There is still a stereotypical opinion about computer art as being inferior to traditional artistic media. The reason for this inferiority is partially stemming from the misconception of computer being too “mechanical” for art, and partially from the opinion that images made with computer look “artificial”.

Both points are wrong. Computer can be used to make images that look anything but mechanical, and of course it is more than possible to achieve an “artificial” look with physical media. However, while the first point comes from sheer ignorance, the second one has something to it that needs to be addressed.

Why is computer-made art associated with artificial look? Answer: because the typical piece of computer-made art off the street does look artificial. The rest is plain rule of majority: whatever is seen most, is copied most. And if it just happens that Marvel and Dark Horse comics are colored with artificially smooth gradients with small addition of computer-generated textures, then it's quite enough that many aspiring fantasy artists produce the same style, even though they are not bound by the “industry standard”.

One of the problem's sources is, of course, the long history of using flat color in comics and animation. Another is the odd adherence to use of Photoshop for painting (which it is painfully unsuited for). Yet another is, as stated above, blind imitation. However, stating all that still doesn't help us if we want to eliminate the problem for ourselves. So what could we do?

Let us approach it from the other side and find out what makes that “artificial” look and what could be done to achieve “natural” look.

Curiously, it cannot be the “absence of human hand”, because modern drawing tablets do quite good in transferring the touch of human hand to the computer.

It cannot be also the mechanical darkening and lightening of values to show light and shadow, so evident in most amateur work, simply because amateurs would do the same with real paint; the comoputer is to blame maybe in making it too easy to lighten and darken the color mechanically, but then we might as well blame it for producing ugly "plasma cloud" fractals. To find out what really is going on, we should turn to the real medium which approaches computer in “artificiality”.

The medium I am talking about is the airbrush.

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