I told my friend some hours ago that it was my intent this evening to sit, drink coffee, eat carrots, and write something mind-blowingly profound. Failing that, I would simply write a page of gibberish and call it profundity.

It is now some hours later, and the coffee has given way to beer. The carrots are now Tim's Cascade Style potato chips, and any hopes of profound prose-smithing, feigned or genuine, are so many punched-paper bits in that proverbial bucket. But let's talk for a moment about digital inking.

Digital inkers are quick to point out the difference between what they do and what others have termed "digital line enhancement" which, as we all know by now, is just histogram adjustment with a little (optional) clean-up. What's usually being implied by the delineation (no pun intended) is that "digital inking" (which we could just as easily call "interpretive manual line enhancement") is a more mature, nuanced, respectable, and VALID discipline than the former. This, of course, is utter bullshit.

Many amatuer penciliers turn to digital line enhancement out of laziness, and frankly, it shows. But the crimes of a multitude of amateurs ought not reflect on a minority of modern and saavy artists who, in the penciling stage, have a mind on how their pencils will "clean up" in Photoshop. This is no different from the potter or ceramicist who must apply glazes with an informed foreknowledge of what their work will look like after firing. The fact that the kiln and the glaze, in an automatic process, are actually rendering the final colors in no way invalidates the efforts of the artist who applied the glaze. The fact that a computer program, in a guided-but-automatic process, manipulates the tones of a scanned page, in no way invalidates the work of the artist who produced that page.

Now, I was going to make some accusations, but I decided that I simply wasn't informed enough to make them, so instead, I'll make an invitation. Could someone point me towards a digital inker who does something with their work that can't be done with traditional media? Users of "special effects" (blur, lens flare, etc) need not apply.

It may sound like I'm blasting digital inkers, but I'm not; I dare not, because I'm a digital inker myself. No, what I'm really blasting are critics of digital line enhancement -- it just happens to be so that many of those critics are digital inkers. But let's move on and blast some people who really need blasting: traditionalists.

A few weeks back, Sean Gordon Murphy wrote a journal about digital inking. Now, I'm not going to blast Mr. Murphy because, frankly, I drool over just about every page he does, the bastard. I am, though, going to blast one of his points. A quote:

"There's more soul in keeping your mistakes, rolling with the punches, thinking on your feet and adjusting your technique every second than simply hitting "undo" each time and making everything perfect. There's no soul in perfection. With digital inks your final piece is more likely to be "exactly what you planned" as opposed to "close to what I wanted, errors here and there, happy accidents throughout, but heart all the way".

Okay. There's no soul in perfection. I'll buy that. But the rest is pure silliness. If we're going to criticise digital inking because it makes it easy to correct mistakes, then there had better be an accompanying piece criticising rubber erasers, because erasers sure as heck make it easy to correct mistakes in pencil work. I'm not just being funny, the issue is exactly the same. It has been an exercise in discipline for all artists, from the beginning of time, to accept their mistakes and move on. The temptation may be greater for the digital artist, but it's not like mistake correction didn't exist before Ctrl-Z.

In my opinion, it's the same issue recorded music has faced: in the early 20th century, the problem of terrible recording quality and under-production was a severe one. By the end of the 20th century, the problem of over-production and staleness was equally severe. It's no easier to record a great album now than it was in 1950, but the challenges have changed. In the early days, the technology was a problem because of it's deficiencies. Now, with technology that's reached a very high level of sufficiency, the blame for a lousy album rests squarely on the creative parties.

Another artist whose line work I admire greatly, but whose traditionalist dogma I abhor, is N8 Van Dyke, who graced the pages of July '08s issue of Juxtapoze with the following:

"I see all these guys who do digital stuff and they're lazy. They don't even have a drawing table at home; they have a Wacom tablet. It pisses me off that people don't draw anymore."

This hardly bears criticism since it's incoherent in the first place. Not having a drawing table means an artist is lazy, and drawing on a digitizing tablet is not "drawing". Utter nonsense.

Traditionalist xenophobia is an understandable phenomenon. Technology and novelty are bosom buddies, and novelty sells. This is incredibly insulting to an artist who has "paid his dues" with traditional media, and insults aside, it threatens his livelihood. But we all (Americans, at least) know the tale of John Henry, and while there's a certain romance in futile gestures and anachronism, the eyes of history can only spare brief, patronizing looks for those who cling to tradition in the face of progress.

This is suddenly sounding like an encapsulation of the themes of Fiddler on the Roof, as well as a denunciation of conservativism.

Before I sink deeper into the bowels of incoherence myself (thank you kindly, Deschutes Brewery), I'll provide some personal points of preference and position.

I'm very happy drawing on paper with a pencil (mechanical or otherwise), and ink and brushes and nibs are on friendly terms with me. For a time I was committed to working purely in traditional media, not because I thought it was superior to digital media, but because the artists I've looked up to my whole life worked that way, and I felt it was necessary for my own proper development to at least make some effort to familiarize myself with traditional techniques. Also, as a child of the Cold War era, there's a subconscious fear that some day the bombs will drop, and there won't be a working computer in a 500-mile radius. But that's another journal.

On the other hand, I still remember the first time my dad showed me PAINTBRUSH.EXE on Microsoft Windows 3.0, and the excitement and fascination that came with that experience. I was instantly hooked (although drawing with a mouse is, was, and always will be shit), and computers have played an important role in art for me ever since.

As the years go by, I find myself drawing on the computer more, and on paper less. I used to hate drawing on the tablet because I always wanted to be able to rotate the tablet and move around it like I can a piece of paper, and have that correspond to the drawing on the monitor, which is (was) impossible, but... humans are masters of adaptation, if nothing else, and I grow more comfortable with the fixed tablet every day.

But the interface isn't really the issue here. What's really at issue is, well, terms like "digital inking". It's a misnomer. There's no ink involved, is there? And it's representative of the on-going misuse and misunderstanding of the strengths and potential of computers in art and every other area in which they're employed.

If we compare the computer and its clever-but-inadequate simulations to the real world which it is tirelessly (tiresomely?) tasked to emulate, the computer is the loser, in every measure. I've never used a "natural painting" application that felt even remotely like the real thing, nor one that produced images which were, in any serious measure, up to snuff with the results one would get from a genuine tube of coloured goop. So if the question is "how does a computer simulation of painting stack up against actual painting?" the grade I'd give is F-. That, however, is not the question that needs asking (unless you're a developer over at Corel, you poor bastards).

The question that needs asking is "how does the computer stack up against traditional media as an image-creation tool?", and for that, I'd grade an A+. There's no debate. Any image you can imagine cooking up can be cooked-up on a computer. If it can't be done now, it's just a matter of software, and if no one's willing to write the necessary code, you can always try to do it yourself. There are no excuses. The computer screen will never obsolete a sheet of paper, but a sheet of paper will NEVER obsolete a cathode ray tube. Or, for that matter, an LCD, OLED, or any other conceivable display technology you'd dare invent.

And here, I'll take another crack at something Mr. Murphy said:

"I support digital painting. Painting deals with more variables than inking. Painting is like inking, but inking with any color you want and the infinite ability to blend those colors however you like. But comic book inking deals with only black and white. Either something is there (black) or it's not. I don't see how the complexity of computers has any advantage at this step. For coloring, yes. But not inking."

This is both mind-blowingly naive, and also dishearteningly protectionist. To my eyes, it appears that Murph, to a degree, denigrates the art of inking simply to disqualify it from any advantage that digital production might introduce. The two sentences, "Either something is there[...] or it's not. I don't see how the complexity of computers has any advantage at this step." just kill me. Computers, at their very hearts, deal with only black and white, one and zero values. Computers appear complex, but at their guts are only performing staggeringly SIMPLE operations, very fast. But, if we boil this down and paraphrase it to "computers are useful for color art, but are useless for line art", the inadequacies of the position are so blindingly obvious (to me, at least) that it warrants no further analysis.

Yeah, that sounds like a cop-out, and, well, it is, but I'm incredibly... tired ... at the moment.

Anyhoo, to be continued, maybe. I'm calling it a night.