally not a secondary language for art and visual arts or architecture), but English lack the term as a specific one, unless to depicture exist,since it referers to an artistic activity and not to a wall refreshing by painting for instance, the prefix de says all, in Latin it means a movement downward from an higher place (even sky or Olympus). As a matter of fact whatever the tool is and the technique, the term applied and applies since ever to any new ways to fix on a surface shapes, colors, tones, texture etc. affresco, encausto, olio, acquerello, tempera etc. (fresco, encausto, oil, watercolor, gouache etc.) are only more specific and not all of them generated a specific verb in Italian.
Just to be complete, the pertinent terminology disegno (drawing more or less), from Latin de + signum (sign) encompasses the graphical category only, the composition structure or an image creation where traits, lines, filled tonal areas are the main issue and colors are not necessary, just an additional option. Once again the de somehow talks of a creative act as a start.
Another intriguing term is visualizzare (visualize), i.e. see inside our mind the idea or make it visible to other people, very much about what visual art is about, i.e. to make us see, to turn visibile (visible), i.e. better observable, intelligible, and possibly enjoyable by our sight and mind an image, an idea etc. including it's emotional content in case.
Having said all the above, before a proper term for dipingere virtualmente/ digitalmente, i.e virtually or digitally painting or better picturing (if it ever exist in this sense) may be found, we should decide if photography, photocomposition/ manipulation, collage etc. is part of the game or not (not in my view) and if the eventual English word should possibly derive from a Ancient Greek, Latin or Italian etymology as a base, considering it an historical evolution. Take into consideration that the terms photography (i.e. drawing with light from ancient Greek) as well as picture comes from such roots. the same applies to creation, fantasy, image, composition and so on. The word pixel too is probably a contraction of picture+element, so I'm practically using in this sentence and in this comment, especially in what sound as an educated terminology, mostly ancient languages words (probabilis, contrahere/ contractio, sententia etc.) which tend to give a clue and a cue of what that word is about.
as an element to explain one of Your question, dear Gary, keep also in mind that photography as well as computer images making didn't start as an art, nor the Cugnot first steam-car or the Ford T making (automotive?) did.
Personally I may easily find definitions in Italian in case, such as videografica (existing), in my opinion too much leaning toward the line and traits structure, or vipingere, vidipingere or vicreare (not existing) or even digidipingere, where prefix vi may stand for either video and/or virtual and many more combinations in case, but I doubt I could enforce any of them by my personal authoritativeness. LOL I may try to turn into English my proposal if You wish, but I have no title to ...
Finally I think that photography, photocomposition/ manipulation, collage etc. are not comprised in dipingere or dipinto (to paint/ painting less precilely though), but may well be part of visual art (so the same should apply if they come from a PC, laptop etc.) and exclusively or preponderantly automatic images creations with no or negligible "manual" (in broader sense) intervention of the artist, no happy accident or uniqueness, is not art in strict sense I think, because its etimology from Latin and even, more remotely from Sanskit, referred to adaption, manufacturing, production where the act of making, a practical manual/ physical skill was then required, mostly or predominantly.
Now I apologize for all this crazy etimological and phylological hodgepodge, I shut up and follow with great interest what will eventually come out as a word in English in case by any native English speaker mate (thus entitled to generate the word) in here.

[BushcraftOnFire]

I put this in Google translate.. but it came out the same.. LOL! Just kidding of course my Brother!

[D Akey]

Good point. I think we paint when Google Translate fails.

[joey_matthews]

I'm writing more, creating more graphics, taking more pictures with my DLSR and creating general art.

Yet I don't seem to find time to actually draw anything or use art rage, I actually don't think I have it installed on my current laptop. For years now, I have sort of taken a back seat with my hobbies which is a shame.

[D Akey]

I'm writing more, creating more graphics, taking more pictures with my DLSR and creating general art.

Yet I don't seem to find time to actually draw anything or use art rage, I actually don't think I have it installed on my current laptop. For years now, I have sort of taken a back seat with my hobbies which is a shame.

Hi and welcome.

So you're saying we aren't still painting.

Here I go again, shoving into the mix another conversational digression based on what was said rather than the original topic. Oh well, they can sue me for following it.

I do those things you mentioned, but not so much photography, just cause I don't yet need to. If I did I sure would or if I lived where Kenmo (a user here who lives in an eye-poppingly beautiful part of the world has jumped into photography hands and feet) does, I would. I guess my slot instead of being filled by photography is music and writing.

I have a ton of diverse software sitting around on my computer and in boxes because I had an idea at one point I would use it. I did some, but because operating system changes got forced on me and some applications didn't work any longer I no longer do many of those things that were dependent on the old software. I don't feel great about wasting money and not having those tools at hand, but the upshot is that such caprices in the software world have changed how I do things and what I do. Some of the software was merely for fun or experimenting and replacing it wasn't worth it to me. I tend to go with the flow unless I really need something where I have to bite the bullet and pay for the new software.

Anyway, in essence, I think we're simply creative spirits in a room full of fantasy generating tools. So long as we're living on a linear timeline, we have to pick and choose at any given moment. At one point in my life before computers made all these creative tools available, I was totally into doing art -- period, with some other moments of toying around maybe with a new style or a new kind of paint or whatever. Nowadays specializing is by choice it seems because any one person can do 100 different things fairly decently. If drawing or painting is in your cards, you'll do it when you do it.

ArtRage will be there patiently waiting for the moment you will have a thought that can best be done by it. Meanwhile, stay creative and all the tools will manifest, or so I've found I'm happy to say.

[Victor Osaka]

You know, I'm looking forward to the day I can buy (read "I can afford to buy") a touch screen monitor the size of a full canvas. Maybe 3'x4'. Oh to be able to paint on a canvas that size with ArtRage. I get goosebumps imagining it.

[Frisch]

I find the discussion about being real or not, odd - my father recently asked me; When are you doing it for real? - I was shocked - are you kidding me? I have spent thousand upon thousand of hours on this - the time used was real - me handling my toy; REAL -

It's all real - really - : )

The rest is accept - it's here

[gxhpainter2]

Thanks for all your great commentary on this and Caesar, yours is especially eye opening, your language is so much richer in its subtle way of capturing meaning and nuance.
I especially like visualizzare ... that seems to capture the process perfectly in my mind.

And like Victor I am eagerly awaiting the day we can digitally paint on a 3'x4' monitor and easily print it or even better when we have the ability to put it onto a film monitor for display in its original pixel glory of colored light.

[Slap Happy Larry]

While we're at it, why are we 'scrolling' down web pages?

Honestly I never even think of actual scrolls when I use that word. Language is never static, and it seems the word 'painting' is expanding in meaning.

But I don't think traditional painting is going to disappear anytime soon... Just look at the resurgence of colouring-in books dominating the adult bestseller list right now. For many people it seems traditional art-making has a zen aspect to it, which Artrage comes close to replicating, but still requires use of technology and a certain amount of analytical know-how.

The children's picture book world is an interesting one when it comes to the digital 'versus' traditional rub. I doubt very much that there are many picture book artists working today without making use of a computer for either some, most or all of their process, yet if you see an interview with that artist, or a photograph of their workspace, they'll almost always show their pots of paint and stacks of textured paper and they'll talk about their thumbnail sketches. You won't hear which art software they've been using. You won't see a photo of an illustrator standing next to their scanner, or cursing at the printer.

I guess they know that 1. that's not what consumers want to know about and 2. part of the children's picturebook product is 'nostalgia' and the illusion that it has been created by some artisan living in a quaint village with their thumb through a wooden palette, squinting to the horizon to catch the dying light.

This is why I think the term 'pixelating' or whatever isn't going to catch on anytime soon