Artist confessions - ’ Undeserving ’

Really, this is my fault for letting my morbid sense of curiosity get the better of me and clicking on artist-confessions to read the posts. Every time I see what young artists are writing about each other it actually gets me depressed.

I see lots of ’ this person gets attention but I don’t understand why because here is a list of their flaws ’ and/or ’ this person doesn’t deserve attention because I think they are not drawing the right kind of subject matter/style ‘. I’m going to hope a lot of people writing these things are still in high-school and it is kind of natural to get a jealous twinge when we see someone getting recognition that perhaps we want.

When I was in highschool there was a week long animation course you could sign up for at a school downtown called VanArts - Generally only 1 or 2 people from each school could go because there were limited spots. You had to write a little paper on why you were interested in animation ect. I thought OH COOL ! This sounds like its fun to try. Now I was interested in animation but it was more or less at the time something that seemed like fun and not something I knew I wanted to do for sure. However, that changed when a bunch of my other friends from my art class signed up for it too. Now I wasn’t dedicated to animation but I thought ” Well I’ve mentioned I like it, and I’ve tried it and no one ELSE shows interest, why are THEY signing up for it”. Suddenly I’m competing with friends who I THOUGHT did not deserve the spot. Why should they ? Suddenly my interest was more resolute - and I convinced myself that they were not as worthy as getting it as me. How they did not deserve the chance since they did not have the prerequisites that I thought they should have (and of course..prerequisites that I already had) .This went on throughout the whole waiting period of seeing who was chosen. I ended up getting surly and irritable as every day I grappled with the possibility of these unworthy people getting the spot that I wanted. Convincing myself I had done things right and OH THE INJUSTICE if I didnt get what was mine.

Then one day I woke up and felt like shit. I hadn’t told anyone how I felt about them getting the spot,  ( I think this is the first time I’ve mentioned it actually haha) , so I realized that I had been treating my friends like complete shit in my head. Who was I to determine who is worthy of a spot in a workshop…or attention on the internet…or a work opportunity. In the end we’re all artists trying to learn, grow, get a job, have fun, ect. Everyone has a different path. Some people who only draw fanart may have people say they don’t deserve attention because their subject matter is seen as selling out. Who cares? Thats what they want to do and just because you view your artistic path as different does not mean you should act high and mighty. So what if someone has ‘same face syndrome’, maybe their goal is to not break into the commerial art world and they want to be casual about it.

Theres nothing wrong with critique - when people ask for it. And heck if someone gives me crit when I didn’t ask I’m ok with that too. Just the whole tone of ’ this person doesn’t deserve ’ rhetoric really makes me sad. Or saying ’ I dont understand why they get attention ’ - its ok if you don’t like something but is it really so surprising others harbor different views? Its really more damaging to the person saying it to the person who is receiving it. IF you’re an artist and you see other people as undeserving of whatever attention they get , you are just distracting yourself from your own artistic path. We’re all artists, we all make mistakes, we all learn and grow and we all have different goals.

I am fully aware of the irony of me writing an opinion about peoples opinions saying you shouldn’t get distracted people who you view as undeserving. Especially because I’m being distracted from work saying this. DOUBLE IRONY. I just had to get it out of my system and any of my opinion rants are really just food for thought as per usual. 

Oh - also

I totally got into that animation workshop thing, and all of my friends got in too. We had the biggest group from any school , like 5 people instead of 1. It was a blast :) We were all deserving.