Contents
- Digital art creation statistics: Digital drawing prevalence and starting age
- Digital art creation statistics: First devices and mobile illustration
- Digital art creation statistics: Digital and traditional art practices
- Digital art creation statistics: Creative AI use and workflows
- Digital art creation statistics: AI attitudes among creative professionals
- Digital art creation statistics: Digital art and NFTs among surveyed artists
- Sources
Digital art creation statistics: Digital drawing prevalence and starting age
A Celsys online survey conducted from August 3 to October 7, 2022, included 6,385 visual-art creators in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Spain. Respondents had drawn during the previous 30 days. Across those countries, 69.6% said they drew digitally. The country figures varied: Germany recorded 75.4%, while France recorded 63.1%. These are results for the surveyed creators who met the participation criteria, rather than estimates for every artist in Europe or worldwide. Source: Celsys, 2022 European creator survey
The survey also asked digital drawers when they first made digital art. Among those who answered that question, 43.4% said they started at age 15 or younger, including 13.0% at age 10 or younger. The average age of first digital creation was 17.1 years, and age 15 was the most common individual response. The average and the most common response describe different features of the answers: the average summarizes ages across respondents, while the most common response identifies the single age reported most often. Source: Celsys, 2022 European creator survey
Reported average starting ages also differed between the country results provided. The average was 18.1 years among surveyed French respondents and 16.0 years among surveyed Spanish respondents. These figures refer to recalled age at first digital creation. They do not indicate when respondents first began making art in any medium. Source: Celsys, 2022 European creator survey
Digital art creation statistics: First devices and mobile illustration
Among respondents who had made digital drawings, 57.3% said their first digital drawing was made on a device other than a PC. This is a first-device measure: it captures what people used when they began drawing digitally, not what they used most often later. It shows that PCs were not the only entry point in this survey, while leaving the particular first device unspecified in this overall share. Source: Celsys, 2022 European creator survey
A separate Celsys survey of 6,000 creators in the same 4 countries was conducted from September 27 to November 8, 2023. Among creators who used smartphones, 48.2% used their phones for sketching and 62.1% for photo editing. The results describe reported activities among smartphone-using creators; they do not measure how often respondents completed finished illustrations on a phone. Source: Celsys, 2023 European creator survey
| Smartphone activity reported by surveyed smartphone creators | Share |
|---|---|
| Photo editing | 62.1% |
| Sketching | 48.2% |
Source: Celsys, 2023 European creator survey
The first-device and smartphone-activity results answer different questions and come from surveys conducted in different years. One concerns the device used for a first digital drawing; the other concerns tasks performed by smartphone users. Neither figure establishes that every creator used a phone to make illustrations. Sources: Celsys, 2022 European creator survey; Celsys, 2023 European creator survey
Digital art creation statistics: Digital and traditional art practices
The Celsys comparison also reported shares of creators who used both traditional and digital tools. For the 2023 comparison, Celsys excluded the 40–49 age bracket. The country results supplied for the comparison were:
| Country | Both traditional and digital tools, 2021 | 2023 comparison |
|---|---|---|
| Spain | 20.8% | 22.3% |
| France | 17.1% | 25.4% |
| Germany | 22.4% | 35.1% |
Source: Celsys, 2023 European creator survey
In each of these 3 country series, the reported share was higher in the 2023 comparison than in 2021. Spain’s figures were 20.8% and 22.3%; France’s were 17.1% and 25.4%; Germany’s were 22.4% and 35.1%. The comparison describes survey responses across the two reported periods. It does not explain why the figures differed or show that individual artists changed their own working methods. Source: Celsys, 2023 European creator survey
Digital art creation statistics: Creative AI use and workflows
Adobe’s Creators’ Toolkit survey, conducted in September 2025, covered more than 16,000 content creators across the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, South Korea, Japan, India, and Australia. Adobe defined creators as people who published digital content on social platforms at least a few times per month. In this broad group, 86% actively used creative generative AI. The survey was not limited to illustrators or digital artists. Source: Adobe, Creators’ Toolkit Report
Adobe reported uses spanning idea development, asset creation, and editing. Among surveyed content creators, 55% used creative generative AI for editing, upscaling, or enhancement; 52% used it to generate new assets such as images and video; and 48% used it for ideation and brainstorming. These reported uses are not mutually exclusive, so a creator could report more than 1 task. Source: Adobe, Creators’ Toolkit Report
| Reported creative generative AI use | Share of surveyed content creators |
|---|---|
| Editing, upscaling, or enhancement | 55% |
| Generating new assets such as images and video | 52% |
| Ideation and brainstorming | 48% |
Source: Adobe, Creators’ Toolkit Report
Tool use could extend across several services: 60% of surveyed creators reported using more than 1 creative generative AI tool during the 3 months before the survey. Adobe also found that 72% frequently created content on mobile. Separately, 75% expected to produce more content on mobile in the year following the survey. The first is a report of frequent activity; the second is an expectation, not a measurement of what happened afterward. Source: Adobe, Creators’ Toolkit Report
The same report recorded concerns alongside adoption. Among surveyed creators, 38% cited high cost as a barrier to adopting creative generative AI tools, 34% cited unreliable output quality, and 28% cited uncertainty about how an AI model was trained. Separately, 69% were concerned that their content could be used to train AI without permission. These results capture stated barriers and concerns; they do not measure how many creators stopped using tools or the effect of a particular product or policy. Source: Adobe, Creators’ Toolkit Report
Digital art creation statistics: AI attitudes among creative professionals
Adobe’s report published in June 2026 drew on nearly 2,000 creative professionals and other creatives in the United States, United Kingdom, and Japan. The accessible report text does not specify the fieldwork date. In this group, 38% said they used AI daily. Adobe also described 4 attitude segments: the “Pragmatic Middle” at 41%, “AI Champions” at 25%, “Enthusiastic Converts” at 24%, and “Deliberate Skeptics” at 10%. These are Adobe’s attitude categories, not measures of artistic skill or the quality of AI-assisted work. Source: Adobe, “How creatives are thinking about AI”
Career outlook and AI sentiment were reported as separate measures. In the survey, 84% of creative professionals said they felt optimistic about their careers, 50% said they felt excited about AI, and 30% described themselves as open to AI but not yet fully convinced. The figures address different questions and should not be read as a single scale of enthusiasm. Source: Adobe, “How creatives are thinking about AI”
Adobe reported that 40.9% of surveyed graphic designers used AI daily, identifying graphic designers as the profession leading in daily AI use in the report. For AI excitement by age in the United States, 39% of creative professionals aged 18–24 said they were excited about AI, compared with 54% of those aged 25–34. Those age-specific figures concern US respondents; they do not represent every age group or every country in the study. Source: Adobe, “How creatives are thinking about AI”
Digital art creation statistics: Digital art and NFTs among surveyed artists
Saatchi Art’s 2022 Artist Report described an online Pollfish organic sample of 500 US artists who identified as artists and generated some income from their art. The survey launched on December 21, 2021, and the report was published in 2022. In this sample, 23.6% said they worked in digital art, while 20.6% reported working in mixed media. These are reported media choices from this income-earning artist sample, not estimates for all US artists or digital creators. Source: Saatchi Art, 2022 Artist Report
The report also asked about NFTs. Among respondents who said they had considered creating an NFT, 39% had created one. This is a conditional share within that subgroup, not the share of all 500 respondents who had created an NFT. The reported finding does not specify the size of the subgroup who had considered creating one. Source: Saatchi Art, 2022 Artist Report
Sources
- 40% of digital creators start digital art at the age of 15 or younger: Survey of 6,000 European creators
- Tablets and smartphones lower the barrier for digital creation according to survey of 6,000 European creators
- Inaugural Adobe Creators’ Toolkit Report: 86 Percent of Global Creators Use Creative Generative AI
- How creatives are thinking about AI
- 2022 Artist Report