Are drawing skills important in this digital time?

Questions from William

“What is the value of hand painting or drawing in this digital time?”

Hi William,

Today, the importance of hand drawing and painting is higher than ever.

I will rephrase your question: what is the value of original thinking in this digital time? Computers can calculate faster and make decisions based on algorithms. Why do we bother to think at all? Why are we going through so many years of education if machines are there to compute?

I hope you see my point.

Before photography and digital means of image reproduction, hand drawing and painting served the purpose of portraying real and imaginary worlds, conveying a message, inspiring people, telling a story, and so on. Art was the way of people’s creativity.

Nothing has changed since. We have advances in technology like digital tools, but they are just tools. Real creativity comes from people. What we use to create art might evolve – from earth pigments, charcoal, graphite to modern acrylic and contemporary digital stylus, but it doesn’t diminish the need for good drawing skills. Such skills can be only gained by manual process of drawing by hand.

If you want to improve your hand-drawing skills, you can enroll in the Drawing Academy here: