Quote - But I definitely wasted 20yrs of my live having to work with pencil and paper because back then computers just weren't good enough to do what they can do now. As I said, different strokes....

I disagree, for years I produced architectural perspectives by hand, projecting lines from a plan using vanishing points, a long ruler and a pencil. Modern software makes that stuff infinitely easier and quicker, but those old lessons are not forgotten, I view them as a kind of apprenticeship.

I'm amazed how often I see a really impressive architectural render from big-money software spoiled by dumb composition or completely ruined by a background photo which places the horizon line in completely the wrong place.

The simpler the tools (like a pencil or a stick of charcoal), the more we rely on our eye and our judgement to make good art. It's easy to get swept up in the complexity of tools like photoshop or Poser or a full modelling/rendering package and to believe that if you figure out what all the buttons do, good art will somehow magically follow. It won't.

There's still no substitute for a critical eye and good artistic judgement, and I believe that you're more likely to find these things in artists who have at some point mastered a simple medium like pencil.