Digital or Analog
the eternal question
Recently, an illustrator and a judge of the Society of Illustrators Original Art Show posted a message to Instagram. It was a series of post-it notes that said:
A note from my time judging this year’s Society of Illustrators original art show:
Procreate is a recognizable medium. (Accounting for, I’d say, 70% of all book submissions.)
I’ll never say, “Don’t draw digitally,” just like I’ll never say, “Don’t use paint.” It’s just a medium. I will say, “very few of the books that made it to final medal consideration were made digitally.”
If you want your work to stand out, start with the way you work.
Woof! Lots to unpack there! (Just a reminder that all awards are given out by small, pre-selected panels of human beings with subjective preferences and biases so, you know, grain of salt!) But for the purpose of this lowly post, i’m gonna talk about how it reignited my forever-internal-debate of “digital or analog????!?!?!???!!”
A while back I wrote a post for paid subscribers which details how I choose the medium for drawing each of my picture books:
It’s completely haphazard. My first book was illustrated in pen and ink, because I just… did not have the option of a tablet.
Later books were illustrated digitally, because I was learning how to use the iPad (acquired in 2017) and also, frankly, it was easier to digitally draw and revise complicated spreads (I was often working with tight timelines).
The same went for a LOT of my New Yorker cartoons. Sometimes, I’d have a flash of inspiration and draw something with ink wash/pencil…
But often, with a 2-hour turnaround time for Daily Cartoons, it just made sense to do it on the iPad. Two-finger-tapping to “undo” an error is just faster than redrawing.
The fact is that drawing on paper brings me the most joy and reflects, most purely, the energy that I want to put into the world.
And yet, this drawing style reflected almost nowhere in my professional (published) illustration portfolio. WHY???
It boils down to the pervasive sinking feeling that my tendency to lean on digital art, or hyper-cleaned-up ink drawings, is due in large part to my fear that the natural imperfection of ink on paper will somehow not translate to a larger audience, or is too scrappy and non-replicable for magazines and publishers. But then I think, why am I peddling this strange watered-down version of myself, and to WHOM? Why am I doing this at all if I won’t even make what I want to make?
In terms of the art in the world, I have no preference for one medium over another. Digital art is not de facto inferior. There are artists working digitally - fully or partially - whose work is INCREDIBLY IMPACTFUL and would not have that same impact, or just wouldn’t exist, if not for the medium.
(R. Kikuo Johnson, "Delayed" (winner of the SOI gold medal in the editorial category); Deb JJ Lee, Dune poster (just look at it!!!!))
I DO think it’s true that if you’re using digital art as a shortcut, it probably means there’s something you haven’t quite worked out skill-wise, and it’s likely showing through in your work. And then it’s just an opportunity for growth, and not an indictment of the medium as a whole (this is me talking to myself, btw). I really believe that if you’re creating something with your whole heart, the energy shows through in the outcome. So then the question is, what makes you come alive???
For me PERSONALLY, what makes me come alive is a scratchy pen on paper, which is why I feel like 95% of my published work is not fully representative of me as a person or my skill as an artist. Yes, this is weird, and it’s something i’m actively trying to change. But I am gradually accepting that these years of experimentation are maybe what needed to happen for me to internalize this fully.
My eternal heroes are Quentin Blake and Jean-Jacques Sempé. I will forever be chasing the line that animates images you see every day and transforms them into something completely delightful and unfamiliar.
Last year, I saw an exhibit of Serge Bloch’s work at the Chagall Museum in Nice, and it was the first time I’d seen this sort of line in an exhibit that wasn’t about cartoons (it was actually about religious art).
And then I saw this book in a bookstore:
I feel like my preconceptions of my drawings being unpublishable exists somewhere that cartoons just aren’t taken seriously as art?
The only way to get to a place where I can access the art I want to make, all the time, in all contexts, is just to draw more, from a more authentic place, and to cast off the fear of disapproval. Instead of projecting fear and apprehension into the world, why not just all of my hope and my joy?
Hope you enjoyed this latest instalment of “The Artist’s Journey: How To Fix Yourself Completely!”
Do you have a personal journey with finding your preferred medium? Thoughts about media in general? Why don’t you…
Thanks as always for reading!
xo Zoe
I came to my art late, first getting a Ph.D in English, then studying art at night and weekends and every spare moment, and I have been flabbergasted by how skilled artists with incredibly energetic and distinctive styles whittle their work down to this common denominator of “acceptable” and “professional.” So EVERYTHING starts looking the same, pumped out slick, shorn of all quirk. This was an honest piece.
Loved the newsletter. Thanks for sharing.
It is the new eternal question.
I almost always start traditional with sketches and concepts and then finish digitally. That said, I did shift a few years ago from Adobe Illustrator to digital tools that let me create in a more analog manner.