Drawing versus digital: a category error

This article challenges the assumption that traditional drawing is less powerful than digital means of producing images. The power of digital imaging technology is widely perceived to render traditional drawing instruction less relevant in visual arts programmes at all levels. This assumption is the result of what Gilbert Ryle called a ‘category mistake’, corrected by understanding that drawing is the progenitor of digital means, rather than a different ontological category. The article proposes that drawing pedagogy remains an efficient, economical means of nurturing an intelligence of seeing; subsequent applications of such intelligence have facilitated all technologies, including the relatively recent digital means of image production and manipulation.