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

I'm a hax0r!

[C. E. Sum]

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i

I come at this story from a different angle. I'm a tech who's starting to
be infatuated with drawing.

It works like this: I spend 90% of my time at work sitting in front of a PC
(a Mac, but that distinction is mighty blurred these days..). I troubleshoot
IT problems and design software. Historicaly, my free time at home was spent
doing thing like playing games and watching movies. It's all virtual,
abstract, and intangable.

Last year, I was in laid up for a bit and found myself with some time and
crayons on my hands -- and I realized that I have no drawing skills. So I
took a semester long "drawing for n00bs" class at a local school. I'm almost
done with it, and it's really changed me.

1) It's a great fun to be able to get down and dirty with real materials.
charcoal, pencils, ink, etc.

2) Even n00bs can make pretty things with a little help

3) I started to notice how much shitty computer-made art there is on the
web (for values of art == design).

Related to the article directly, there's something in this debate that reminds
me of the assembler vs. compiler arguments in tech circles. Is it better
if you know what's going on and how to do it yourself? Is there value in
doing it the hard way?

Re:duno about this

[tverbeek]

I'm a former illustration student and current tech support geek for a college of art & design. For our foundation/intro-level courses, computers are deliberately left out of the course work. Drawing I & II, Intro to Graphic Design, Color Theory, etc. are all traditional-media classes, because it trains students to focus on getting ideas out of their heads and into a tangible medium, rather than just twiddling knobs and seeing what the computer does, or (worse) going directly from vague concept to digitally-precise "finished" image without the doodling and sketching phase. Computers can be useful tools for serendipitous exploration and experimentation (the ability to play "what if" without having to redraw everything by hand is invaluable), but they're best used by people who've previously learned to do that sort of thing non-virtually.