notes from underground

I’m going to keep notes and musings here regarding my Digital Painting independent study, with the hopes of condensing them into a longer piece at the end of the course. First up: Definition of Painting.

Courtesy of the OED:

1. a. Painted matter; that which is painted. … a representation on a surface executed in paint or colours; a painted picture or likeness.
b. The representing of a subject on a surface by the application of paint or colours; the art of making such representations; (in extended use) the practice of applying paint to a canvas, etc., for any artistic purpose.
c. Computing. The creation of graphics or images in electronic form in a manner analogous to painting (sense 1b), as by the use of a paint program.
2. a. The action of applying a coat of paint to a surface; the action of colouring or staining something; (occas.) an instance of this. Also fig.
c. Computing. The filling of (part of) a display screen with a particular colour.
3. The result of applying paint; the fact or quality of being painted; colouring; pictorial decoration. Also: the relative condition of something as regards paint (freq. with modifying adjective).

Obviously the usage cited in definition 1.b does not discount painting on wood or other surfaces, but both of the computing definitions are disappointingly complicated. At first we have digital painting defined as a process analogous to (and by extension not the same as) “real” painting. This is acceptable inasmuch as there exist many painters who were not regarded as doing “real” paintings by their contemporaries, for example the initial disdain for impressionism. To be viewed as parallel to but separate from the mainstream, important part of the art world is a natural side effect of being a nascent medium. Of course it was generally accepted that the impressionists were at least [mis]using paint, which is less widely acknowledged in regard to digital work.

This issue is represented in the worrisome divide between the concept of Digital Painting represented in 2.c, which uses painting in its most basic programming context, juxtaposed against the tactile application of physical paint cited by 2.a and 3. Paint is something invoked by a computer, versus something applied by a painter. It is a subtle difference in agency, but it’s a problem for anybody who wants to argue digital painting as comparable in its own way to oil on canvas. No matter how complex the drawing instrument you use, many galleries view digital work as nothing more than a side effect of software rather than a human creation.

All of these definitions of the noun painting are naturally targeted at defining a physical end result. In my mind it is the process of painting that defines the work, not any particular end product, and I believe art history will corroborate. I have often heard painters and sculptors talk as if their target image or form was already present in the canvas or marble and their job was to find it, using forms of color to bring out the painting from the canvas. This artistic process translates perfectly to a digital context: computer monitors already “contain” every color they are capable of producing, and the job of the digital painter is to pull out the right ones.

In closing:
A pastel teacher of mine, irritated at the dual view of pastel work as both drawing and painting depending on the caprice of gallery owners, once defined painting as the definition of form with mass and drawing as the definition of form with line. Images may incorprate both techniques, of course, and drawings with mass or paintings with line exist in droves, but at its most basic level the definition struck a chord with me. Digital painters rejoice! None of the difficulties of the OED definition are present here. Nothing is to say that form cannot be articulated on a screen.