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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."
A big conflict i see about using computers is the ease at which you can change things. When you're doing things by hand, you have to put more thought into what is going on before you start drawing. The other side is the ease at which you can draw and change and rechange and redraw things on the computer causes you to just get it done without putting much thought into it because you can change it later. This last thought is the big problem i see and sometimes fall into myself. You draw it, its not quite right but you will "get back to it later." Later you don't remember what was not quite right and you submit it anyway. This is very similiar to a paper passing a spell checker and thinking it is ready to go.
Like anything else, there are pros and cons and you have to evaluate it as necessary.
Tonights forecast: Dark. Continued dark throughout most of the evening, with some widely-scattered light towards morning
"One of the things about things like drawing, or manual writing, is that it slows you down and makes you pay attention."
I don't need an external mechanism, or a luddite, telling me when and to what I need to pay attention. Thanks for sharing, though!
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!