Sorta sermon

[bladespark]

This is not a religious sermon. This is one of my other soap-boxes. One of my BIG, FAT, hot-button issues. Let's see what you guys think of it.



Have you ever heard somebody say "If you never get critique, you'll never improve as an artist"? I bet you have. I bet you've heard it, and things like it, a bajillion times. And it's implied that people who dislike critique are babies, cowards, and horrible people who just "can't take it."

I'm going to let you in on my dirty little secret. I hate critique. I loathe it. I despise it. I hate it for a number of reasons.

First, I hate it because most of what's offered under the name "critique" is nothing of the sort. That faux, pretend, critique is usually rudeness and insult, the desire to assert superiority, put other people down, and thus make yourself feel better, hiding as "I just want to help you improve." False critique tells you what you're doing wrong (and it may do so politely, couched in compliments about what you're doing right, even) but it offers no help for doing better. It comes without redlines, hints, tips, or suggestions. It is THE most common sort I get, and it's bloody useless. Completely, utterly, 100% without a use at all.

Secondly, I hate it because nobody actually cares if you take it. For example. Several times I had people tell me I should do poses other than standing side views. I favored the standing profile when I was a young thing, and I still do use it, it's a useful art convention. But these "critiques" about it... well, firstly NONE of them ever gave me any idea how to go about doing anything else. "Do something else" is all well and good, but how? When I finally taught myself how to do other poses... I stopped hearing about it. That's all. Nobody complimented me. None of those people turned up and went "I notice you've improved! Wonderful!" None of the people who'd watched my early sad attempts at doing it chimed in to applaud when I did it right. Nothing changed. And you can go on all you like about how I probably got more watchers now that my art is "better" and that I probably will get more commissions too. That may be true. But the simple fact is that the people giving you critique don't care about you. See above. They're doing it to make themselves feel better. Even if they offer real, useful crits, they're just playing the Wise Guru for a moment, and they will not be there tomorrow to say "good job" when you take their advice and get it right.

The ONLY critique I happily take is from close friends. People who WILL be there tomorrow, and MAY actually say "good job." I am not producing art so that some stranger can get their Old Sage jollies from me. I am not producing art so that people can put me down and tell themselves its for my own good. I'm producing art for me, because I am an artist. And I do not need critique to improve.

Because there's where it really falls apart. Critique can help you improve your art. But it is just one of many other tools that frankly people neglect in favor of just asking to be told what to do. And there we come to the third, and most important reason why I hate it. The reliance on critique robs people of the chance to use all the other methods for improvement that are out there just waiting to be used. It takes your development out of your hands, and entrusts it to other people. It removes the chance for you to develop your own art, by yourself, as yourself. It encourages little art clones who do just what their mentors do, and never try anything on their own.

Do you think people who avoid critique are cowards? Well I think people who constantly seek it out are lazy. They are asking for someone to hold their hand. They want it done for them. They want other people to come up with the techniques, redline the problem areas, even define the style. They don't take responsibility for their own art!

I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with sometimes asking for help. Everybody asks for help sometimes, even me. But the way current artist culture praises people for seeking crit and ostracizes them for avoiding it drives me NUTS. The one is not any better than the other. Cowards or lazy bums, if you want to use those terms. Or how about self-motivated creators, and open-minded learners? There is virtue in seeking critique. There is also virtue in avoiding it!

Let's talk about where you can get as a self-motivated, creator. Here. I'll show you.

This is my first wolf head. (My fourth head ever.)


This is the wolf head I finished a month ago.


I had almost NO critique between those two. Nobody told me how to air brush (actually I've ignored everything I've been told about "airbrushing" because I don't airbrush, I use a paintbrush. Sometimes you improve by actively going against people's suggestions. In fact a number of things on this head are things I was told by people NOT to do.) Nobody taught me now to shape the face. Nobody gave me so much as a suggestion about how to make the eyes, or the nose, or the teeth, or the ears. (The one time I asked somebody with really good ears how they made them I was ignored! So I worked it out on my own.) Nobody gave me ANY advice about any of it, except a few things from JJ, who as a friend I trust to give crits. So to "you can't learn without critique" I say BULL SHIT.

Let's try again, shall we?

Here's a dragon I drew in high school.


Here's a dragon I drew last week.


In between do you know how much critique I got? One drawing class entirely about still life, with some good critique about using pencil for shading and coloring when drawing from life that's right in front of you. Not exactly applicable here, especially as we learned with Prismacolor pencils and my current medium is watercolor pencil. And I had a few people on the internet telling me I should try dynamic poses, and I think JJ suggested something about line weights, or maybe that was my idea, I forget. That's IT. I taught myself, by myself, everything I learned in between. All the anatomy. All the color theory. All the ways to shade and highlight from off the top of your head. All the technique for varying line weight. All the dynamic pose, ALL that. I still have a lot to learn. I'm sure somebody could give me critique on that later picture and have something valid to say. But they can just sod off. I'll continue to improve without their frigging critiques, and it doesn't make me some kind of coward to prefer learning by myself!!!

Not that my art exists in a vacuum, I taught myself by looking at other artists, and seeing what they did, and trying it. I taught myself by finding tutorials and using them. I taught myself by using references, and looking at real life, and looking at photos. I taught myself by a lot of means that involved other people, but that precious, holy, oh-so-essential "critique", without which we "can't improve" had NOTHING WHATSOEVER TO DO WITH IT.

So quit fucking saying that it's impossible to improve without critique. It's untrue. It's complete and utter BULLSHIT, and I want to punch somebody ever time I hear it!

Thanks.



And anybody who wants to debate with me about this is welcome, but see icon. I am kind of pissy right now, so don't expect me to be all gentle words and kind correction, if I think you've said something stupid I'm going to let you know. :P

Comments

[harliquinnraver.livejournal.com]

i agree with everything youve said here. and youve said it better than i ever could.

[bladespark.livejournal.com]

:D Thanks! I thought you'd probably agree with this.

[ellixis.livejournal.com]

I agree. Improvement has little to do with the methods used to learn, and everything to do with the practice, work, and thought put into the art.

(Icon aimed at idiots, not at you.)

[bladespark.livejournal.com]

*nod* Thank you. It really is about work put in. Lazy people won't become good artists no matter how many redlines they get. :) And I'd be much better, crit or not, if I had more drive than I do.

I really don't have anything about people who really love critique, I just wish they'd quit treating me like crap because I don't! (Man, this is starting to sound like a discussion of religion.)

[ellixis.livejournal.com]

A thing I've noticed is that people who think they're all that and a bag of chips tend to improve very, very slowly or not at all. The attitude of being willing to learn also counts for a lot.

I think that applies for any kind of rabidly held opinion, really. ... Haters gonna hate?

[bladespark.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I mostly fail to improve because I can't bring myself to want to badly enough. I get all "meh, good enough" and coast along for long stretches. Possibly a bit of ego there too, I do tend to think my own stuff is awesome. So I don't doubt that's a factor. But I never pretend I know it all. I just have to look at the many, many artists so much better than I am!

[lilsongbird.livejournal.com]

Oh god, amen to this! I am more then happy to accept critique but some I get is people not reading and tearing stuff apart because they are "omg so much better" yet when I look at their gallery their work us more flawed then mine e-e I actually snarled at someone to try what I had done first before going "u suck" (I was using a difficult method just to see if I could do it- something the description stated), and until they did get off their high horse and learn the difference between constructive criticism and being a critical brat. Ugh

[bladespark.livejournal.com]

Oh man! People who make it obvious they haven't read the description drive me nuts! "I made this from fleece because I was just trying it out, the next one I'll do in minky." "You should make it in minky, it would be better that way!" *infinite facepalm*

[jenn malenfant (from livejournal.com)]

I pretty much taught myself everything I know right now too. Most of the critique I got in the past few years is "You need to change this and this and then make me something for free for helping you."
I know exactly how you feel about this. I think people just need to not say anything unless it is actually useful.

[bladespark.livejournal.com]

O.o I've never had anybody ask for free art for "helping" with critique. Wow. That's really arrogant!

[ellixis.livejournal.com]

When people drop anvil-sized hints at me for art, I enjoy deliberately and cheerfully missing the point.

[pointytilly.livejournal.com]

I like useful crit under the right circumstances. I've had a few cases where someone pointed out an issue with my writing/art and/or gave advice that made something click in my head that I might have taken a lot longer to figure out myself. (Like the whole shade with dark version of opposite color, not black deal. Or shiny metal reflects its surroundings AND itself.)

I learn better by messing around and screwing up a lot (and then redo, and repeat...) than I do by step by step Do It This Way, too, though I do like tutorials that are more general guides/advice.

And like you said, I often see "crit" used to mean well I must pick at this person's work because that's how you learn to art don't you seeeee, and just, argh. No. The best are the people who go and pick on things like kids drawing art for fun and go but but I'm just giving them REAL CRIT so they can GET BETTER...yeah no, they just wanna feel smug.

Rambling a bit, here. Short version, good to know I'm not the only one sick of the no no I have to give harsh "crit" or people don't LEARN thing.

[bladespark.livejournal.com]

The picking on kids who're just drawing for fun thing really gets my goat. My husband has an amazing eye for art, he gives me some of the best advice I've gotten anywhere, but he can't draw hardly at all himself, and it's largely because he got too much harsh crit as a kid, and decided that meant he didn't have talent, and left off. He's mentioned a few times that he wishes he'd been able to ignore it and keep on.

Being harsh to kids who are just having fun is not helping anybody. Heck, being harsh to adults who are just having fun doesn't help either.

Honestly I really think that crit should be given when asked for, or people should go "do you want crit?" before offering it up. Otherwise you may just be spoiling somebody's "just for fun" good time, and ruining their desire to do any art at all.

[pointytilly.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I like the as-asked for model. I try to follow it myself now, because it works so much better.

[bladespark.livejournal.com]

Offering unasked for crits is a good way to get annoyed, defensive comments in reply. :D Which I've heard some people complaining about "I'm just trying to help, why do I always get flamed for it?" But of course "just trying to help" is a GREAT way to annoy people in many different endeavors, not just art. :)

[vintagevwolfe.livejournal.com]

Hmmmm.... To some point I agree with you but I've never taken critique from others very well. Personally I've always improved more when I took the time to self critique. To actually go through and make notes on anything and everything that I thought was wrong and then push myself to a farther point of perfection. True that it means I never really think of my work as "perfect" because I'm always criticizing and trying to be better but I think that it's almost more helpful. I like.... suggestions instead of critique as well; they feel nicer and don't make me want to slap someone.

:) hope you feel better and less ranty soon!

[bladespark.livejournal.com]

?

I'm confused. You say that to some point you agree with me but... and then go on to completely and 100% agree with me? That a person improves more when they take the time to self critique, rather than relying on critique from others is EXACTLY my point!

[vintagevwolfe.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I'm a little goofy and sleepy today.... I'm sure I actually meant to follow that up with something but to be quite honest I cannot remember exactly what that was. I've been trying to for the past hour. I think I was going to say something along "but although its rare someone might point out something you missed" but I'm not sure if that was it....

Terribly sorry if that was confusing, I get a little fuzzy sometimes and have a terrible curse of not making sense. :)

[aburamechan.livejournal.com]

I rarely get critique, and I probably wouldn't take it too well if I did. I'm easily offended, and many people don't know how to word negative feedback correctly. They take it as a chance to be a dick and vent their anger somewhere. >_>; I don't understand people who crave and "need" feedback to make any sort of improvement though. The only thing feedback ever did was frustrate me...especially sine most of the time it's alway been from people I honestly don't think are any better than I am. :/
Most of my improvement is learned through dumb mistakes, practice, and tutorials, and it seems to work pretty well. It's far less frustrating to do something wrong and fix it than it is to have someone blatantly point it out and tell you to fix it.

[bladespark.livejournal.com]

I reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally hate getting crits from people who aren't any better than I am. Heck, when it comes to the fursuits and plush, most of the suggestions I get are from people who don't make them at all! What do they know?!

[aburamechan.livejournal.com]

That's how I feel. :/ It's even worse when they tell you something completely false though, and want to argue about it. Urg. Critique is the main reason why I am not majoring in art at all.

[bladespark.livejournal.com]

You know what drove me nuts when I was majoring in art? (I dropped out.) Nobody would give actual critique! That's what I was there for, and I hardly ever got any! You got a grade yes, and you might get a "Your line work needs improvement" or something, but the drawing teacher who did the still life class was the ONLY art teacher I ever had who gave REAL critique! All the others just wanted us to do the assignment, demonstrate the technique they were teaching, and then who cares about anything else. "Today's assignment was about complimentary color. I see you have complimentary colors in your piece. Very good. Next!"

I remember my print making class... we'd have these BS "critique" sessions, with all the students, and we'd go back and forth with all this "ambiance" and "line weight" and "theme" crap, but not one scrap of practical advice for improvement ever happened.

[aburamechan.livejournal.com]

Ugh. I took a design class so I could be full time once, and regretted it so hard. We had critique sessions, but the asshole teacher decided to do them BEFORE we were to a point where we thought we were done, and nothing good ever came from it. Personally, if I have to do critique, it makes more sense to finish your first draft/idea, get some "critique," and then fix it. Don't tell me how to "fix" it before I've had a chance to finish and discover the flaws myself. :/ I mean, they'd say something, and I'd be like "I was just about to..." It made it even worse that it was classmates "critiquing" each other so we could lean the dumb vocabulary. :/

And that is why I didn't learn anything at all. We were supposed to learn about things like photoshop and illustrator, but everything I know about them is self taught.

Way in the future though, I may take some art classes for fun if I have time and junk. Since I won't really need the credits, I won't have to give a damn about what they say.

[bladespark.livejournal.com]

The teacher you get makes ALL the difference. I mean, the sort of art I love the very most is illustration, yet my illustration class was one of the ones I HATED above all, because the teacher was such a nimrod. While I don't really give a fig for modern sculpture, but I had a BALL in my sculpture class, the teacher was frigging awesome! (Also I learned how to weld. Sparks and metal and all that stuff, wheee!)

[aburamechan.livejournal.com]

:c Teachers do make all the difference. However, colleges are set up funky where if you get a shitty one you can either drop the class and potentially lose money/scholarships, or you can deal with it and get a shitty grade. Either way, you'd probably wind up retaking it.
The add/drop period is dumb, because they give you one week to decide if you want to stay...and that's only enough time to go over the syllabus. You just don't have enough time to tell if the teacher is effective or crazy. College is just a gamble these days, since anyone can teach. Sometimes it makes me lethargic and want to quit, but somehow I just keep going and hope for those good teachers so I can do well. ._.;
Ratemyprofessor.com has been helpful to me though...and would be far more helpful if people knew how to give good feedback (lol there it is again) With many of the professors, half of them will claim that they experienced a wonderful time and got an easy A. The others will claim they went through every layer of hell and don't want to even thing about it due to the trauma. makes me wonder, and leads me to gamble again for nice professors.
lol sorry for rambling.

[wolfmare.livejournal.com]

Agreed.

And what little "critique" I've gotten has always been thinly masked insults. I'm not *great*, but I'm improved drastically since 2005, and I'm sure I'll be even better in another 5-10 years.

[chiscringle.livejournal.com]

My aunt once gave me a set of books on how to write. Without reading past my works from about 8 years ago. I forget where they books went, but I never bothered with them. Personal art in any medium is a function of the person, otherwise it isn't personal - hooray for defining something using the word!

Since I dislike people who weigh in with a restatement of my own point and agreement rather than anything material, there's also this: I'm the sort of person who has to resist the urge to write critique. There are a lot of people I knwo how agree with you and so I rarely point out the problems I see and how they might be fixed. Most of the time when I do, the response is either nothing or the artist saying that they were going to get to that part next. I ask for it on my own work, however, knowing I'll hate it but perhaps see what the other person is getting at even if they never say anything directly useful. There's a difference between self-serving criticism and critique. If someone sees something that has nothing to do with themselves and plenty to do with what I'm trying to do, I want to know about it. They may not know how to fix it, but if they notice it and I don't, I might be able to work something out myself. As an author, I hate it because it means I missed something that ought to be obvious. As a Flash animator, I demand that whoever tells me something is wrong go and fetch me some Actionscript code that will fix it.

[cargoddess.livejournal.com]

I'm a fan of constructive criticism:

"I really like ____, but I think ____ could be better if you did ____, _____ and _____."

But, good gravy, that's something you do WHEN ASKED or in private. And only if you know what the hell you're talking about. The people that just say "that sucks" without any experience in what you're "critiquing" need to be shot.

[unspeakablevorn.livejournal.com]

As a math teacher, my most powerful piece of criticism is "where did you get that?" because it gets people to think about what they've done and try to defend it -- which makes it clearer to them where the error is.

But I suspect most of this comes from the fact that in math, there's generally only one right answer...

[kiwihunter8.livejournal.com]

I've been thinking about this post since you made it....you really made me think about this in another way. I think especially in furry circles what you say about people critiquing others just to make themselves feel more important is true. There is a method to critiquing that is helpful, and one that is definitely NOT, and I think we see a whole lot more of the 2nd in furry art circles.

I always disliked hearing critique of my work even in art school, but in the end I did find it helpful for people to point out things I wasn't seeing, or the same mistakes I was making over and over again. Sometimes I've recieved fursuit making critique that has really helped or even saved a suit from looking plain bad.

But again, I think those are anomalies. We have a saying where I work "Everyone's a graphic designer" because people with no training whatsoever will stomp all over what you took years of school and many more years of experience to learn to do.

I think that correlates well to the fine arts as well.