Being an illustrator with 20 years experience in selling my skills to the advertising industry as a commericial illustrator, I have seen the progress and the duress that the computer has bought to my industry.

For a long while I saw no need to get computerised as the tools or applications just could not do that much that impressed me. It was back in 1996 that I was encourage to take a different stand, when I saw an Australian artist by the name of David Nelson, (an airbrush artist who really impressed me), had been using a program called "Painter" to create an illustration for a Film company. It was a roman centurion with a trumpet and it looked like no other computer illustration I had ever seen.

Had it come to this? The problem was not the computer but the bod’s actually at the helm of this thing. There is no doubt today that many thousands have discovered that the computer does not detract but contributes to the creative process. Afterall it is not the computer that is doing the drawing, it is you the controller, and if it does look good you know who to blame. That’s right not the comuter.

A bad workman blames his tools. Correct, but on the other side of that coin it is very difficult to produce good work with bad tools.

Not anymore, the tools available today are just awesome for creating really any virtual thing you can imagine. Yes, virtual not real. There is something that has died since I began pixelating, and that is the "original" is no longer with us.

Still there is nothing stopping you from printing off a piece and adding your original finishing touches, and then it is an original.

But I wonder is there anyone out there who still thinks that the computer has killed the artist?

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written by Greg Gillespie \\ tags: advertising industry, David Nelson, good work with bad tools, News, Painter