You're making no sense. When I say you can't create something out of nothing, I mean that if you have no imagery to represent what you're trying to express, you can't express the concept. This is the theory of matter. It doesn't only apply to physical matter and energy.
But your thoughts and creativity cant be measured in matter or energy. Granted, all creations take inspiration and ideas from already existing things, but you
can create something absolutely new, in the eyes of what is known, anyway. There is an astronomical chance that something that someone makes that no one has seen before, exists somewhere in our universe. But in our perception, it is new. This is what I'm saying, I don't know where you got the notion that someone is creating something from absolutely nothing.
Frankly, the argument took a nose dive into the penal zone when you started talking about how artists express themselves in the first place -- the original argument was literally just takato saying bloukface's airbrush shading isn't good. What I'm thinking here is that it's more that you're looking for a reason to attack takato for having a passive-aggressive tone to his criticism -- most of your argument stems from the fact that takato specifically called out the airbrush.
See here:
airbrushing is not experimentation, its being loving lazy, it always results in really soft and poorly defined shadows, it doesn't allow for hard edges simply by its design, which are absolutely critical to achieving realistic lighting and shadows
the airbrush is an objectively bad tool, its not like we're talking about differing mediums, we're talking about different tools to manipulate a single medium
it's like using a loving toothpick as a paintbrush, it's not gonna work well no matter what you do
and
It is a stuffty tool that only does something that other tools already do
except the results it produces are significantly worse than the results the aforementioned other tools produce
I may not have been as nice as I thought I was being, and I'm sorry about that, but that doesn't change the fact that the airbrush is not a good tool
My argument was stated matter-of-factly and as simple as possible multiple times, but again: IT IS A TOOL. IT IS WHAT YOU MAKE OF IT.
Generally taking the easy way out doesn't make for a very nice picture, since you put less effort into it.
Over-complication =/= better. Just because it
is easier does not mean it is worse. I'm using this as a general statement.
An artist that uses a medium adapts their style to it -- the tool is shaping the artist's style as he shapes how he uses the tool. A sculptor working with hard clay will develop stronger fingers with practice, so that he has more control over how the clay can be molded.
Sure, an artist can adapt their style to their medium, but an extraordinary artist uses the medium to do things not seen before with that medium. It's those moments when you see something new and exciting from a medium that makes you say "Oh wow I've never thought of that," that signifies an artists job as an
artist.
