Digital VS Old School

I've been exploring the paperless digital graphic art alternatives to old school methodology and am still on the fence about the whole phenomenon. The convenience and flexibility of digital graphics is something I greatly treasure and will probably always rely on for exploratory design work. The actual execution of finished art is something I'm wrestling with. I seem to spend more time digitally trying to mimic what is pretty easy with the old fashioned pen or brush.

The example illustrations shown here are how fluid and varied Jack Davis was able to get his lines simply using a brush. The other two color drawings are mine using a digital paint program and I am not at all satisfied with the line quality. I didn't care much because they were exploratory drawings but I could not let these go as finished art and would have spent a lot of time tweaking line thicknesses.

I work with incredibility talented illustrators and they seem to have adapted pretty well to the digital revolution. I do see them spending a great deal of time laying down and deleting a single stroke until there is something they like. Would it be more efficient working old school? We still need to get that image digitized to be usable today though, don't we?

Brush work by Jack Davis (click on image to enlarge)

Digital designs by Joel Brinkerhoff (click on image to enlarge)