“You have to start drawing traditionally first! You can’t jump straight into digital!”

Is a statement I’ve seen often said by professional artists, specifically artists who mastered a traditional medium and then moved on to digital pieces. While I understand why they would say this and why it is important to practice drawing traditionally, it just isn’t good advice to tell someone that you have to start as a traditional artist as I feel it overlooks a few important things.

Here are my personal reasons for not agreeing with this mindset, based off of my personal experience with drawing.

1. Physical Space. Not everyone has the physical space needed to develop and practice their art style traditionally. There is one (1) table my house that can be used for drawing, but it is also the kitchen table that is used throughout the entire day. I have an extremely limited amount of space to store art supplies. I do not have space to comfortably work on traditional pieces or to draw each day if my only option was traditional mediums. While a pencil and a sketchbook doesn’t take up a lot of space, they’re useless if you don’t have a place to work at or the ability to work privately without being disturbed every 5 minutes because you’re in a heavy traffic zone of the house. Meanwhile: drawing with a laptop and a tablet permits complete privacy + the ability to sit in one corner away from everyone, for myself it is a spot on the couch in the living room that is in a corner, where no one can look over my shoulder and where I can draw without being bothered. The laptop and tablet can easily be stored away in less space than what traditional art supplies take up.
   
2. Permanency of Traditional Pieces. No one likes to make mistakes, no one likes to be reminded of their mistakes. When you start off learning art, especially when using a traditional medium, you can only erase your mistakes so far and can lead to a sort of fear of drawing. It kills one’s confidence to always feel like they’re messing up each line they draw! I dealt with this majorly when I started drawing, I hardly drew traditionally before I picked up an interest in digital art. When I started out, I was aware of my mistakes, but there wasn’t any permanency to my lines in a digital canvas. They could be erased without a trace! As someone with a strange guilty conscious for even existing, I felt like I was wasting paper if I drew traditionally and I felt awful for it. While digital art taught me that I could draw horrible, terrible pieces, and delete them! No one had to see my mistakes and my failures, only I did, and I could learn from them and move on instead of them collecting dust physically where I could feel like I wasted paper. After drawing digitally for so long, I found the confidence I needed to draw traditionally and now it’s a fun challenge, not a dreadful feeling of being wasteful.
   
3. Mobility and Health. I have a chronic illness, I’m unable to draw with my whole arm or with my elbow. I can only draw with my wrist. There are days where I cannot draw digitally because I can’t hold up my arm for long, but it’s nothing like if I tried drawing on a large traditional canvas! Digital art has allowed me to draw despite my health. I can stabilize my brush strokes to hide my inability to draw smooth lines and I can draw each day, every day, compared to getting myself to pull out all my traditional art supplies. Digital art made art accessible for me.
4. Cost. A lesser point is cost. Laptops/computers, tablets, and art programs (even though there are free options) all cost money, but once you purchase them you’re good to go for several years. I have one art program that has lasted me well over 8 years of use. My point is, paints dry up without use, pens can dry up/run out, sketchbooks and paper are needed, new supplies need to be purchased every so often, you need to research heavily into what material is the best and what is right one to use, and it’s easy to accidentally purchase cheap or faulty materials. Technology has it’s problems, don’t get me wrong! But it’s been easier for me to troubleshoot my tablet than to figure out the correct traditional art supplies to use and still feeling like I’ve failed in buying the right ones after the fact. I feel that bad traditional supplies would hinder my growth as an artist more than knowingly using a cheap art program for the fun of it.
   

If I had been told that you need a background in traditional art to draw digitally, then I would’ve never gotten into art. I know not everyone is the same as I am and are fully capable of starting traditionally and moving on digitally, but for some people digital art is the best and only choice they have to begin their adventure as an artist.

I only wish that professional artists would keep in mind the variety of beginners and that not everyone is able to buy the supplies needed, have the space for them, or the health to develop their art style traditionally.