Marc Boutavant

Varoom issue 05, 2007

You spoke to me recently about the liberating role of the Wacom tablet. Could you tell me a litte more about this?

It's a very personal experience. I don't much like drawing,and working in the way i used to work became boring for me. I wore my acrylic cross for years, but with the tablet several things happened that had a liberating effect for: i was no longer looking for my hand at the end of my nose as i drew. Looking at a screen, with a hand (mine,in fact) drawing on a tablet, introduced a kind of distance to the process, which was good for the thinking process. Also, it was now easier to make shapes 'inside and outside' shaping forms in way which was closer to my feeling. Using acrylic had often been a huge waste of time regarding technical difficulties of rendering colours and materials with scans and CMYK printing and so on. With digital, the final result is closer to what i wanted to do.

Some people, particularly publishers, do say that digitally generated artwork is less 'friendly' than traditionally created work. Do you have a view on this?

I do understand this. I used o feel it too, but its like new food, new tastes. In the end, what is important is what the artwork allows you to pick up on. Traditionally created art work is seductive and somehow regarded as more 'noble' material but this might not be enough. I would respond to this by saying that the medium is not used in order to show the medium but is used to make an image, to create reaction, to evoke thoughts and feelings.

Could it be said that the work of some artists is more stylistically appropriate for children than that of others?

I would say no. That is an adult projection. If an image is made to talk to children, it will talk to them, whether done with pencil, college or computer.