Category: AHIS 430

Digital Reflection: Working Hands-on vs. Digital

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With the growing presence of technology in our age and the way it is continuously evolving to fill all our basic needs, the question of what’s the difference between working traditionally versus working digitally is always on our minds. Some believe there is not much of a difference, but I believe there is a huge difference based on my own personal experience.

I have used my computer and other technology to do things such as take notes in class, write essays, journal and process thoughts, sketch ideas, and draw. I find when I type or draw digitally, there is always this unconscious fixation to write and be perfect in what I’m doing. Especially with the convenience of undo and redo, I always find myself trying to perfect my lines and my words. I believe this hinders me in reaching my greatest creative potential and tapping into my unfiltered self.

When I look at the greatest European master painters of all time, such as Rembrandt, they have only ever gotten messier and freer in their art as they aged. They might have started out drawing and painting very precisely to get all the structure and details and forms correctly, but afterwards, they strayed from that and tried to tap into the liveliness that embodied what they were capturing. They tried to capture all the senses into their art form. What I find is that in this generation of children, we have a tendency to be perfect and we are actually lacking the originality and imperfection that comes with experiencing and embracing our mistakes. Sometimes when we stunt our creativity and prevent ourselves to explore and think laterally enough before thinking vertically/critically. I believe that technology amplifies this tendency we have as children of the digital era.

As I use my computer to takes notes in class, I always find myself hitting the backspace button and trying to perfectly record everything that the professor is saying. However, that isn’t the point of note-taking. I am supposed to be writing down a condensed version what I am hearing and thus interpreting and shortening what I am hearing into note form. I believe this is a skill that must be built and a skill that technology has overshadowed. When I am writing by hand or taking notes by hand, I may not be as clean or as quick as I can be when I type, but I find myself being able to pay greater attention to the professor’s lecture and actually focusing in on capturing the essence of what they are saying. I believe that there is a different part of our brain that is accessed when we are typing or drawing digitally compared to doing this hands-on, and it is evident in the difference in words and especially in the way we draw.

When I sketch online on the iPad or using a tablet, I automatically draw neater and in a way that I can visually understand what I am seeing. Usually, this isn’t even something I think as much when I sketch in my sketchbook. My focus when I draw is to get my ideas out and put pen to paper so that I can visually capture what I am seeing or imagining in my mind. I think this desire is the same when I draw digitally, but there is something that is lost, an aspect of originality or spontaneity when drawn digitally because of the constraints and cleanliness that comes from the clean white blank screen with the tablet pen. Technology will always try to improve and upgrade the pen pressure sensitivity and brushes to mimic real-life mediums, but moving through real space to grab and hold your tools and feeling the pressure change as you use your whole body to move can never be fully captured through technology’s space limitations.

However, I must commend technology for everything that I put it down for. Technology has opened many doors in writing and art to precision, time-convenience, cost-efficiency, and many techniques that could not be available through working solely hands-on. From copying and pasting to word counting and editing, working digitally has given people the means to save time, money, and supplies by being able to fix their mistakes and going back to refine their work. Art techniques like linocut and screen printings can be mimicked through digital technology so artists are saved the extensive and costly process. Also, simple things like resizing heads to proper proportions through Photoshopping, or inserting words that you missed out as you wrote our your thoughts can save someone the trouble of going back and cleaning up their work. Some may say that that is part of the beauty of working by hand and it builds your skills by redrawing and rewriting the same thing over again, but in our fast-paced period of time, we do not have the time to spare on fixes minor details either.

All-in-all, I do find that there is a difference in working digitally versus hands-on and this difference can be seen in my sketches and work. Though I recognize and acknowledge all that technology has done for me, I know there is nothing like working and creating something organically through hands-on mediums and techniques. No technology can truly imitate and replace reality and handmade work. As an artist, I prefer working hands-on and though I would never restrict anyone from working digitally, I would highly encourage and even advocate working hands-on before working digitally. I would recommend working with physical mediums and on real paper to draw or write notes freely with any of the structure that comes from working digitally in order to experience and express the full extent of their creativity.

Final Project: Introduction Draft Notes

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Here are some written out thoughts I was going to include into the introductory paragraph of my final essay project. These are not completely connected yet and can transition from thought-to-thought rather abruptly.

…

With over twenty-five years dedicated to his craft of comic books and illustrations, Adrian Tomine brings storytelling to a whole new level of empathy through his minimalistic drawings and subtlety details.

Tomine has a knack of using subtle hints and changes within the environment he draws to build context and his characters.

Adrian Tomine is most known for his published works, Optic Nerve, Shortcomings, and Killing and Dying, and his illustrations in the New York Times.

His voice in his storytelling hits a huge audience the same way the American writer and poet Raymond Carver resonates with people. Carver was known to reflect and write to a greater audience. Raymond Carver used dirty-realism to capture the heartbreaking reality that middle-class people faced in their everyday lives—something that Adrian Tomine utilizes very clearly.

In the book, there is a sense of universality by the way Tomine draws with his simplified, iconic drawings, but also through the voice and realistic themes that border on dark. He is able to capture the modern, everyday American very clearly, including all the thoughts, personal struggles, and joy.

Even in contemporary times, we as a society struggle with understanding the concept that comic books can be used as a medium to tell stories just as hard-hitting as any other novel—that comics are not just for kids.

Adrian Tomine is at the forefront of contemporary comic books, and Killing and Dying is the epitome of fiction to the new era.

Understanding Comics – Glossary of Terms

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Additive combination – when words or images are used to strengthen the meaning or explain the other. They basically show the same sort of idea unlike interdependent combination and build upon each other.

Amplification through Simplification – is what cartooning is essentially. Pictures can be put on a scale from complex – simple, realistic – iconic. By stripping an image down to the specific details and bare bones of the image, an artist can amplify the meaning by making the reader focus in on the important aspects and meaning of the drawn forms instead of the details. It opens the door to more relatability for the reader and universality in the imagery because the defining details are not present, thus making it easier to insert our own thoughts, conceptions, and even our own selves into the images.

Bleeding – When a panel runs off the page instead of being enclosed and contained within borders. The image can set a mood and give a sense of timelessness as time escapes the borders into space. This technique is commonly used in Japanese manga and Western comics are beginning to adopt it as well.

Closure – the grammar of comics and something we do unconsciously every day. When we see parts only parts of a whole through our senses, our mind mentally connects the pieces together to perceive the entire whole. Believing in this perception is an act of faith.

Comics – “Juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence, intending to convey information and/or to produce an aesthetic response in the viewer.” A.K.A. sequential art.

Gutter – the space that separates each panel in a comic. It represents both time and space in comics between the two images and where we assume something happens there that is not drawn. Combined with closure, we are able to connect the two different images aside one another and transform them into a single idea or storyline.

Icon – an image that is used to represent a person, place, thing, or idea. There are different categories of icons such as symbols, icons of language/science/communication, and pictures. Within pictures, they can range from being very photo realistic to simplified and abstracted versions of reality, meaning some icons are more “iconic” than others.

Interdependent – when words and pictures go hand in hand to convey an idea. They are two separate ideas that play off each other and could not work or be as strong as they are when put together compared to when they are seen separately.

Mono-sensory medium – a medium that only uses one sense to create an experience. Comics solely uses imagery to convey information visually for readers to experience the story’s world, including sounds.

Montage – when words have been treated as part of the picture, and can even be integrated/woven into the imagery or vice versa.

Non-sequitur – a panel-to-panel transition within a comic that has no logical relationships between the panels.

Pictorial – images having a resemblance to the subjects they are representing. Their meanings are more fluid and ever changing depending on the appearance of the picture compared to non-pictorial icons.

Synaesthetics – the idea of uniting all senses, specifically by using uniting the art forms which appeal to the different senses. Within comics, lines hold expressive potential depending on how it is drawn, what it is drawn in, and the direction it is drawn, thus, giving the art form emotions and other senses. For example, wavy lines and flies around a garbage can visually convey the garbage’s rotten smell.

Zip ribbon – the motion line within comics to show the path of movement of objects through space. These lines have become more refined and stylized over the years and have been used to create drama in action, especially in American comics. The background or the subject can be streaked into motion lines depending on the desired viewpoint the author wants the viewer to see.