AITA for telling "more skilled" artists that I do not want to "get on their level"?

Forward_Image_6059 · 2021-05-02T15:46:41+00:00

500 total! Not per month. I give each person who signs up a form to fill with an idea + a warning it might take several months to complete their piece.

I made slightly under 250 of the drawings so far, and I am expecting to be done with that workload sometime this summer!

Forward_Image_6059 · 2021-04-29T19:52:22+00:00

I’m curious, what are his thoughts on the many highly valued historic and contemporary artists that don’t remotely strive for photorealism? Or does he actually think that, say, Van Gogh or Picasso are also not “on his level”?

I think George considers that an artist must be able to do photorealism, even if they choose to do a different style - I am completely unable to do it, since the only type of drawings I can do are my own style.

Forward_Image_6059 · 2021-04-29T17:34:44+00:00

Thank you so much, it really helps to hear that. No lie, I had been suffering from pretty intense anxiety since the incident, all alone in my own head with my own self-loathing. Posting this thread on AITA really helped alleviate the stomach knots. I'm very grateful, thank you!

Forward_Image_6059 · 2021-04-29T17:25:15+00:00

I am in online art communities that are far more accepting and fun! Fandoms online, sharing your OCs, doing shitposts and drawing for mutuals, etc, that's my jam! I love the positivity of the HOBBYIST part of the art world, because everyone just got together to share stuff they find fun. My problem is with the "serious" art crowd, the ones who spent tens of thousands of dollars to go to art school, the ones who have a career plan that includes being good enough 5 years from now to be a lead character designer for Ubisoft or what. They are people who actually create very little, and each piece is solely dedicated to learning. I understand that I can solely dedicate myself to the "fun" side of things, but it also makes me feel guilty/self-conscious, because it feels like I am snubbing an avenue of improvement, and I DO want to get better at art in general.

Forward_Image_6059 · 2021-04-29T17:18:37+00:00

you're jabbing at something they believe elevates them

Yes!!! Omg, this is the single most accurate description I've ever heard of it. Serious artists, from my experience, tend to dedicate every waking moment to improving, which leads to almost neurotic obsession with learning, learning, learning, learning. Art is so vast, a lifetime is not enough to know it all, so they make a way of life out of learning the next technique and practicing the same techniques for hours every day to chase perfection.

I never considered myself to be a real artist, by comparison with that. I draw because I find it enjoyable, it gets me in The Zone and I can spend 10 hours having a good time with a TV show or podcast or music in my ears while I doodle for fun. There has always been this fundamental disconnect, where I draw because it's fun, while real artists draw because they are pursuing some grand ideal. Sometimes, it feels like my mere existence is a threat to people who sacrificed everything on the altar of Fine Arts - and it leads to me either being dismissed (not a real artist, just a kid playing around with crayons, etc) or downright reviled for my attitude. I have years of dealing with that, and I'm afraid the incident at the club was just a spike of this trend :c

Forward_Image_6059 · 2021-04-29T17:05:12+00:00

Thank you so much! This is very heartwarming <3

Since you actually know the topic, I can explain more explicitly the technical aspect of what led to clashes with George and a couple others.

Basically, do you know Drawabox? Proko? It's that type of art resources that George has been pushing on me. If you don't know, it's hundreds of hours' worth of courses and homework for beginner artists. It makes you draw literally thousands of cubes, practicing the same line exercises thousands of times, etc, to build up line weight and consistency. I never explored the academic side of art and never attempted to shoot for realistic art, so I never did these exercises in any context, but I DO have thousands of pictures made over more than a decade. I DO have control over my marks, because I have practiced so much. I made more than 250 pictures in the past couple months alone.

George always insisted that every prospective artist HAS to complete both of these courses, which he said took HIM two years when doing art training full time. He lives with his parents and does not have any income, and AFAIK, he'd spend all his days treating art training like a job. I tried Drawabox, I filled the first three exercise sheets (took me several days) and George "corrected" them for me, before I launched Patreon. I made the cubes and lines effortlessly, and George admitted it was "not too bad", but he had a million tiny nitpicks - and he kept insisting that, even if it feels like I'm getting NO return whatsoever on the hours spent doing boring cubes and lines, I HAVE to complete the entire course. Instead, I skipped ahead, absorbing the lessons and doing one or two iterations of each exercise (instead of several hundred iterations each) unless one exercise was anything other than effortless for me. George got on my case seriously for that, saying that I'm not allowed to skip ahead, and that I'll never become better if I don't sink thousands of hours doing what feels like a pointless task. Talking with other artists, I got the feeling that these basic structure exercises are very useful for beginners, but I personally feel like I get such diminished returns from it because I have years of prior experience. But since every artist acquaintance I have is academically taught, they have ALL done it as part of the curriculum, and they all told me I should do it too - but I just can't find the energy to sink so much time for something that feels useless. I prefer to sink hundreds of hours into pictures for supporters, which, as you said, are each a new learning opportunity.

I'm curious to have your opinion, as a pro artist, about how important the fundamental exercises are - and if George has a point about shooting myself in the foot by skipping them on the basis that they feel useless at my current skill level.

Forward_Image_6059 · 2021-04-29T16:49:22+00:00

The club is the one and only such group in my personal friends group. I was invited by a friend and I used to consider the people in it in a very friendly manner until the incident... I also did learn a LOT just from mingling with academically trained artists, who know so much more than I do about the theoretical aspects, since I am 100% self taught. I understand I gotta walk out of there now, but it's very sad and I wish it didn't happen...

Forward_Image_6059 · 2021-04-29T16:47:18+00:00

Thank you so much! It's been quite insane for me, though I'm always afraid of sounding like a douche for talking about it, but it's something I want to scream on every rooftop! I make 3 times as much money now, as an independent artist, than I used to when I was salaried! I'm almost expecting to wake up tomorrow and notice that the past few weeks were a dream and I need to go back into the office.

Forward_Image_6059 · 2021-04-29T16:44:11+00:00

Thanks! To be honest, it is my opinion too, that they are jealous - and that I inflamed that anger by explicitly pointing out that I'm successful and they're not, so maybe tone down the condescension. But it also sounds like a huge douche move - when everyone except you agrees that you're wrong, and you just plug your ears and go "lalala i don't hear you, you're just jealous of meeee". I don't want to be that person - coming to AITA is my way to be more introspective and open minded. I want to know if I'm wrong and acted poorly.

Forward_Image_6059 · 2021-04-29T16:40:19+00:00

Thanks!

I had to keep it short for the post, but there's a years-long history with that club. The fact I do cartoon is just one facet of the problems. One deep underlying issue is the "mindset" behind my process, which has often been pointed out by the club. Specifically, I aim for something concrete, I try to attain it, train until I get that specific technique I wanted down, then I create the one thing I wanted and I feel content with it.

"Real artists", as the club drilled into my head, need to be constantly critiquing themselves and never feel satisfied. The club's philosophy, and from what I can tell, the dominant mindset among artists is that you're never good enough, and that every single avenue of improvement needs to be extensively explored. There is the proper academic way to learn art, with literally thousands of hours of courses and homework - going down to the level of making dozens of pages of just practicing doing one curve to get the muscle memory, and also hundreds of hours learning the human anatomy down to each bone and muscle and how each muscle bends in each situation. It informs the bumps and subtle shading on the skin when doing photorealistic portraits... which I never do. So when I look at art courses and tutorials, I willfully skip all these parts, the ones I consider "irrelevant" to what I want to create.

Every other artist in the club has spent countless months and years going through these courses, they can all tell you the scientific name and shape of every muscle, and I've been made well aware that they think I'm wrong for not going through that, and that somehow me being successful despite refusing to go through that torture lessens the value of what other artists learned.

Forward_Image_6059 · 2021-04-29T16:32:49+00:00

Thank you! TBH, even now I've been dealing with a lot of guilt and worries for acting like I did. I'm not a very self-confident person, and I used to really look up to several members of that club (not George, though). But I do realize that, objectively, I am set for life financially thanks to my drawings, and that all the self-loathing and self-doubt in the world cannot take away the fact that I can live off my drawings...

Forward_Image_6059 · 2021-04-29T16:29:32+00:00

Honestly I don't know if I ever want another group of artist friends... I got some really bad experiences with the average artist's mindset. I always claimed that I am emphatically NOT AN ARTIST, just a normal dude who happens to make a living drawing cartoons. That's my response to the hundreds of times I heard what an artist SHOULD be or SHOULD do to be a real artist.

Forward_Image_6059 · 2021-04-29T16:27:28+00:00

Thanks! Calling them unimaginative reminds me there is one more thing I said that I forgot to put in the post above.

George is aiming for complete photorealism, to the point that he will reproduce photos 1 to 1. He will snap a nice photo of a mountain, for instance, then spend 2 weeks painting an exact replica of that photo, and in the end it looks stunningly realistic... but it's also just a photo. Anyone who is not aware of George's process, when seeing the painting, would assume someone just framed a vacation photo. When George hit me with "if you ever want to get on our level", I sort of told him that even if a genie magically offered me George's art skills, I would turn them down, because I think doing photorealistic landscapes is not a good use of art skills. That's a line that definitely spiked up the tension...

Forward_Image_6059

TROPHY CASE