All depends on who you're trying to impress. If you want to fit into a group like the Watercolor Society, then you play by their rules. If you break their rules and make a painting that looks better than theirs, you will lose favor.
If you're doing digital, you should already go get an outfit for when you're burned at the stake. There's no appeasing people who have their niche. They know that digital is easier to do, and makes artists out of neophites in short order. They want you to suffer just as they did and take the long way home.
Digital is fairly limitless and unfettered.That after all is the point of making pictures.
I think the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial makes a good parallel. So what are you, a Spencer Tracy or a Fredric March? Are you going to keep inheriting the wind or are you going to create your own. . . uh. . . your own flap.
I'm thinking in the next version of ArtRage they could create a Blend Mode called "Penance" in which the image, like the artist's soul, gets dulled and a scarlet 'D' for 'digital' gets stamped smack in the middle of the beautiful picture.
Or you can think of it like the Picture of Dorian Gray in reverse, in which the picture looks better than ever but you can no longer look in the mirror.
Are we having fun yet? If you haven't figured yet, I have no regard for the people who look down their noses at digital. Their voices have been an irritation based on nothing but that they noticed they lost their edge because there are newer and better tools available to the artistic world. Piffle says I.
"Not a bit is wasted and the best is yet to come. . ." -- remembered from a dream