Amateur vs. Professional: The digital artist

In today’s society, digital media is an ever present and highly accessible tool available to the everyday computer user. As a result of this convenience, amateur digital artists are able create impressive works with relative ease within a fraction of the time formerly taken. Imaging and design software along with comprehensive online tutorials, allow beginners to learn the basics, as ­­well as the detailed tricks, and photo-sharing and art community websites, allow them to share them with the world. As ideal as this sounds, professional artists, who due to this progression in technology, are finding it much more difficult to make their living. The question must be asked- has digital media officially blurred the line between ‘the amateur’ and ‘the professional’?

For the purpose of this essay, A 'professional’ as determined by The American Heritage Dictionary is a person “Engaging in a given activity as a source of livelihood or as a career” and “Having or showing great skill; expert”. These professionals usually have had a formal training in their field and use it as their primary source of income.
The Random House Dictionary defines an 'amateur’ as: “A person who engages in an art, science, study, or athletic activity as a pastime rather than as a profession.” and “one that lacks the skill and formal training of a professional, as in an art.” This however, as this essay will explore, does not mean that the amateur cannot make profit from their “pastime”.

The creative software available now, with is comprehensive and easy to use interface, is allowing amateurs to successfully design artwork that, in the past, was left to the trained eye of a professional. Payed programs like Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator , and Coral Paintshop Pro and DrawCoral Paintshop Pro and Draw, is becoming much more affordable and in some cases, free, depending of the computer user’s level of criminal activity, downloading from file sharing websites. There are also free applications like GIMP.org which make it even easier to access a form of creative editing software.
This is great for people who want to get into creating and designing for a leisure activity or hobby however many professional artists believe there is a distinct difference between the work of a trained artist compared to a self taught artist.
“High-quality, professional work usually bears a distinct ability to be subtle—to show restraint, and avoid garishness. That’s not to say, of course, that this work is boring. Instead, it is impactful and compelling without being overt.” (Croft,2009)(Croft, 2009)
Despite the aptitude of these professional artist is seems an amateurs work to the general public’s eye can be just as effective, rendering the subtleties of a professional almost obsolete.

The real advancement however, is in the online communities that nurture amateur artists. Deviantart.com, for example, allows its users to upload their creations into their personal galleries, allowing the rest of the community to comment, critique, and add them as a favourite (fave). It is this action in which the amateur artist begins to create a following, becoming a well known name in the online art community (Kostakos, 2009). Another example of this art community type website can be found in flickr.com which Josef Kolbitsch from the University of Technology, Austria (2006) describes as allowing users to store, organise, and share photos. Users can upload their photos to a server, add comments and leave notes inside pictures. The key element in the system, however, are arbitrary tags attached to photos, which in the same way Deviantart.com uses ‘faves’, which are used to search for the piece as well as find similar images the viewer may also like.
This sort of website has been successful in launching many amateurs far beyond their title, moving them into an area the questions when the artist moves from amateur to professional. An example of this can be found in one Lara Jade Coton,19, who has grown into a celebrity status in the online photography communities since she posted her first imagine on deviantart.com in 2004.
“From the age of fourteen, I was already aware of what the internet could do. However, at the start my photography was purely a hobby. I posted my work online because I enjoyed being part of a community. I suddenly started getting more and more comments and gradually, as the years went on I had quite a few followers!”­­­­
This is fantastic news for fellow aspiring photographers, however at what point do people like Lara Jade Coton take over from professional artists and photographers who have studied and trained in the field for decades?

The final blow to the professional artist comes down to the very core of the words, which is the ability to survive off of their art. There are an increasing number of online galleries showcasing the work of up-and-coming artists, as well as extensions of the very art communities previously mentioned, which allow the purchase of prints and originals of absolutely anyone’s work that has enabled the option. This ultimately allows art collectors to choose from literally millions of artists, at an extremely affordable price, in the comfort of their own home. Undoubtley, this affects the rate that young and new art collectors visit galleries in a time where such establishments are struggling already.

In conclusion today’s advances in digital media has allowed the amateur artist to grow and flourish, gaining reputation and following, opening up the opportunities to sell and produce their work, and gain many unforseen passions in pursuing their hobbies and passions. While there will always be a place for the trained masters of art and design, it will certainly be much harder to solely rely on the field as an income.