Sketching with technology: I have mixed feelings

Since I teach children art, I am regularly introduced to the artistic tech of today. I find it interesting and normally the kids will have to teach me how to use it. These various programs on an iPad or whatever tablet you happen to have can be interesting and maybe would inspire someone to get involved in art, and they certainly are a lot more forgiving than a piece of paper or canvas. I'm not that thrilled about them though because it just encourages people to spend more time on electronic devices and I feel as though we already have too much of that in this world.

Looks terrifying doesn't it? Well this was my first try so I think we can make some allowances plus I was merely trying to get an outline.

The major problem I had with this is that it is quite difficult to get any fine lines using your finger, so a bit later a student handed me a stylus and that helped quite a bit.

Here is where I start to really have issues with using technology for this kind of thing: It does a lot of the shading for you and will "auto correct" based on certain preferences that you can set. Doing something like this encourages someone to not actually be able to create real world art without assistance of the tablet. This will also discourage "purists" like me who are just starting out because with a pencil and a piece of paper, nothing is going to be auto-shaded unless you have a professional artist that is going to do the tough stuff for you.

In the end I feel as though this was a relatively decent product but I don't feel good about it since the tough stuff like shading and shadows were done for me. You can even adjust where the supposed light source is and the shading will be completed for you.

I admire the work that went into creating a program like this and I can't even imagine how complicated it must have been to create it. I run the risk of sounding like an old-timer here but I don't consider this to be real art any more than I consider DJ's to be real musicians.

While I think it can be a useful tool in helping students to understand things like shading and shadows I fear that too many people will become dependent on it or even use it as a method of cheating rather than actually learning how to do these things inside their own heads.

I would prefer if my students only used this on a part time basis because overall I feel it can actually be damaging to the development of one's own potential skills.