I play a game called League of Legends, and whenever they release a new champion they always post a video of a guy drawing the concept art in photoshop.

I've watched a few of these and I am wondering:

Compared to drawing, painting, etc. It seems less 'artistic' and more 'technical'. By that I mean, it seems to be that you need to be more versed in the different shading/line tools, how to flip pictures and layer them, how to change the lighting around, etc, than having to draw the right lines. Hand drawn art, seems to me, that it is harder to get actual lines and such. if you get a line slightly off on the computer, you just highlight it and drag it and such.

If you design on the computer, how do you compare it to drawing? Will you say you still need an artistic eye or could someone, who is artistically uncoordinated, spend a while with a line tool and some of the effects and produce something of sub-par quality with a little experience?

If you've never seen a car, would you be able to draw it? Just because a tool like photoshop makes it easier to draw, doesn't mean experience still makes it better. Style also comes into play, I can blow peoples minds with ink and paper, but with photoshop I'm extremely rough and amateurish.

I prefer ink and paper, for the fact that I'm more of a fluid drawer, I also draw faster, and the slow pace of editing, finding the best blends for layers and so far to be troublesome and cause me to loose focus on what i was trying to draw.

No, painting for example has a lot of technical crap involved too. The current painting I'm working on has required use of a ruler, use of math to figure out what smaller spacing a large space can be evenly divided into, use of masking tape, use of wet q-tips to erase accidental splashes of paint, use of 3 self-made stencils to get a uniform-looking row of objects, careful storage of paint so I can have a specific color available weeks later if I need more, use of source-images of various flowers, use of different sizes and shapes of paintbrushes, etc. Photoshop has a few important conviences, mainly undo history, color rotation, and filters, but using colors and lines to create the illusions of 3d objects with texture, placement, gravity, and lighting, is a lot of theoretical brainwork no matter what medium you use. Mediums without color are a little simpler, but they still have proportion and perspective and stuff.

I didn't mean any disrespect on the above posts, sometimes I can come across like that, but I didn't mean it.

I guess a better way to phrase the question, if I knew how to use all the tools and conveniences of photoshop without being able to draw well, could I make up for it with the different line tools/shades/morphs/textures?
I see him flip and reposition things constantly.

But I agree, there's a lot that goes into art, and a lot of it is pretty mentally intense and requires the right mindset. I suppose technology makes everything look easier.

I didn't think your tone was disrespectful. I always thought smearing graphite or paint on paper looked simple; certainly it took me less time and instruction to learn to use a pencil and a brush than to learn to use Photoshop. Generally with art the tools are never the hard part. (Blender may be an exception - I still find that brain-breaking.) But seriously, the hard part of art isn't getting lines, shapes, and colors onto a paper or canvas. The hard part is figuring out what lines, shapes, and colors you want to put on the canvas so the result looks like a rampaging dragon, or a majestic mountain, or an elegant noblewoman.

My personal opinion is, the only things that require serious skill to draw are people and, to a lesser extant, animals. If you want to draw something that isn't either of those you can fake it or learn a way to do it in a few days.

Hand-drawn art done on a PC is hand-drawn... This makes no sense.

No, having good technical abilities with Photoshop does not make up for having no art skills.

I didn't mean any disrespect on the above posts

No disrespect taken, and I didn't mean to come off rude. Just wanted to make my opinion clear, that art is one of those things that requires experience to be good at.

But seriously, the hard part of art isn't getting lines, shapes, and colors onto a paper or canvas. The hard part is figuring out what lines, shapes, and colors you want to put on the canvas so the result looks like a rampaging dragon, or a majestic mountain, or an elegant noblewoman.

exactly.

Hand-drawn art done on a PC is hand-drawn... This makes no sense.

Photoshop isn't going to simulate the effects of blending different colored pencils, pastels, or other mediums unless you know how to tweak it's settings. Sure they may both use your hand to draw, but it's about the tools you're using that makes them different.

I watched some of those League of Legends. There's a whole lot more going on in the ones I watched than just flipping some layers around. There is true skill being exhibited, and that, I'm afraid, doesn't come from the software. But take heart: given the availability of software, anyone can pick up a digital paintbrush and learn how to do that. It's not some mystic art. It's like anything else: the more you practice it, the better you will become.