In week eleven the lecture covered critics and reviewers
regarding your art and understanding how to respond to criticism as well as how
it is able to help you.
To start off we need to understand criticism, so what
exactly is criticism and what is good criticism and what is bad criticism? There
are two definitions of criticism in the English oxford dictionary, however I
will only use one and also state the origin. The oxford dictionary (n.d.)
defines criticism as “the analysis and judgement of the merits
and faults of a literary or artistic work: ‘Alternative methods of criticism
supported by well-developed literary theories’”. The word criticism
originates from early 17th century from the word ‘critic’ or Latin ‘criticus’
+ -ism.
What sets good criticism apart from bad
criticism?
Good criticism is essentially positive
personal feedback from people on your work/ artwork as well as outlining areas
that require more attention/ knowledge and detail. Examples for good criticism
on artworks would be the placement of objects as well as size difference of
objects or body parts in the artwork would help making it looks and feel
better, basically say a person in it is walking depending on distance if he’s
in the background and far away he should appear small, normal size if he’s just
in the middle of the background (of course it depends on angle and distance it
was all based on), and if the person is at the front in the image he would be
foreshadowing meaning he would be bigger, there is also more detail on the
person’s clothing/ face, unless they are that close and the artist doesn’t want
to focus on them they can instead using digital software blur the foreshadowing
part of the drawing. People can point this out nicely giving constructive
feedback, which means that it is good criticism, sometimes though bias opinions
will get in the way or even a language barrier can leave this a bit muddled.
Bad criticism is essentially when
someone is so bias of what they want to see from your artwork, thus they will
either try to annoy you as much as possible by insulting you personally, your
artwork and in some cases even the people that follow you, of course this also
depends if you are drawing a certain genre of art and if you are part of a ‘fandom’
(being a fan of someone/ something). The most bad critique that I have seen are
definitely comments of “this is bad” or “what is going on with this?!” there is
definitely a lot of that on the website Deviant Art which is heavily known for
its negativity, of course there are a lot more bad examples of bad criticism,
however all you need to know is that there is basically no explanation they
give nor do they point out anything helpful, but if they do, they do so by
using excessive swearing.
Of course a lot of these opinions on
what good and bad criticism is, is viewed from my own perspective, thus it does
end up being bias to a certain degree. I can definitely relate to having to
take criticism as it is an important and sometimes annoying part of your career
that does end up helping and improving yourself and your artwork.
Now onto responding to criticism,
obviously there is the right way and the extremely wrong way to react to
criticism.
The correct way to respond to criticism
is by obviously being nice to the person and not responding negatively in any way
possible, it is of course hard to do that as one negative comment will
overshadow a lot of the good comments. Essentially you have to somewhat detach
yourself from it all, at least emotionally, you can ask the critic to explain
specifically why they pointed out several things in case they have stated their
reason for doing so. Another way of dealing with good criticism is going after the
problems that have been pointed out (different if you work in restaurants as
you also have to ensure satisfaction in case they might come back and also
explain factually what caused their discomforts food wise etc.) How can you
respond incorrectly to criticism? It’s really simple, run off your emotions, it’s
basically you getting extremely worked up and getting angry/ annoyed at the
person or people that critique your work, thus referring to attacking them
personally verbally, there are many cases of this coming from both the critic
and the person being criticised.
So what exactly happens when you handle
criticism the incorrect way?
It’s simple, you end up creating a
massively negative view on yourself and will be regarded as someone whom is
short tempered and can’t handle criticism, and this will result in people
taking a jab at you purely for entertainment purposes or to see how you will
handle the situation. Of course, still responding negatively only makes you dig
your grave deeper.
In my own opinion it is extremely
important on how you handle criticism, especially if it’s bad criticism, as it
leads to an extremely bad image and can definitely destroy the good image you
have been building up. Good criticism is just as important as bad criticism,
purely because with good feedback you are able to focus on the areas where you
didn’t add detail or improve yourself on areas where you have failed, for
example perspective, background, vegetation, buildings, anatomy, lighting,
colours and colour balancing. My only advice is that you should not be afraid
to seek advice or criticism as it can definitely help you in both the short and
long run.
References:
SAE Creative Industry. (2015). Week 11:
Critics, Reviewers & Your Art. Retrieved from https://medium.com/self-directed-practitioners/week-4-critics-reviewers-and-journalists-8bd8666d2f3#.jo38df2f6
Trench, R, C. & Coleridge, H. (1884).
Oxford English Dictionary. In Murray. J (Ed.), Oxford English Dictionary Vol. 2
(volume range C). Oxford, Oxford University Press.
