Can digitally painted maps be called handmade?

[pservices69]

Does the acrylic paint have to be silver or can it work with any color ?

[LordEntrails]

... As Falconius says, it's just sales & marketing nonsense and should therefore be completely ignored.

A different thought/perspective; the more you know a subject, the less useful a simple label is.

For instance, for most people, "stainless steel" is a label they think they understand. Stainless Steel silverware is better than plain silverware. Stainless steel screw is better for building your deck than galvanized screws. For an engineer like me, it's ... annoying. What type of stainless steel is it? Martensitic? Austinitic? Is is 304, 316, 440? 440c? Is it an ASTM 440 or an ISO 440?

To a cartographer (or artist), you understand the intricacies and challenges with a label like "hand-drawn", "digitally rendered" or what have you. To the common map consumer, simple labels are important because it conveys a general sense of the product. It provides a level of comfort for what you are buying because you think you understand the label. Therefore, labels provide a great deal of apparent value to consumers. Not so much to experts.

[Falconius]

In the example you provide the different types of stainless steel you list have very specific definitions. "Hand-_____" is a term purposefully left vague and undefined, because it is a term used, as you say, to get customers to perceive a value to the product whether or not it has it. It is false comfort, misleading comfort, in other words, marketing ****.

Which is why I suggested striking to simple but actually descriptive terms. For example: "Drafted and painted by Falconius" Or "Composed and drawn by LordEntrails" Or perhaps the simplest "By Mr. X"

I think with useless descriptors like "hand" thrown in you are bound to get people looking at your stuff expecting one thing, but getting something else. For instance recently there was a guy on a Facebook group I'm part of selling 3D printed sculpts, describing them as "hand sculpted" (or it might have been "hand made", English was a second language to him). What does that mean? Does it mean he sculpted something real, 3D scanned it, and then sells the prints of that? Does it mean he did that, but cleaned it up on the computer for printing? Does it mean he modeled it on the computer, but used no aids like symmetry, or posing? Does it mean he modeled it on the computer using all the advantages that technology allows him, but since he used his hands to do that its like all the rest? All this could have been avoided if he just said "Sculpted by _____" instead of "Hand Sculpted by ________." As soon as he stuck the "hand" on there he made a statement about the value of how his piece was made, which then raises the question of what was that value? And is his claim of that value true?

[Mouse]

Well, ok. But I've just bought Artrage Lite with some of my birthday money, and the drawing I'm working on is every bit as intense as drawing on a real piece of paper with a real pencil, even though I'm working on a tablet and staring at the screen (its good software).

Would that be hand drawn, or... what should I call it?

[Falconius]

Drawn.

I need to add letters since a one word answer is too short :p

[Mouse]

Hmmm. 'Drawn in Artrage', maybe? Just saying 'Drawn' makes it sound a bit strange to me. In English the word on its own and out of context can mean a number of things - not all of them very pleasant!

Maybe I should just call it 'an Artrage drawing'

[Falconius]

I would think a giant map plus a byline would provide the required context haha.

[LordEntrails]

"Drawn and Quartered by Mouse"? *G*

I get it Falconius, and I don't disagree. The desire to say "hand-drawn" is marketing (something). It's an attempt to add a qualifier or upsell the item. To an expert it raises more questions than it answers, to a consumer... it implies value (rightly or not). In marketing speak should it be used? And does it mean something?

I don't know. Before this thread I would have thought it did. Now, not sure. How does an artist label what they do in a way that it implies value, quality, uniqueness?

I think just saying "drawn by ___" doesn't give that sense. It is accurate, but it doesn't imply some quality to a consumer that they would want this versus something else. Wanting to add marketing (something) is a valid desire. So what might? "Uniquely Drawn" or "artistically crafted" or... I don't know. Don't really like anything

[Falconius]

That's true, and a lot of how an artist makes money is about marketing. I'm really, really, really, really, really, terrible at marketing, so I'd only take what I say with a grain of salt.

[Mouse]

Maybe it still doesn't really matter if we aren't all that uniform with our terminology. After all, if an artist gets a name for calling his or her stuff hand drawn, or hand painted, and its obviously digital, then it will never be as impressive as someone who calls their works exactly the same thing, but really does do it in ink or paint on paper.

Even then (as ChickPea pointed out earlier), the difference becomes less as soon as the painting in watercolour on paper, or the drawing in ink on paper is scanned and mass distributed...

I think the word 'hand' is actually a bit irrelevant once a work is no longer unique - as soon as the entire world can download it if they wish, but the only way you can get around that and still market your work online is to make sure that all the online copies are heavily watermarked, so that the only person in the world who has the actual work in its unblemished entirety is the artist, or the one who buys it and receives it carefully rolled up in its cardboard tube. Then it should bear the title Hand painted/drawn/sculpted with pride