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The art of F$%^ing Up
14 years ago
General
I've never really cared for the term Natural Talent. Because as an artist I feel like I've been playing a game of catch up in some for or another when I see other artists. Whether someone's finish is brilliant, their expressions so specific and personal! Their forms are so full of movement and then I look at my work and find myself not nearly anywhere near there.
It's always felt like, as an artist, I carry the term "professional" simply because some companies pay me money to do it. While that may carry some weight, when I see artists so much more talented I still end up feeling I come up short. This, however, doesn't stop me from practicing my craft.
Hands never came naturally and neither did coloring, anatomy, gesture, composition or whatever style I choose to use. I had to practice. I had to fill sketchbook after sketchbook after sketchbook of nothing but mistakes and constantly learn from them. I still have a long way to go and the errors I make GLARE at me. But I KNOW if I continue to practice and move forward I can make everything work.
The difficulty I find is seeing people let their doubt get to them so quickly. They are so quick to fold to their own doubt and give up. Then return to a comfortable level of drawing. All over the fear of making a mistake. MISTAKES happen here and there, and thankfully they do, or else we never learn. A toddler touches fire and is scarred, he lives through it and sees not to do it ever again. We draw, we don't necessarily burn ourselves ( possibly burn out) we find many many many MANY wrong ways to do one thing but upon making those mistakes you also discover a few ways to achieve others.
My advice is to NEVER cave into that one voice in you saying that "NOTHING IS WORKING!" because the thing is slowly but surely you will show improvement. The point of me having a sketchbook is so I can make mistakes, and allow myself that freedom to make a derpy drawing here and there, make some serious anatomy flaws, draw with my left foot, WHATEVER.
The fact of the matter is if you want to continue you will allow yourself to make mistakes and then even moreso allow yourself to learn from those mistakes. Don't be afraid to be harsh on your work but ESPECIALLY don't be afraid to see what's good in your work. If you don't see what's good then you won't keep pursuing.
When tutoring, while I'm not necessarily known for being particularly mean I WILL point out your mistakes and let you know how to fix them. But if you keep making the mistake I'm going to rub it in your face until you stop.
This came from discussing art with a lot of friends. A lot of artists I know end up succumbing to the darkest emotional pits, but instead of thinking of a way to improve they can only focus on what they cannot do. Once you realize you are capable of reaching those goals, that you are merely steps away from reaching it.
During a lecture, one of the things I like to do is turn the weight of the future on the students I'm talking to. Let's face it, they are there because they want to shape their future. I'll ask them what they want to do. I had a young woman reply to the question with "manga-ka" For those of you not familliar with the term, it refers to our Japanese comic artist counterparts. Now... it's a tad unheard of, at least culturally of an United States native going over to Japan and being a critical success in the manga industry. Improbable maybe but not impossible.
What IF she actually did it? What if she actually really did it? Did I want to be the asshole that said that she couldn't? That she did it because I said it was impossible? Or did I want to be the guy that said "Not only do it, do the HELL out of it."
Whatever you take from this; Practice makes perfect, never give up, whatever. Don't give in to doubt that's all I ask :3
It's always felt like, as an artist, I carry the term "professional" simply because some companies pay me money to do it. While that may carry some weight, when I see artists so much more talented I still end up feeling I come up short. This, however, doesn't stop me from practicing my craft.
Hands never came naturally and neither did coloring, anatomy, gesture, composition or whatever style I choose to use. I had to practice. I had to fill sketchbook after sketchbook after sketchbook of nothing but mistakes and constantly learn from them. I still have a long way to go and the errors I make GLARE at me. But I KNOW if I continue to practice and move forward I can make everything work.
The difficulty I find is seeing people let their doubt get to them so quickly. They are so quick to fold to their own doubt and give up. Then return to a comfortable level of drawing. All over the fear of making a mistake. MISTAKES happen here and there, and thankfully they do, or else we never learn. A toddler touches fire and is scarred, he lives through it and sees not to do it ever again. We draw, we don't necessarily burn ourselves ( possibly burn out) we find many many many MANY wrong ways to do one thing but upon making those mistakes you also discover a few ways to achieve others.
My advice is to NEVER cave into that one voice in you saying that "NOTHING IS WORKING!" because the thing is slowly but surely you will show improvement. The point of me having a sketchbook is so I can make mistakes, and allow myself that freedom to make a derpy drawing here and there, make some serious anatomy flaws, draw with my left foot, WHATEVER.
The fact of the matter is if you want to continue you will allow yourself to make mistakes and then even moreso allow yourself to learn from those mistakes. Don't be afraid to be harsh on your work but ESPECIALLY don't be afraid to see what's good in your work. If you don't see what's good then you won't keep pursuing.
When tutoring, while I'm not necessarily known for being particularly mean I WILL point out your mistakes and let you know how to fix them. But if you keep making the mistake I'm going to rub it in your face until you stop.
This came from discussing art with a lot of friends. A lot of artists I know end up succumbing to the darkest emotional pits, but instead of thinking of a way to improve they can only focus on what they cannot do. Once you realize you are capable of reaching those goals, that you are merely steps away from reaching it.
During a lecture, one of the things I like to do is turn the weight of the future on the students I'm talking to. Let's face it, they are there because they want to shape their future. I'll ask them what they want to do. I had a young woman reply to the question with "manga-ka" For those of you not familliar with the term, it refers to our Japanese comic artist counterparts. Now... it's a tad unheard of, at least culturally of an United States native going over to Japan and being a critical success in the manga industry. Improbable maybe but not impossible.
What IF she actually did it? What if she actually really did it? Did I want to be the asshole that said that she couldn't? That she did it because I said it was impossible? Or did I want to be the guy that said "Not only do it, do the HELL out of it."
Whatever you take from this; Practice makes perfect, never give up, whatever. Don't give in to doubt that's all I ask :3
I'm significantly happier, it should be said. >o>
http://www.furaffinity.net/full/5881618/
*honks horn* Ciao Gato *whooshes off*
To many people think they have no talent because they make mistakes... when in fact mistakes area natural part of the journey to becoming a great whatever you want....
Mistakes are simply stepping stones to progress.
not to sound rude! Where did that come from ?
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/5105921 this made my year :) (i had just been made redundant and needed an uplift)
I agree with you, sugar. So much.
Also, I'm giving you lots and lots and lots of hugs when I see you in 15 days. <33
Also...
"As absurd as it sounds when we stop to think about it, our steady state seems to be one of unconsciously assuming that we are very close to omniscient.
This serene faith in our own rightness is often warranted. Most of us navigate day-to-day life fairly well, after all, which suggests that we are routinely right about a great many things. And sometimes we are not just routinely right but spectacularly right: right about the orbit of the planets (mathematically derived long before the technology existed to track them); right about the healing properties of aspirin (known since at least 3000 BC); right to track down that woman who smiled at you in the café (now your wife of 20 years).
Taken together, these moments of rightness represent both the high-water marks of human endeavor and the source of countless small joys. They affirm our sense of being smart, competent, trustworthy, and in tune with our environment. More important, they keep us alive.
Individually and collectively, our very existence depends on our ability to reach accurate conclusions about the world around us. In short, the experience of being right is imperative for our survival, gratifying for our ego, and, overall, one of life's cheapest and keenest satisfactions.
I am interested -- perversely -- in the opposite of all that. I am interested in being wrong: in how we as a culture think about error, and how we as individuals cope when our convictions collapse out from under us. If we relish being right and regard it as our natural state, you can guess how we feel about being wrong.
For one thing, we tend to view it as rare and bizarre -- an inexplicable aberration in the normal order of things. For another, it leaves us feeling idiotic and ashamed. Like the term paper returned to us covered in red ink, being wrong makes us cringe and slouch down in our seats; it makes our heart sink and our dander rise.
At best we regard it as a nuisance, at worst a nightmare, but in either case -- and quite unlike the gleeful little rush of being right -- we experience our errors as deflating and embarrassing.
And it gets worse. In our collective imagination, error is associated not just with shame and stupidity but also with ignorance, indolence, psychopathology, and moral degeneracy.
This set of associations was nicely summed up by the Italian cognitive scientist Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini, who noted that we err because of (among other things) "inattention, distraction, lack of interest, poor preparation, genuine stupidity, timidity, braggadocio, emotional imbalance, ... ideological, racial, social or chauvinistic prejudices, as well as aggressive or prevaricatory instincts."
In this view -- and it is the common one -- our errors are evidence of our gravest social, intellectual, and moral failings.
Of all the things we are wrong about, this idea of error might well top the list. It is our meta-mistake: We are wrong about what it means to be wrong. Far from being a sign of intellectual inferiority, the capacity to err is crucial to human cognition. Far from being a moral flaw, it is inextricable from some of our most humane and honorable qualities: empathy, optimism, imagination, conviction and courage. And far from being a mark of indifference or intolerance, wrongness is a vital part of how we learn and change. Thanks to error, we can revise our understanding of ourselves and amend our ideas about the world.
Given this centrality to both our intellectual and emotional development, error shouldn't be an embarrassment, and cannot be an aberration. On the contrary. As Benjamin Franklin once observed, "the history of the errors of mankind, all things considered, is more valuable and interesting than that of their discoveries."
Through our errors, he felt, "the soul has room enough to expand herself, to display all her boundless faculties, and all her beautiful and interesting extravagancies and absurdities."
To my mind, the healthiest and most productive attitude we can have about error must take as its starting place Franklin's proposition that however disorienting, difficult or humbling our mistakes might be, it is ultimately wrongness, not rightness, that can teach us who we are." --Kathryn Schulz
good journal. it should be reprinted and hung up in any art school.
Something I want to add to this is: If you're taking your work too seriously, you're going to get burnt out. You'll be easily discouraged, your art will be all negative and no positive. You need to be sure to do some personal work every now and again; figure out what you truly love to do, and do that as frequently as you can get away with it. For me, for example, it's sci-fi; robots, starships, technical stuff that I rarely ever draw but I love drawing. I've been getting burnt out lately, and then someone suggested an idea and it ran away with me. I feel soooo much better now.
After things settle down a little here at home, I'm going to start up again. :3