On the internet there are two kinds of art tutorials available. The old one with a classical style and more modern oriented tutorials which are digital. What is the difference? The old style of teaching art is oriented on understanding art, or to be more detailed the idea is of reproducing the past. That means, the artist is taking a sheet of paper, has oil-colors, and is painting like van Gogh and others. In most cases the tutorial are grouped around the teaching of certain skills, for example to see the objects right, to understand the idea of perspective, to be familiar with imagination and so on.
Somebody may argue, that this way is the only one and is equal to THE art. But it's not. The new digital oriented tutorials have a different focus in mind. Here is the aim not to reproduce a certain workflow or a understanding of art, he is the focus on the result of art. In most cases, a painting is created with a purpose, for example the artist want to paint a flower. How this can be done is not important. One option of creating the result is simply put a photo on a copy machine and press the button. Another option is to copy and paste a jpeg-file which is already there. All of these techniques are valid pattern in creating art because they resulting into an output.
What new art is investigating (and what is described in the tutorials) are different ways to generate art in a productive way. Apart form simply using a photocopier it is also possible to start the GIMP software and draw the image with a tablet. The technique is not important. Instead of a tablet a mouse would work too and instead of GIMP another tool for example a vector drawing software is possible. What the artist is focussed is not a certain workflow or a certain understand of art, but he is guided by the results. He has certain conditions, for example an image created from scratch which shows flowers, and then he takes a technology which is helping to produce this output.
Stereotypes
The classical description of art was separated between online and offline art. Offline art is equal to painting with oil colors on paper, while online art is equal to digital art which is grouped around electronic photoediting. The gimp software was introduced as a classical photo-editing software tool. That means, a digital camera is producing the image and the gimp software is for making minor adjustments.
But, this clear distinction disappeared. Because Gimp is more then only a photoediting software, GIMP is a full blown electronic art-studio which allows to paint directly on the screen. The new better workflow is to use gimp for replacing classical painting. That means, the content is created nativly for the web, and is printed on demand, for example to present the work in an Art exhibition. The result is, that there is a difference between physical painting and the creating of the painting. It is possible to draw a picture without printing it out. The advantage has to do with costs. It is possible to create with GIMP much more images in a short amount of time, and without the need to buy oil colors for concept works.
In classical old school painting both working steps were made at the same time. While using the brush, the artist decides about the image. He can not paint without paint. Painting was about physical painting. In the improved workflow, the artist can create a complex oil painting without using real colors. He moves the mouse on the screen and using virtual tools like a brush, a pencil and so on. But, the old technique of using physical colors is still available. Because it is possible to transform any jpeg image with an inkjet printer into a real painting. In context of creating art, a normal desktop printer is not enough. There is a need for special A0 inkjet printers which provide a high-resolution quality. Such printers are available in photocopier studios.
What is the result of printed art? The result is mostly a higher productivity. Artist how are using a digital workflow with GIMP plus inkjet printers are not only drawing 2 images in a year, they are producing 100 images in a huge format. And they get printed out many thousands time. On the first look it seems, that not a single artist but a huge group of designers is behind the images, but it was a single person. He has optimized the workflow and is able to create any image the customer likes from scratch. What he has done is to replace a normal offline brush with computer hardware.
Resolution
One explanation, why computers are not very often used for paintings has to do with the limits of technology. The first painting programs were available since the 1980s and Andy Warhol used the top model for creating art. But, the output wasn't comparable to real art made with a brush, because the Amiga 1000 computer had a limited amount of main memory. If somebody is drawing on early homecomputers an image it will look like computerart but not like a real painting.
Let us define some preconditions to use the computer as a serious tool. Suppose, somebody want's to create a normal sized image which can be printed out in 40 inch by 40 inch (1 meter x 1 meter). A sufficient quality amount would be 300 dpi, the number of pixels is 12000x12000. Reducing the number of pixels isn't a good idea, because this result into a rastergraphics which can be seen with the normal eye from the distance. The key question is: how does look a computer like, who is able to process 12000x12000 pixels? And this is the bottleneck, the early computers in the 1980s were not capable of doing that. Even expensive workstations from that area are not suitable. The amount in Megabyte is 400 MB, that means, computers before the year 2000 were simply not powerful enough to handle this data.