5 Things That Suck About Being an Artist

Ever since I was very young I have been drawing (etc) basically non stop. That's right guys. I am self taught. Self. Taught. I really enjoy drawing/painting/whatever, mainly because I find it incredibly therapeutic and keeps me from murdering everyone. But here are 5 things that suck about being an artist. 

1. Your art is judged extremely quickly. To be able to even be remotely successful you have to make your stuff catch people's attention and they have to like it within about a 3 second time frame. Then they still have to like it when they look at it more closely. If you screw up in doing that, you're not really an artist but just some idiot who threw some paint around. You know what that means? There is virtually no room for mistakes if you want people to like your crap. You can spend 3 hours on one portion of a piece trying to get an angle right or whatever, but if you are off people will notice immediately. It doesn't matter how much time you spent doing it. In my 15ish years of drawing(etc) I have learned that people don't notice your art as much if it is done correctly and is cohesive than if you have a gigantic mistake that they can't help but stare at. It's kinda like how you don't think about how your car brakes work and how nice it is to have them until they break. You don't notice something that is well designed until it is broken. That's the other challenge. Basically, you have to create things that are good enough to be noticed almost as much as people notice something terrible. 

2. People expect art to happen quickly. Some art does happen more quickly than others for sure, but in general it all takes a long time. It takes on average about a 1/60th of a second to take a photo (excluding prep and wait time. Photographers have it rough too), but to recreate that photo by hand can take dozens of hours that people will probably only look at for a few seconds. Let's test that shall we? Here is a digital painting I did of Aiden Pearce from Watch Dogs (amazing game by the way. Kudos, Ubisoft).

Complete with my snazzy logo.

How long did you look at that photo? A few seconds? Wanna guess how long it took to do? About 10 hours. But don't get me wrong, I'm not expecting you to stare at it for 10 hours. Just give us artists some credit, yeah? Also, I'm not complaining. When I do stuff like this, it doesn't seem that long. Mainly because I probably have the worst time perception of anyone anywhere. I can stare at the wall for an hour without even realizing it. Because drain bramage (refer to Kristen's apology letter found here). 

3. All of my pants are covered in paint, and it doesn't come out. People probably think I'm some sort of hobo, especially when I am wearing a matching paint splattered shirt. I usually don't go out in public when I'm like that, but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. It doesn't help that my hands are covered in paint splatters too. I'm fairly certain there have been times when I had finger paint streaks across my face. Like, 100% sure. It's not my fault my face gets itchy, and I don't think things through.

4. Injuries. You wouldn't really think this, but I get cut up all the time. I have a scar on my left knuckle that has a permanent reddish color around it, so it looks like I punched someone with only one knuckle somehow. This is from trying to open a rusted shut bucket of paint. I have another scar on my left thumb where I sliced it open while making a cardboard chair for a class (which you can read about here). This is probably why I lean more towards digital art (and thus why I am pursuing a Graphic Design career). I am extremely accident prone. Once I even got a pencil stabbed into my foot (caused by bad decisions) which resulted in me having to get surgery to pull the pencil lead out. But that's a whole other story. 

5. Being an artist revolves around being criticized. You have to take criticism. The art world isn't there to make you feel good about yourself. It's there to point out your mistakes and tell you how to fix it. It's a constant process of self improvement, and it can be hard sometimes. It's not just someone saying your art sucks, but it's someone saying your art sucks and listing off reasons as to why it sucks. This is basically why I am very hard to offend. I thrive on criticism, and you have to take it and improve if you want to produce solid work. Usually it's hard because you know that what you are told sucks is true. I figure you can either slap on your sulk pants, or you can figure out what the problem is and work on it. Sometimes criticism isn't verbal, which is why I always watch the face of whoever I am showing my art to. Their very first expression when they see it is all I need. Usually when someone likes it they raise their eyebrows a bit and their mouth hangs open a little. If they don't like it, it's the opposite. Their mouth goes in a mean little line and their eyebrows go down. This isn't true for everyone, but I have noticed that it is true for most people. Eventually, you do this to yourself. Before I finalize any of my art I do not look at it for several hours. Then I look at it again, and pay attention to where my eyes go and what it is I notice first. If I don't look at what I intended to be the focal point first, then I will spend hours fixing it or even start over. First impressions are always the most important. Basically this is the reaction I aim for:

All in all though, I love the art world. Probably because of how mean everyone is to each other. I find it amusing and it gives me an excuse to be rude. There is always someone who hates your art, or maybe hates your art because they hate your guts and wish you would get smashed by a rogue piano. It really doesn't matter as long as you like what you do, and are open minded enough to accept advice for improvement.