Here’s a very interesting article which can help understand why it is, in my opinion, essential to have a physical input in digital art making (Wacom tablets or other), lest we cut ourselves off a major part of our totality.
Cognitive science has often been guilty of a cardinal sin, focusing primarily on the brain, overlooking the fundamental importance of the body.
To be sure, it is possible to work digitally without always being linked to te process by hand-made gestures, but if one never had that essential connection (coming to digital art without prior experience with natural media), one is likely to design maps of a country one has never set foot in.
So, if indeed an artist is an adult who has kept the child alive in him/her, this article and its emphasis on learning via the body applies to grown-ups as much as it does to kids.
For the record, as a teacher, I had three role models: Maria Montessori, Jean Piaget, and John Holt, all of whom I am sure would agree with the findings of the article I am referring to here.
As an illustration, here’s a short animation done in SA by my son when he was 5 (that was 13 years ago), all by himself. He already had a Wacom tablet and his own computer, was home-schooled then, and spent a couple of hours every morning doing work in Painter, and Studio Artist: http://www.nondidjuti.net/animation/georges_clip_1.html
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