A Thick Skin and Honest Critique

For seven years, from when I was in year twelve in high school,  I was fortunate enough to be employed as a graphic designer at a great little firm in Florida.  I spent time making art by hand or in the computer,  learning to design logos and tshirts and billboards and anything else(minus web design) under the sun that could be printed.  I cut my teeth on photoshop and Corel.  For a couple years, I was also the Art Director(which really just meant I was salaried, I was responsible for everyone's work, and I went from working 40 hours a week to 60 hours a week for a very minor raise that washed away when I worked overtime).

When I was still so young, I have to say, it felt pretty fantastic to just be making art for a living.  And it's hard to imagine a better way to get your feet wet than diving right into the deep end of the pool, sink or swim.  But I like that sort of thing, the challenge of it.

What I learned was, in the end, that I didn't want to be a graphic designer.  That was the single biggest lesson I walked away with, and I consider it time well spent.  I also learned little things along the way, how to deal with customers, I learned not to fall in love with every little thing I did(because the customer or art director, regardless of the reason or benefit of it, always wanted a little change to great work, almost like adding their own little immortal bit or signature to the creative process).  I learned the value of a client and what it cost to lose one, I learned how process printing works, screen printing, embroidery, offset presses, I even learned automotive paint.

But the second most important lesson I learned was the value of critique.

Sure, we all enjoy praise, it feels warm and fuzzy.  Wow, that sure looks great.  I can't believe how good that looks, you're amazing!  Again and again, it never gets old, receiving praise feels good.  Damned good. Great, even.

But what purpose does praise really serve, in the practical sense, to an artist?  In it's essence, it's positive reinforcement which, logically speaking, is designed to get you to repeat a pattern of behavior.  How does that help an artist grow, retreading the same old path with repeated behavior?  The words "good enough" come to mind.  And how depressing must it be to become "good enough", call it quits, to mentally check out and coast the rest of the way through life?

To me, all life is can be summed up in a single sentence; Life is the pursuit of perfection.  That's it.  Once you achieve it, well, crap, you are the dog that caught the car, now what do you do?  A dog chasing cars seems kind of dumb, but it's the same thing we as artists do, we hone our artistic craft the way the dog hones his hunting craft, endlessly chasing perfection down the road, the closer we get, the more dust is kicked in our eyes and the more alive we feel.

If you want to grow as an artist, it doesn't help all that much to know what you got right, it doesn't help you to know it's the best work in the room.  What you need to know is what is wrong with it, what doesn't work.  Michaelangelo said every block of stone has a sculpture inside, it's the task of the sculptor to discover it.  In your work, the deeper you get into it, the harder it is to have perspective, what rough bit of stone needs to be cut away to really free the sculpture inside?

That's where a good artist is well served by a thick skin and honest critique.

If hearing your perspective is off, your composition looks thrown together, not thought out, and your anatomy sucks makes you feel like a lump of crap, you probably need to rethink how your brain is wired.  Whoever just told you that awful stuff about your work, the work you spent hours laboring over, that you lost sleep over, that you missed TV shows to work on, that you neglected relationships to slave at, that guy is one of the best assets you have.  That guy that you want to knee-jerk react to with a frown or a dirty remark under your breath, he just gave you more insight than all your formative years of praise from your mom and all who gazed in awe at the kitchen fridge magnet art gallery.

To be clear, "that sucks" is not critique.  Neither is "I don't like it", or any flavor of blather that doesn't speak about specific issues within the work in question.  That's not delivering critique, that's being a hater.  Learn to spot the difference.

If you can get a small group of honest people willing to really trash your work in your entourage, if you can restrain yourself from hating those guys for their tactless delivery, your work will grow in leaps and bounds.  If praise should be handed out, mete it to those guys, that's where positive reinforcement belongs, that's the sort of behavior you want repeated.  One of those guys is worth a thousand groupies lavishing shallow praise.

I had the good fortune to work with honest people who paid me for my work.  They expected a lot in return, they didn't tolerate mediocrity. They told me what was wrong and where and why, and if they could, how to fix it.  And rarely, if ever, did I hear praise for my work.  And it was the best time of my life in terms of artistic growth.