The most important aspect of being an artist is the strength of his or her criticism. Towards everything, as art is only truly meaningful in commentary to a real life context, but chiefly towards itself. An artist can only evolve if he or she is critical enough of her own work. In order to improve, the first thing you need to do is identify the problems. This holds true both in the case of a specific piece of art, and in development over time. You can't become content, ever.
It's a harsh reality, that you can't get better if you're content with where you are. They say artists are depressing people, because they can never get good enough. Which is untrue, artists just can't allow themselves to become comfortable. And it's not just us pencileers, the same conditions for further achievement apply to musicians, and really, to anyone, anywhere. Once you start believing that what you're doing is good enough, that's when you stop moving.
I sent a series of pictures of this drawing to my friends while it was still work in progress, along with some commentary on what I thought was going well and what was going poorly. It must have seemed like I wasn't somehow proud enough of what I was doing, listing the faults and flaws in my drawing, but that's not how I saw it. You can be proud, of where you are and where you're going, but you can't think that it's good enough.
If I thought now that I had drawn the best drawing I ever will, then I would never pick up the pen again. You always need to be your own biggest critic. It doesn't matter where you are, what matters is that you're moving forward. And to do that, you need to see what's lacking, and what's bad.
This is a portrait of The Hound from HBO:s Game of Thrones, drawn from reference. But it doesn't look enough like him.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Feel free to speak your mind!
It's also always more fun if you leave some way for us to identify you.