Design Software Weakens Classic Drawing Skills

mosel-saar-ruwer writes "A recent conference, hosted by UC-Berkeley's College of Environmental Design, sought to 'examin[e] the need and role for drawing today in the design professions and fine arts'. In this Reuters summary, via C-NET, the participants seem to agree that the emergence of sophisticated graphics software has coincided with a startling decline in the basic drawing skills of university students. Apparently teenaged boys don't need to practice drawing their nudes when they can just download them off the web."

Comments

Re:duno about this

[macthulhu]

I've been a computer graphic artist for 20 years. Back when it was SuperPaint, Deluxe Paint, Pixel Paint Pro... I still drew with traditional tools on a very regular basis. Today, my drawing skills are just about shot. I'm having to re-learn basic drawing skills. It's embarrassing, but that's what years of Photoshop will get you if you don't keep up on the basics. So, I don't know what the details of their study are, but I can personally vouch for the validity of the concept.

Re:Who cares?

[c_forq]

Many comics have moved to digital production. Almost all, even if they start as sketches, are early in their life scanned and almost all coloring and refining done digitally. In the same way more and more story boards are moving to the computer realm. There was an article here recently of LucasArts working with its game division on story boards that are interactive, or at least dynamic. In both computers are being used more and more as the digital form can be quickly manipulated and more importantly copying and transporting is trivial.