Is that REALLY paint Sweetie?

While waiting for the daytime television commercials to pass, one of these commercials kept coming on during the whole show. So, after such insistence, I actually paid attention to what it was about. Turns out, it was aimed at all family members in particular to parents and children. (Hence the time of day the commercial was playing at...) It was a little girl using the program "Fresh Paint" on her new touchscreen Windows 8 computer. Really fresh? She had so many "paintings" hanging on her wall that she had done using her paints, which she could also mix as if they were "REAL" paints!! She was doing this while her "canvas" aka her computer screen was on a painting easel. She had so many masterpieces including a painting of her father that she later Skyped and showed him. Below is the video.

Is this really painting? What happened to using Crayola tempera paint and getting your fingers messy as well as the entire workspace as a kid? I wonder if to children of today's generation, if this is what it REALLY means to paint? Instead of real paint they use "cyber ink/paint" that can never get on their clothes and drive their mothers crazy trying to find the perfect detergent to wash it out with? Do these kids like this little girl in the video feel the satisfaction of finishing a masterpiece as one would using traditional paint? Do they really experiment with color mixing as they would on the computer? As the colors are being mixed, is this really reflective of how colors would turn out if being mixed in real life? Just goes to show that the mediums used in creating art evolve as time pass. 

Don't worry Crayola Tempera Paint, to me you will always be number one. ...and the day my little guy is old enough he will know what is feels like to drive his mother crazy getting the REAL paint all over the house while trying to really paint a picture! :) Sorry Microsoft, you lost in my house! Personally, doesn't matter how amazing this may be to some parents, there are some things children and adults alike need to experiment with. Even though new mediums and ways of creating art are emerging from the depths of digital technology, if we stop using these traditional ways of creating art...the technique may be lost forever in a few future generations. This is a risk I am not willing to take! :)