Week 11: Critics, Reviewers & Your Art

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 17^th 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.