ART CLASS 002
TOOLS DO NOT AN ARTIST MAKE

Olivia De Berardinis [link] herself once told me that the airbrush is only a tool and does not define her skills. For someone who has been working in the art realm for well over 30 years to say that showed that she herself had, for the longest time, been defined by the very same tool that she wields with the skills of a master. As though the relatively simple pieces of metal that channel paint carried along by jets of pressurized air were the source of her skills as an artist and not the imagination and natural skills that she possessed. That her skills come only from the airbrush, when in fact it is what it is, a tool of creation.

Something like He-Man getting his powers only from the Sword of Greyskull.

Every day on deviantART we see artists of different genres, of different skills and of different medias displaying their works for the world to see. We marvel at how well they have mastered certain tools with such skill that they were surely born with it, and yet at the same time we start to criticize them for using them. One person can use a pen better than someone who can use a mouse and vice versa, and we are critical of both, wanting them to show some measure of diversity in their works and at the same time wanting to see more of what we have just complained about.

Some artists and viewers, like me, are not critical of the various style-types on deviantART. We are, in fact, envious of them for what they can do that we cannot, and sometimes we even go out of our way to try and tackle those same skills to see if we were cut out for them or not. I cannot paint nor can I do 3D work, but that does not mean I am going to criticize those who can. Is it their fault that they utilize the tools that best carry out their unique visions? No, not at all, and we should respect them for it. Sadly it is in our nature to do the complete opposite.

I know my limitations and I work with them the best I can, using the tools I have become comfortable with. Pens, pencils, markers and paint for certain effects when it comes to my traditional works, and brushes, autopsy photos and high-quality stock pictures (when I can get my hands on them) for my manipulations. Some people will use a pen to create something on paper, then turn around and use a computer to color it because they cannot use a marker, but can create beautiful images with a computer. Some try to build sculptures of people out of clay, and yet cannot carve something out of wood or stone to save their lives.

We as artists are born to use certain tools to bring our visions to life, and yet we are not entirely bound by them. Nevertheless, in the eyes of the general public we are. We are bound to the pen, to the brush, to the mouse or the stylus. Many people see what we do and, while they know it’s imagination, they can’t seem to understand that we can do anything we want with whatever tool we have mastered, and yet maybe we choose to stick with one tool in particular because it brings to life our dreams with the visual style that we had in mind.

To sit and pigeonhole someone into a certain category because that is what we always see them do is an injustice to the artist involved. In a way it is almost like artistic-racism. While I will not use the vulgar terminology here, labeling an artist by the tool they use would be like calling people by their racist-slang name based on the color of their skin or the country of their origin. Every artist is just that, an artist. I am not a pen and you are not a stylus. We are artists, creators and worthy of better titles than the ones we are labeled with.

Glance around on deviantART and you will see that many people do not label themselves with the more base terms that are provided. On average we will avoid labeling ourselves by calling ourselves an "Angelina Jolie Fetishist" or a "Pornographic Connoisseur" and not certain types of photographers or artists or skinners. We detest labels on a subconscious level because we want people to see our work, not the tools we used to bring them about. Sure we like for people to say ‘wow you can really draw’ but we do not like it when they say ‘wow you sure do know how to use a Zig Memory System Millennium .005 pen’. Our skills have just been reduced to the thing we held in our hand during the moment of creation, and that is belittling to say the least.

Many artists on this site and others like it are proud of their output. The visions they create they are obviously proud of enough to have shared them with us and the world. They are proud of what they used to create it, and will be more than happy to tell you what they used and how they did it (unless of course you have an ego and tell eager learners to go fuck themselves). However, to sit and label us is a crime that we will only tolerate for so long.

I am not a pen-and-ink man.

I am not a PhotoShop user.

I am an artist, and damn proud of it.