Art Is Hard™
Jan. 25th, 2019 09:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingI follow a lot of visual artists on Tumblr and Twitter, so I see a fair number of posts about how the best way to get better at drawing is to practice. I know that these artists are coming from a good place, and I get that this is sound advice, but also, like…
This is a post about art, but it’s also a story about how someone on the internet annoys me. It doesn’t paint me in the most favorable light, so feel free to judge me for being an asshole.
When I first got on DeviantArt, I was young and didn’t really understand the way the internet worked. I commented on a lot on people’s art, and I put a lot of effort into it. I would leave long and effusive comments about how much I loved particular details of an artist’s style, and how much I loved something new and different they had tried, and how much I loved their interpretation of a certain character, and how much I loved their original character, and so on. If I can say this about myself, I was an absolute flower crown of a human being. Although I was perhaps a bit too earnest, I was cheerful and positive and really took the time to sit down and appreciate people’s art; and, when I followed someone, I was totally their #1 fan. Very stupidly, though, I thought that all this emotional effort on my part meant that I had some sort of relationship with the artist, and that they would see my comments and be happy. I understood that an artist getting dozens of comments on each piece might not care about a single commenter, but I felt that maybe fandom artists working on a smaller scale might see my screenname and be like, “That’s the person who’s always leaving nice comments, they’re all right.”
So anyway, I followed this one artist because I enjoyed the rough but cute fandom comics she drew, and I left friendly comments on almost all of her posts for more than a year. (She didn’t respond to my comments or follow me back, but responding to people’s comments and becoming mutuals wasn’t part of the culture on DeviantArt, so her lack of engagement didn’t mean anything to me – like, I didn’t get the sense that I was bothering her.) She posted this one stand-alone fandom comic, though, that felt weird to me. In retrospect, it was clearly making a tasteless and awful joke, and it was only because of my inexperience that I didn’t perceive it as an indicator for the climate of her headspace at the time. Because I didn’t know any better at the time, I left a comment on the post to the effect of, “I love your comics, but I’m not sure what you were trying to do here, I was wondering if you could explain what you were going for.”
Obviously that was the wrong thing to do, obviously. I know that now; obviously I shouldn’t have said anything. I don’t know what sort of response I was expecting, but what the artist did was to get really upset at me. She wrote an angry response to my comment and then went after me on the comments I left on other people’s art in the same fandom, like, “It’s interesting to me that you say this is ‘funny,’ because I wasn’t aware you had a sense of humor,” that sort of thing. You couldn’t block people on DeviantArt, but I sure did get the hell out that fandom in a hurry.
Years later I saw the artist tabling at an anime convention. The old drama was all water under the bridge to me at that point, so I thought I’d go up to her, buy some merch, and start a conversation about one of the fandoms she draws art for. (“What’s your favorite Studio Ghibli movie” was my conversational gambit, I think.) She wasn’t particularly nice to me, but she didn’t come off as a psycho either. I think our earlier interaction was just a case of me not having the good sense to know better than to say something clueless and then someone else completely taking it the wrong way. Maybe the artist was out of line for going on a mini-rampage, but that happens sometimes on the internet, you know? It doesn’t make a good story, but this isn’t the story.
The story is that, during the past ten years, this artist’s style has not changed in the slightest. Every once in a while I’ll see her work in a zine or comic anthology, and every so often I’ll see someone reblog her fan art for the fandom I used to follow, and I always get this visceral feeling of anti-nostalgia, like, that time has passed but nothing has changed.
If I can be shallow and superficial for a moment, I think it’s fair to say that her style is distinctive only in the sense that it’s perfectly generic. It’s like she draws the people who appear in diagrams in the sort of textbooks and emergency prevention posters that the “try not to cry” meme was parodying, and her range of faces and bodies and poses doesn’t seem to have expanded. She drew entirely in cel-shaded grayscale then, and she still draws entirely in cel-shaded grayscale now. As far as I can tell, she still uses the same two Photoshop brushes. This artist is fairly prolific and seems to be serious about her creative career, but she’s still drawing in the exact same way she was when we were both babies on the internet in 2008. Basically, she draws a lot, but she hasn’t improved at all.
If you know me, and if you know my fandom history, then you can probably guess the fandom, which means it’s probably easy to guess the identity of the artist as well. If you’re wondering if it’s the person you’re thinking of, the answer is YES. Even if it’s not, and even if you’re thinking of an entirely different fandom, the answer is still YES. I get the feeling that every big fandom has at least one of these artists, someone who draws and posts a ton of content but never gets any better.
Granted, I haven’t really improved either. I didn’t start drawing seriously until September 2017, but daily practice and experimentation haven’t done much for me during that time. Here I am, judging this artist who was mean to me this one time ten years ago, but can I really say that I’m any better than her? I’m afraid that maybe some people only have a limited amount of talent, and it does not matter in the slightest how hard they work or how much they draw. I understand that a lot of “talent” and “getting better” is subjective, and I’m happy for people who are happy creating for the sake of creation, but I’m specifically talking about myself here. It’s like, I practice drawing hands hands hands hands hands hands HANDS HANDS HANDS all the time, and guess what I still can’t draw to save my life? (Answer: Literally *gross sobbing* everything.)
This is why it bothers me when artists say “the best way to get better is to practice.” It’s like, yes, of course it’s important to practice, but people who make good art are clearly doing something more than making a commitment to “just draw every day,” and I wish I could figure out what this is.
I’m going to follow this up with a post about writing and my own experience of what that “something more” was and continues to be for me. I’m not sure if putting this in words will help me create connections to visual art, but it would be nice if it could.
In the meantime, I also want to say that it is nothing short of pure joy watching my artist friends try new things and grow and change across their posts on social media, and I’m always so grateful that they’re comfortable sharing their work with the world like that. I’m not even remotely at their level, but I’m still inspired by them!
This is a post about art, but it’s also a story about how someone on the internet annoys me. It doesn’t paint me in the most favorable light, so feel free to judge me for being an asshole.
When I first got on DeviantArt, I was young and didn’t really understand the way the internet worked. I commented on a lot on people’s art, and I put a lot of effort into it. I would leave long and effusive comments about how much I loved particular details of an artist’s style, and how much I loved something new and different they had tried, and how much I loved their interpretation of a certain character, and how much I loved their original character, and so on. If I can say this about myself, I was an absolute flower crown of a human being. Although I was perhaps a bit too earnest, I was cheerful and positive and really took the time to sit down and appreciate people’s art; and, when I followed someone, I was totally their #1 fan. Very stupidly, though, I thought that all this emotional effort on my part meant that I had some sort of relationship with the artist, and that they would see my comments and be happy. I understood that an artist getting dozens of comments on each piece might not care about a single commenter, but I felt that maybe fandom artists working on a smaller scale might see my screenname and be like, “That’s the person who’s always leaving nice comments, they’re all right.”
So anyway, I followed this one artist because I enjoyed the rough but cute fandom comics she drew, and I left friendly comments on almost all of her posts for more than a year. (She didn’t respond to my comments or follow me back, but responding to people’s comments and becoming mutuals wasn’t part of the culture on DeviantArt, so her lack of engagement didn’t mean anything to me – like, I didn’t get the sense that I was bothering her.) She posted this one stand-alone fandom comic, though, that felt weird to me. In retrospect, it was clearly making a tasteless and awful joke, and it was only because of my inexperience that I didn’t perceive it as an indicator for the climate of her headspace at the time. Because I didn’t know any better at the time, I left a comment on the post to the effect of, “I love your comics, but I’m not sure what you were trying to do here, I was wondering if you could explain what you were going for.”
Obviously that was the wrong thing to do, obviously. I know that now; obviously I shouldn’t have said anything. I don’t know what sort of response I was expecting, but what the artist did was to get really upset at me. She wrote an angry response to my comment and then went after me on the comments I left on other people’s art in the same fandom, like, “It’s interesting to me that you say this is ‘funny,’ because I wasn’t aware you had a sense of humor,” that sort of thing. You couldn’t block people on DeviantArt, but I sure did get the hell out that fandom in a hurry.
Years later I saw the artist tabling at an anime convention. The old drama was all water under the bridge to me at that point, so I thought I’d go up to her, buy some merch, and start a conversation about one of the fandoms she draws art for. (“What’s your favorite Studio Ghibli movie” was my conversational gambit, I think.) She wasn’t particularly nice to me, but she didn’t come off as a psycho either. I think our earlier interaction was just a case of me not having the good sense to know better than to say something clueless and then someone else completely taking it the wrong way. Maybe the artist was out of line for going on a mini-rampage, but that happens sometimes on the internet, you know? It doesn’t make a good story, but this isn’t the story.
The story is that, during the past ten years, this artist’s style has not changed in the slightest. Every once in a while I’ll see her work in a zine or comic anthology, and every so often I’ll see someone reblog her fan art for the fandom I used to follow, and I always get this visceral feeling of anti-nostalgia, like, that time has passed but nothing has changed.
If I can be shallow and superficial for a moment, I think it’s fair to say that her style is distinctive only in the sense that it’s perfectly generic. It’s like she draws the people who appear in diagrams in the sort of textbooks and emergency prevention posters that the “try not to cry” meme was parodying, and her range of faces and bodies and poses doesn’t seem to have expanded. She drew entirely in cel-shaded grayscale then, and she still draws entirely in cel-shaded grayscale now. As far as I can tell, she still uses the same two Photoshop brushes. This artist is fairly prolific and seems to be serious about her creative career, but she’s still drawing in the exact same way she was when we were both babies on the internet in 2008. Basically, she draws a lot, but she hasn’t improved at all.
If you know me, and if you know my fandom history, then you can probably guess the fandom, which means it’s probably easy to guess the identity of the artist as well. If you’re wondering if it’s the person you’re thinking of, the answer is YES. Even if it’s not, and even if you’re thinking of an entirely different fandom, the answer is still YES. I get the feeling that every big fandom has at least one of these artists, someone who draws and posts a ton of content but never gets any better.
Granted, I haven’t really improved either. I didn’t start drawing seriously until September 2017, but daily practice and experimentation haven’t done much for me during that time. Here I am, judging this artist who was mean to me this one time ten years ago, but can I really say that I’m any better than her? I’m afraid that maybe some people only have a limited amount of talent, and it does not matter in the slightest how hard they work or how much they draw. I understand that a lot of “talent” and “getting better” is subjective, and I’m happy for people who are happy creating for the sake of creation, but I’m specifically talking about myself here. It’s like, I practice drawing hands hands hands hands hands hands HANDS HANDS HANDS all the time, and guess what I still can’t draw to save my life? (Answer: Literally *gross sobbing* everything.)
This is why it bothers me when artists say “the best way to get better is to practice.” It’s like, yes, of course it’s important to practice, but people who make good art are clearly doing something more than making a commitment to “just draw every day,” and I wish I could figure out what this is.
I’m going to follow this up with a post about writing and my own experience of what that “something more” was and continues to be for me. I’m not sure if putting this in words will help me create connections to visual art, but it would be nice if it could.
In the meantime, I also want to say that it is nothing short of pure joy watching my artist friends try new things and grow and change across their posts on social media, and I’m always so grateful that they’re comfortable sharing their work with the world like that. I’m not even remotely at their level, but I’m still inspired by them!
no subject
Date: 2019-01-25 04:00 pm (UTC)I saw a lot of this in art school. There were a handful of kids who had little to no improvement in their style and general comprehension of art from foundation studies to graduation. And I swear those kids all had the same chip on their shoulder in regards to self-entitlement with their work. It sucked and even if I wasn't "better" than them, I tried to at least be open to changing and developing instead of stewing in an I'm-So-Awesome bubble.
I both love and hate the whole "the best way to get better is to practice" mentality. Like... there are so many aspects that help nurture a creative soul. I'm not sure I can say doing the thing is the best way. Yeah, you need to do the thing at some point, but I remember how I spent two years not even once touching Photoshop in graphic design and typography classes. I learned from changing my perspective and trying different mediums. I learned from going to museums and studying anatomy and then flipping off structure altogether. I think there needs to be an understanding of what and why you're doing the thing before you ever come close to doing it. I'm also a massive fan of constructive criticism, which I know is like to fan creators today as garlic and holy water is to vampires, but legit, it helps if creative types want to grow. Remember those awesome potted plants you keep in your apartment? They grew because you watered them and got them bigger pots when they were root bound and made sure they got enough sunlight and probably fed them some yummy fertilizer now and then. They sure as hell didn't grow from you shoving them in a pot and ignored them forever (and I mean, if that's literally what you did, then damn, I'm impressed, but anyhow). People are no different. Yeah, the truth can be harsh and some people confuse critique with witch hunts for some reason, but how else do we develop ourselves if we're blind and deaf to the world we're influencing?
So instead of drawing a million hands a day (oh lord, I can hear my Life Drawing II professor now about goddamn hands), maybe grab a medical textbook and look at hand drawings in there. Photograph some hands. Go to a museum and look at every hand in the paintings and sculptures. Stare at people's hands when you're waiting in line at a cafe/concert/place where people wait in lines for things. Watch a stream/video of an artist illustrating hands. Basically, what I'm trying to say is that sometimes the most helpful thing for improving ourselves as creative types is doing anything but the thing we want to improve. I took a loom weaving class as a random elective one semester in art school and I swear I got more out of that class than anything else I took that year and my graphic design work improved because of it.
Also, while I'm more of an active writer than an artist these days, I do treasure every kudo and comment and reblog on my works. I would never torment someone if they left a comment like that. Screw that artist.
I also say this and still worry now and then I'm bothering people when I comment on their stufftl;dr - I have feels about this and I just want to see you grow and be happy ♥
no subject
Date: 2019-01-26 04:57 pm (UTC)For the rest of us, who don’t have such a strong inner teacher, we can improve by ourselves but much more slowly—and if we always do the same thing we might improve so infinitesimally that it’s like we don’t improve at all. And that’s okay. Eventually, if we care enough, we can find a way. But if we want faster improvement, I think having a teacher/mentor to help problem solve and provide that critical eye is the way to go. Otherwise we have to slowly reinvent the wheel all by ourselves. And that’s so hard we might just give up along the way.