April Hopkins, you ask some good questions in your article. Your title may be conjecture, because how do you know that? Perhaps just add a question make at the end.

To my mind, the valuable aspect of “rendering” or “descriptive” drawing and painting is that it teaches the artist not only technique, but to see correctly. This ability may then be used wherever.

Knowledge of art history too, would be a plus for any artist. Just take a look at the number of famous Rock Musicians grounded in the classics, not to mention actors out of repertory theatre and the likes in other artistic fields.

Whether “rendering” is art necessarily — maybe not. Building is not necessarily architecture. Depends just how you define art, I guess.