Met a guy at a comic con who told me my art was "too clean"

I was tabling at a small local art fair in Portland last month when a older man stopped at my digital painting prints and said they looked "sterile and lifeless" compared to traditional media. He then pulled out his phone and showed me his own work which was basically messy lines and splatters he called "raw emotion." Has anyone else gotten weird criticism like that from people who don't understand digital tools yet?

4 comments

4 Comments

anthonynelson13d ago

Yeah that "raw emotion" thing always feels like a cop out.

ray_sullivan13d agoMost Upvoted

Oh man, that "sterile and lifeless" bit hits close to home. Had some dude at a Ren Faire tell me my graphite portrait looked like it was traced because the shading was too smooth. Pulled out his own sketchbook full of these scratchy, angry-looking faces he called "authentic mark making." Like buddy, sorry my lines don't look like a spider had a seizure on the page. People get real weird about anything that doesn't match their personal style.

hannah_wells13d ago

Agree with @ray_sullivan completely but I'd take it further - that "raw emotion" thing is just a way to make their own lack of technical skill look intentional. I had this guy at a gallery opening once go on about how my digital art was "soulless code" but his splatter paintings were "pure spirit." Meanwhile his stuff was literally just paint thrown at a canvas with zero composition. The double standard is wild too because if a digital artist makes something messy and chaotic they call it lazy but when a traditional artist does the exact same thing suddenly it's profound. Honestly I think some people just can't handle that digital tools let you achieve a level of precision that they'll never reach with their shaky hands and cheap paper.

jason_stone5913d ago

Hannah you nailed it. Had a similar thing at a local art walk where some painter told me my digital piece was "cheating because of undo buttons." I asked him if using an eraser on paper was also cheating. Guy just stared at me like I'd asked him to do calculus. They act like suffering for your art is a requirement but I've got carpal tunnel from drawing on a tablet for 12 hours straight, tell me that's not pain.