ANCIENT OPERATING SYSTEM

Let’s face it. The operating system for Transparent Drawing is ancient. After all, we are talking about nothing more than a pencil and a piece of paper with some watercolor tones. So how long has this OS been around?

People were drawing on the walls of caves some 40,000 years ago. And not only that, they were applying color tones to their forms. So here we are, 40,000 years later doing basically the same thing.

Is it fair to call drawing an OS?  Well, an operating system acts as an intermediary between programs (your mind) and the hardware (pencil and paper.)  Operating systems manage memory and storage (what is on your paper.)  They execute programs (what you are thinking about.)  So at least in these terms, yes, drawing is an OS.

So when you start with an OS this ancient, then it becomes a hurdle to develop a new functionality. From what I can tell, the French cave drawers were not thinking transparently. And this has not changed over the eons. So I would submit that indeed Transparent Drawing is offering a new functionality. If it gives you a new tool with which to think and solve problems, that sounds like increased functionality to me. We might think of this as Drawing OS 7.3 with the Transparent Drawing feature.

Is there a radical functionality to Transparent Drawing? Well, if you are given the opportunity to use ancient methods in ways that nobody has suggested to you before, that might qualify as radical. Or you might say that this is merely an incremental improvement. If so, I think that is also valid; there certainly is nothing wrong with incremental improvements.

Obviously, this is a tongue in cheek riff on computer terminology. We will look at digital inroads into analogue drawing. Pens can now record movement so that the lines show up on your tablet. They make a pen in which you draw in 3D (review upcoming).

Yet drawing is an Operating System. It had incredible power 40,000 years ago. And it commands that power today. The power that I feel when I hold a pencil over my sketchbook is far greater than anything I have felt sitting in front of a digital display.