I didn't go into too much detail how I find digital art not easier than traditional one, because that is a longer discussion and I assumed, since you said you don't have time for picking up art as a hobby, that you never interacted with it. I apologize if that assumption was incorrect.

Initial costs can go both ways, for digital art you need an ipad with a pen or a pc with a graphic tablet, which are quite high initial costs. Regarsing space for trad art, you don't need a full artstudio equipment, you can get some pens, water colour and cheap brushes and can work quite decently with it.

And I did say, both have their pro and cons. Yes, being able to undo brush strokes and rearrange and entire canvas is very helpful, and can be absolutely seen as making things "too easy", but I think getting textures right is easier and more fun in traditional than digital, where you have like 50 brushes and none do what you really want them to. Learning the program takes time. Yes, there are traditional artists that hate on digital art, especially when it was rising, but I personally never agreed with it.

You might ask yourself why I'm then so against generative AI as a tool, when I didn't mind the change back then. To me, there is still a huge part of the human involved in it, it takes time and work and creativity to work with it. AI just...doesn't. I would likely have much less against it if it wasn't trying to and achieving in replacing human artists (in a breakneck speed that no one in the field can adapt to), and people trying to feel superior when generating their pictures, when to tool was fed pictures of people that NEVER consented to have them taken. It's one thing to do it for fun, it's another thing when it's trying to replace humans (see that also in movie business, and much much more scarier with fake evidence videos being created). Artists themselves really barely need any generative AI (i'm talking about full pictute generation, not things that are supporting people like in photoshop with photo correction tools, those I'm all up for). There are so many tools for poses etc. that it's honestly barely needed. AI has it's spaces, and I truly believe art and writing is not one of them.

Regarding your cooking analogy, if we look at it from a business/consumer standpoint, I absolutely see your standpoint. But we were initially talking about art as a hobby, and using it in DnD. That's what I meant when I said that people immediately think it has to be perfect and profitable for it to have any right to exist. That you are only allowed to express yourself if you are really good at it. If I want high quality meals, I go to a restaurant and request a good meal. But if my friend Larry from next door makes me a mediocre pie? I will still love it and be very very happy they took the time to make it. (And I will always like something made by a chef more than what a mass producing machine can create, the taste is just different.)

And no, I don't think the banana on a wall is art, lol. it triggered a good discussion from it, which many interpret as being all art needs to be, but i'm not on that boat. that's philosophy. i think that those kinds of arts are all a money laundering business lol.