Dan Kim

QUESTION CONTINUES BELOW
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Followup to previous question due to character limit. And even if you do find good criticism, any advice for those of us (cough) with fragile egos? What would you tell someone who has a hard time not taking criticism (even well-intentioned ones) personally? Thanks again for your time and comics.
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END OF QUESTION

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Re: ego bruising
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Place your art at the center of all things and serve that. Once your art -- IN ITSELF -- becomes your primary concern you will find that petty concerns about responding adequately to critics, managing your feelings, your ego, this or that particular drawing, etc. will naturally fall away.

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Eventually the very idea of worrying about having your ego bruised will seem as strange and silly as worrying about getting sand in your boots while storming the beaches. Of course you'll get sand in your boots -- that's what happens when you storm the beach. What's the issue? You have bigger fish to fry!

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Re: criticism
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It's useful to remember what artistry is: it is technique + purpose.

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On matters of technique criticism is simply out of place. All technique arrives through knowledge + physical training. Simply knowing your pitching form is wrong will not add a single newton of force behind your fastball. Your pitch will only be improved by learning the skill correctly and then training correctly for a decade. The same applies for drawing in perspective, proportioning correctly, etc.

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As for purposes -- consider the following criticisms:
a) you served purpose X poorly
b) you served purpose X when you should have served purpose Y
c) what are the right purposes?

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(a) is remedied by technique. If there is effect you wish to achieve, guides are everywhere. Criticism will not help, knowledge and practice will.

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(b) is really just politics. There are priesthoods on all sides who would love to make a tool of you. There are also readers who just want their tastes catered to. This is as inadvisable and dangerous as changing who you are for another person or a political purpose. In any case, taking this seriously will nudge you to (c).

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And (c), IMHO, is where real art happens. Clarity of purpose only comes after many failed projects and pieces. This process of failure is sometimes called "finding your voice as an artist" or "finding your project". It is as hard and fuzzy a thing as "becoming/finding/creating yourself". Here there are no guides, no gurus--only lucky breaks, hunches, and fellow travellers. Success in this area leads you to a state where (a) is useful, or you are breaking new ground.

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If you are breaking new ground, remember that criticism is a latecomer to the game and can only operate by casting the unfamiliar in familiar terms. Insofar as what you attempt is genuinely new, criticism of the usual kind is simply a non-starter. You are breaking new ground, they are picking up the pieces. Let the janitors of history do their work.

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Best of luck, fellow traveller!

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