The walls and door of my office are festooned with "artwork"—sketches and doodles, really—that I've produced over the course of weeks, months, even years. I'm a closet cartoonist and have been drawing for much of my life. Though much of the posted artwork was hand-drawn, a good third of it was produced on the PC. In fact, I've been drawing on computers for 20 years. Now, a bunch of out-of-touch university instructors are complaining that young people weaned on computer graphics will lack the basic skills needed to become good artists.

Boo-hoo. They say that the big bad computer will make it impossible for artists to learn the basics of volume, shading, and perspective. According to a Reuters article, computer artists move too quickly to create good art. Drawing on paper, the article says, "requires concentration, introspection, and revision." One professor characterized it this way: "Drawing to me is a sense of consciousness . . . a spiritual existence." Wha . . . ? I've met professors that think like this. They were the ones who came to class wearing sunglasses and then asked if we'd like to go out onto the campus lawn to talk about the "nature of love." Give me a break.

I enjoy drawing on paper and do it consciously and unconsciously all the time—it's something of a nervous habit. I derive equal enjoyment out drawing with a computer, and I can tell you from long experience that it demands just as much "concentration, introspection, and revision."

Back in 1986, I got my hands on a first-generation Apple Macintosh. It had few applications beside PageMaker 1.2 and the Cricket application suite, which included Cricket Draw. Fresh from my college experience, where I'd been drawing a weekly comic strip, the idea of drawing on a PC intrigued me, though I doubted it could be done. Yet, during downtimes at my first newspaper job, I used the blocky mouse and basic bitmap software (something less sophisticated than Microsoft Paint) to draw super-simple cartoons. One of my first was a guy jogging in the cold. It was black-and-white and not particularly nuanced, but not bad, either—in fact, the newspaper ran a couple of my early drawings in print. In time, I graduated to a better app, Aldus Freehand.

Freehand was something of a sea change for me. It switched the technology from bitmap to vector, and soon my drawings were taking on greater sophistication. Still, the output rarely looked very good, because the 300-dpi laser printers were all black-and-white and the color ink jets were pitifully low-res. In time, that changed, too.

When I made the leap to PCs in 1991, I was one of the first people to use Aldus Freehand on the PC. I was still drawing with a mouse, but getting more skilled with it every day. With the arrival of the first Wacom drawing tablet in the early 1990s, I dropped the mouse for the more natural pen. Fast-forward 15 years, and I'm still using Freehand (though it's now owned by Adobe) and a USB-based Wacom tablet. I also still do bitmap work in Adobe Photoshop and Fractal Design and Alias.

The last application I use exclusively on a tablet PC, the latest evolution in my computer graphics experience. Being able to draw directly on the screen has, in the most fundamental way, melded my old-school drawing skills with technology. My hand is no longer 6 to 18 inches away for the electronic paper surface.

This brings me back to my point: Why do these professors think creating art on a PC is so radically different from doing it on paper? Yes, I'll admit I minored in art in college and was taught some basic skills, but school did not create my drawing ability. I often create greeting cards on the PC that I send around to friends and family. Usually, they're cartoons with an opening scene on the cover and the punch-line image inside (similar to what you pay for at egreetings.com). Before computers, I drew the original by hand, made copies, and hand-colored each one. Now I print out all of them at high-res and in full color.

It usually takes me a week to create one of these cards. I may have a rough pencil sketch that outlines the idea. Then I create it on the tablet PC by sketching, tweaking, revising, concentrating, and falling into occasional deep introspection. I'm creating something that other people will see and I want it to be just so, and, if I'm lucky, a little bit inspired. The interesting thing about drawing on a computer is that it offers so much flexibility (you can zoom in incredibly, to pixel-level close, or you can grab a drawn line and bend it, move it, delete it, and more) that you can almost overwork a drawing. Sometimes I need to step back from the card (zoom out, really) to get a clear sense of what I've done and make sure I'm not overcomplicating the cartoon. It all takes work and skill— skills that I believe have grown since I began using the computer to draw back in 1986.

In comes down to this: If you love drawing, you'll do it, no matter where you are and with whatever you have at your fingertips. You'll doodle on napkins, have way too much fun with MagnaDoodle (my daughter and I have for years played a "You Draw, I Draw" game), and when the need arises or the mood strikes you, draw on the PC. The more you draw, no matter the medium or input device (analog or digital), your skills will grow.