Drawing w/Digits_Painting w/Pixels: Selected Artworks of the Gesture over 50 Years

Abstract

This paper selectively traces the art history of the gesture in drawing and painting with electronic painting systems/programs. Beginning with Ivan Sutherland's Sketchpad (1963), which mechanized the hand gesture via light pen; Richard Shoup's SuperPaint system (1973), with the Summagraphics tablet and stylus; the Quantel Paintbox (1983); and the Macintosh (1984), the author concludes with a review of contemporary finger painting via capacitive touchscreens in the iPhone and iPad. A selection of nine classically trained visual artists who have sought to expand their work by creating art via the computer while heuristically inventing unique ways of working reveals the genesis of a hybrid vocabulary for the visual arts.

Integration and Exploration of Digital Painting and Traditional Watercolor Painting

“…The popularity of portable smart devices such as iPhone and iPad has also promoted the beginning of digital painting to a certain extent. As iterations of drawing/ painting systems proliferated with the monitor, keyboard, tablet, and stylus, the artistic practice of painting and drawing continued into the digital age (Nappi, Maureen ,2013). As the Four Laws of Media predicted by Marshall McLuhan, the more improvements in technology have promoted media self-reinforcement, retrieval, reversal, and elimination of old elements, while giving the artist more and more unpredictable possibilities for creation.…”

Because of the Pixels: On the History, Form, and Influence of MS Paint

“…That Microsoft’s graphics program was given the name ‘Paint’ might seem arbitrary, but by 1985 there was a formal and professionally acknowledged distinction between ‘drawing’ and ‘painting’ programs. This difference between ‘drawing’ and ‘painting’ has little to do with the art historical distinction between the two practices that lend their names (Nappi, 2013). Rather, for software produced in the early 1980s the terms ‘drawing’ and ‘painting’ designated the two primary methods used to digitally define images: geometry or bitmaps (see Figure 1).…”

“…Drawing programs, like LisaDraw (1983) or Illustrator (1987), allowed the user to produce images by positioning and manipulating geometrically defined ‘objects’. This was a technique first employed by Ivan Sutherland, with his 1963 program Sketchpad (Nappi, 2013). Using a light pen and a bank of physical toggle switches, Sketchpad users were able to specify points, vectors, and arcs on an invisible X,Y plane.…”

“… 24. Bitmap painting programs do not require the use of a mouse. In 1973, Shoup’s influential SuperPaint program used a Summagraphics tablet for input – ‘a flat, markless surface’, that ‘opaquely concealed a grid of wires … that sequentially transmitted electrical pulses’ (Nappi, 2013:164) and allowed for the use of a pencil-like stylus. …”