Why the erase button sucks

It’s not me, it’s you. And I know this is going to be hard to hear and yes, you can call me a hypocrite and I’ll take it, but this is the truth - the erase button is no good for art.

You see, and this is the bit where you can call me a hypocrite if you want - I use digital image making software, and I use the erase button - or the erase command, however you like to think of it - but it’s no good for making art. Sure, for everything else in the entire world, it’s bloody marvellous - from creating the most perfectly rendered 3d mindscape that pushes visualisation to the edge of what’s possible, to digitally altering your mate’s photo so they look like Shrek on a bike (you had to be there) the erase button is a bloody good thing. If only, indeed, we had one for real life, so we could un-spill the tea or un-swear the f-word in front of the two year old, who then merrily repeats it to everyone they meet - but we don’t. However, the place we don’t need an erase button, is art - and here’s why.

OK, before the why - let me take you back to the dim and distant past of the nineties, when were were young enough and foolish enough to have hope and wear striped leggings, the world saw the first release of photoshop, a version of photoshop which was compatible with a pen like device, rather than a click and point mouse. I fondly recall the era of using photoshop on a screen as heavily pixelated as a tiled floor, when a pink blob surrounded by brown blobs somehow became the face of an adventurer on a magical quest - but then there came the first program which allowed one to draw on a pad and see those lines written in glowing wonderment across a screen. To celebrate this, the BBC, when TV pretty much was the BBC in the UK and we all watched, got some famous artists to give it a go and see what they could do with it. I can’t remember who they all were, but the show was called ‘Painting with Light’ and the person I remember most was David Hockney, he of the flat vowels and swimming pool fixations.

Hockney drew away, chatting through his thought process long before zoom draw-a-longs were a thing, and I watched pretty impressed as he doodled images after image onto of each other. I wish I could report I was gripped by his artistic process and his creativity, but honestly I was thinking ‘bloody hell, he’s just doing a load of old bollocks, this being an artist thing must be dead easy.’

I was of course, wrong about that, but the big thing that stuck with me was when David, after casually drawing a horse in lurid pink, said (and I admit I am paraphrasing) ‘of course, the problem with is that there’s nothing to stop you. If this was paper, it would be all falling apart by now, but with this you just keep going and if you don’t like it, you just, you know, make it go away.’

That’s my point, you see. As much as I love using digital because it saves you acers of time, as much as it has made the impossible possible in so many ways and for so many things, as much as it’s the most amazing illustration tool out there - the problem is you can always just make ‘it’ go away. No fuss, no mess, no bother - and that’s the problem when it comes to art.

Because one of the best things you can do for your artistic development, is put right the things you messed up, or even better, take what went wrong into a new and creative direction you would never have found before. It’s such a frustrating truism that we learn from our mistakes, but it is frustrating because it is true - and it’s not because we learn not to do something again, but we learn how to go with it, work with it, cosset it into a new direction and let it flourish in a way we never would have thought of without that first mistake. But with digital, you don’t get to do that, you just erase it all and go again and again, until you’re where you thought you wanted to be - but you’re less likely to be where never knew you could go.

I’m so utterly convinced of this, have proved it to myself over and over again that in my latest collection ‘Thought and Memory’ I’ve started working with the mistakes first, making them happen without thought for where they’re going and then working with what they’ve given me, treating them as a gift.

This is the first piece I created in this way, no idea where it was going when I started it. I knew only that I wanted to create something with the colours of a rainbow, and I knew that I was drawn to thin, vertical images, so I sliced up some big watercolour paper sheets, stretched them and threw ink at them.

When I remember, I try and photograph where I start, but I was too absorbed to remember until fairly far on with this one, but here are a couple which show how it grows - I study what the paint has created for me, and see if I can pick out patterns and images and let them take me where they want me to go.

So yes, I’m not saying a digital artist couldn’t draw this, but I am saying I didn’t know I was going to draw this until I started, and I couldn’t start until a lot of ink had made unpredictable contact with a lot of wet paper and a hairdryer, and it’s that wild ride which I just don’t think digital art can go on.

If anyone tries to take my photoshop away, I will fight them, but I’ll fight harder for my inks!

This piece - Euphoria Iris - will be launched at The Rochester Art Fair, Rochester Corn Exchange, 03/05/2024 - and on my website - where you will be able to buy prints if you miss out on the original -

Until next time!