Is it Better to Learn Art DIGITALLY or TRADITIONALLY?

I'll answer a couple of commonly asked questions: Is it better to learn art digitally or traditionally? And what is the fastest way to learn to draw?

[basil]

I personally like using traditional art for drawing my sketchs and then once they're on my pc, I use digital art for coloring. To me, it's about combining the best of both worlds.

[coalslaw]

I have been doing digital arts so much I thought there was a redo button on One of my paper drawings

[LanxPenzenpepper]

"Digital art have little to no risk of ruining it"

Me: draws on the wrong layer and realize it an hour later...

[Cristopherthekiller]

I personally prefer to PRACTICE traditionally, because having a mountain of sketchbooks will help you keep track for your progress and you see how much work you have put in, its better to feel and touch your drawing rather than it just being an file that can be deleted from your computer at any time.
Edit: I'm comming from a pencil drawing perspective, I'm not messing with painting just yet.

[jennilocke]

I love traditional art. You learn to make mistakes work, you get to experiment with lots of mediums, especially if you want to do something out of left field. And there's just something i enjoy about mixing my own paint, applying it with a brush, seeing it on the canvas. It might not come out perfect like it would in a digital art program, but that's what i like in art. Especially contemporary art, when used in an interesting way.

I'm biased toward traditional art. I feel like traditional art has more character, while digital can look too 'clean'. I also feel like traditional artists get less recognition in certain areas, like concept and illustration, than digital art.

[stuffwithjon]

Ever since I was a kid, I wanted to do digital art. I wanted to draw and create, but paper and physical art tools irritated me endlessly. I've been trying to study art on traditional tools, but everytime I start sketching I get depressed, sometimes so much I cant physically draw more than a few minutes. Some time ago I finally got to try a drawing monitor in a library. I felt this energy and excitement like never before. I could actually motivate myself to draw, almost endlessly. The amount of detication that is needed to learn art fundamentals, I need an art monitor to achieve it. I am saving for a Cintiq pro. After im done mastering all the micro skills and fundamentals on digital, then I might start learning the traditional medium. Makes more sense to me that way

[seireiart]

I did start with traditional art, I love draw with pencils, pens and use real colors, but after I discovered the many advantages of digital art, I start working with that one instead
Sure I'm doing both of them, but to be honest, I use digital art more than traditional.

[icecoldlloyd]

You’re being completely biased on this one. Learning how to draw traditionally is a great foundation before jumping to digital art, especially for young beginners. It’s easier to practice the foundations of drawing (shade and proportion) in traditional medium as there is only the availability of the pencil, paper and eraser, while doing so in digital art can be too overwhelming with the abundance of tools. This also trains the artist to create less errors in painting digitally, therefore making their workflow more efficient. I completely agree with the advantages that you have stated while using digital, but you’re underplaying traditional too much.

[aredt]

1 reason I like traditional is you can do it without the need for electricity lol but yeah digital is fun

[tomaszurbaniak]

I see where you are coming from. But, for me it's traditional art, I'm a programmer and I don't want to spend additional hours in front of the monitor:)

[meaganveronica]

There is something magical about flipping through a traditional sketchbook. Also I think the satisfaction from completing a traditional piece is more for me. It's a lot more relaxing to paint and colour traditionally and the piece is more unique. The imperfections make it more yours. I kinda feel good about seeing a piece I love coming together after making a mistake or actually becoming better because of a mistake and all the effort to fix it. Satisfaction and pride. No piece can be exactly the same traditionally and like I said I feel like that's just magical. Lol I gotta say though, when I started digital art that undo button and coloring was great. But it got me kinda lazy and putting less care with my strokes cuz I know nothing is permanent. So it actually slows the learning process cuz your not as careful. You can make a digital masterpiece but then end up struggling on real paper. At least that's for me. Also ppl are àmazed at a finished digital art piece but even a sketch traditionally makes ppl including me go "wow". What I started to do was sketch traditionally and color digitally. But if I really like the piece I would go back to my sketch and complete it traditionally as well.

[lepidlover]

I like both forms of art, but the reason I lean towards digital art is because I don't have the money to buy traditional art supplies to color my image.
But it can be hard when you are trying to learn how to use a different art program

[sogeurow]

Pardon? For those people who think digital art is easier you're very wrong in my opinion, just because we have control z doesn't mean its better and easier, because doing digital art is just as hard as traditional art, and I think for my opinion at least, that both of them are just as hard as each other.

[artbear]

My opinion is that traditional art first, you don't have to use paints in the begining anyway, just to train the hand holding the pencil, when you feel you are good and you like what you can do on paper you can get a cheap tablet and learn digital drawing, I started out digital paintings with mouse, and it is not so hard as it looks likes, because in digital art is defferent from traditional and you dont have to think about perfect strokes because you can fix it with defferent methods, so yea first learn traditional and then digital cus the rulles are the same for both. Because starting digitaly will get ure more difficulties of learnin tablet or mouse which can make you neagatvie experience about the art and you wont continiue learning it.

[acecake]

I speak as a traditional artist when I say this, digital art is a far FAR superior way to produce art. My friend uses procreate and I've seen some of the shortcuts that allow u to produce art with such little frustration. Like there are the things that are more common to know like just using the same pose and/or background and just changing 1 or 2 little things. I was drawing a mini comic and it was such a simple idea. 3 panels of the same character from the shoulder up looking directly forward with the same background with the only change being the expression on the face in between each panel. If I did that in digital then it wouldve taken me abt 3ish hours. Coz I have to do digital, it took SO much longer. Trying to keep everything the same in between each panel, knowing that there are much easier methods that u dont have access to is nothing short of infuriating and demotivating. Then there are the other things I wasn't aware of like how if u draw a circle in digital that isnt perfect then it makes it perfect for u. Same goes for other shapes. I think that it's fair enough to say that digital is objectively easier to use than traditional

[SideQuestSensei]

For me, sketching digitally is proving to be more difficult than traditional means. I'm using intuos pro 2017 model with smooth texture sheet and apart from various driver issues, it feels really odd and difficult to draw that way. I can manage to draw better lines with a pencil but on tablet, it's very jittery (using photoshop).

[zhanikka]

Why make it a matter of not either/or? Indecision leads to inaction and I know many people that wasted a lot (some still wasting) a lot of years deciding from where to start which is nuts, imagine spending years thinking whether to grab an electronic pencil or an analogic one instead of just doing the thing which is drawing.

Aaron has a solid point. Do both/and, really, it's not like your brain will get stupider or your progress in drawing as a whole will get hindered just because you use the different methods at once, you'll be fine as long as you stay commited to learning how to draw! Besides you get to enjoy the subtleties and nuances of each medium so I don't see how it is not a win/win situation.

[ivdfedy]

I’ve done traditional and digital but for the past year only traditional and a ton of times I just think how much easier it would be with layers and how you can color a very large segment in 30 seconds with digital. No hate for digital artists, their art is spectacularly beautiful because the way coloring is on digital allows so much more potential.

[An.nymus]

I think traditional artists can smoothly adapt to digital arts than digital artists, to traditional arts. Digital arts have default brushes that you don't have to buy and master and you can just delete the layer used to practice and start over again while it's different for traditional arts.

- my opinion

[sleepnaught]

I'm ready to start learning to draw, and I decided to learn digitally on a graphics tablet. I think I will be more motivated to work in the digital space. I really don't enjoy drawing on paper, but I can spend hours making things in Photoshop or pixel art in Aesprite, even if my art isnt very good.