Constructive Criticism Where does one draw the line?

I go to art school so my critiques are harsher. It's just a fact that I am obsessed with perfection, and will be honest when I see something imperfect. I do not understand why people have such freakouts regarding criticism. Everyone has room for improvement. I do not care whether you do it for a living or not, you can improve. I can't go on deviantart because I am too honest. I stay off of the critiques part of the forum because I can be pretty brutally honest regarding my work and other people's work.

 

True, but not everyone strives for perfection like you seem to do and if it's 'just' a hobby for them, butal criticism could scare them off. I think encouragement is sometimes more important than harsh honesty.

I'd rather have 20 people trying to paint an (imperfect) picture, then no-one painting at all, because they're scared to fail.

 

Can you be honest without being brutal?

 

Absolutely.

 

I have to say, I'd rather get imperfect crit here than ask for it at home. At least here I'd get someone who knows about dolls, and has at least a vague idea of the techniques involved in customizing.
At home I get "helpful" suggestions like "Well, if you used a Sharpie, then you wouldn't need the sealer-stuff."
...

 

Someone earlier in this thread said that there's a common perception that critique has to be brutal and negative-- otherwise it's not "honest". Simon Cowell Syndrome. I think if you pride yourself on being brutally honest, you have to ask yourself what you hope to achieve with your critique. Do you really want the person to improve? Then maybe a gentler approach would be more effective.

Unfortunately, I think some people kind of enjoy giving harsh critique, because it's one of the few times society allows them to insult people without retaliation. JMO.

 

That's unfortunate. Art school should, ideally, be teaching you how to present constructive crit to improve a work, whether it needs a little or a lot, not merely brutal harshness. If you're all about what's wrong with no guide as to how to make it right, I gotta be blunt -- they're teaching you to give very poor critiques. It can be as simple as, 'The anatomy here is off, you should take a look at some charts of muscle structure or some anatomy reference for that particular pose,' but the second half is as essential as noting the first. Honest doesn't mean ugly/brutal/harsh. They aren't synonyms. Treating them as such isn't helpful to anyone. That's not to say that extreme sugar-coating is required, or that honesty isn't important -- just that there are good ways and bad ways to present an honest critique. While to some extent it's an individual thing, dependent on how that particular individual processes information presented to them, tearing someone a new one is not a one-size-fits-all approach that will be productive, constructive, or assist someone.

I had one of the 'brutal' teachers my first year in college. She would slam her hand down on the table and say, 'This is wrong/horrible draping/misbegotten anatomy/etc.,' and circle what was in error. She warned people that if they did not want their work treated this way, have a sheet of tracing paper and be damned fast getting it over the sketch the moment she neared the table. (She wore monstrously large rings that, I'm not kidding, had chips in the stone from where they'd apparently been stabbed at by mechanical pencils over the years. That woman was quite the character, but I digress.) What spared her from being a 'bad critique provider' was that she would then explain, in detail, how the lines should be falling and why, what structures were affected, and why it was wrong -- along with a clear example, right on the page (or tracing paper if you were quick) -- so you could see precisely what she meant, and what the difference was.

While I find the 'What's wrong with this?' 'This.' 'OMG HOW DARE YOU FIND SOMETHING WRONG WITH IT!' instances worthy of wincing, it's not a hard thing to understand. Some people are simply not looking for it in a hobby they enjoy. If they're asking for it, that's another matter. (And by that I mean literally asking, not merely presenting an image something that someone else feels requires work.) Some people can't even respond well to helpful, politely worded hints, but very few consider uninvited, harsh commentary on something anything but rudeness. And there's plenty of perfectly good reasons for that.

This, absolutely. And knowing someone's relative skill levels is so critical to that. You wouldn't expect a 5 year old to spit out a Da Vinci; treating them as though they're a failure because they haven't created the next Mona Lisa would be absurd. While that's an extreme example, the premise holds true.

 

I go to art school. I am critiqued and thus shown how to critique reguarly, to. This does not need to equal a harsh critique. You can delve right into the mass of the problems and root out the flaws, present them to the person in question, and tell them how to fix it- without being harsh. I'm fine with being given "brutallly" honest critique. Not everyone is.

Discretion is key, IMO. As is being able to be flexible in one's ways. Truely helping people fixing things is not a simple thing where the same technique will work for all. Thus, the line in how far to take a critique is different for each person; thankfully, DoA has set guidelines on the methods of constructive criticism it wants to see, so people can know what to expect before posting work.

 

Well, dA now has the critique system, and reccomendations from artists about whether or not they want critique... but that's beside the point.

Being honest with critique is actually important. It just matters how you phrase the critique. If you focus on the artwork as a whole, both the good and bad, and also include an explanation and some advice, I don't think anyone would call you to a grievance on the critique you've given. If you just say "This is bad" and don't say why - that's not helpful.

When I critique writing, I can be downright merciless with the things I pick up. When I'm teaching students (high-school English) I'm a harsh marker and my students dread it when I mark their assignments, because I give back things that are covered in red scribbles. But I also tell them why things are scribbled, offer suggestions to improve, then take the mistakes that the class in general has made and explain in detail how they can avoid making those mistakes in future.

Of course, there are some people (I use an example of a girl on dA) who cannot accept critique at all. This bugs me, especially when the person in question has asked for critique. My example is a girl who cried 'troll!' and posted a journal about it every time someone offered her critique. Her drawings are done in the 'sonic' style, and someone told her that for a Sonic character (I think it was Amy? I don't follow Sonic, but it was one of the girls) picture she'd drawn, her anatomy was a little off, and her colours were wrong. They provided links to images of the character, and gently pointed out that she could improve, and how she could do it.

She flew off the handle, called them a troll and posted a rant in her journal about them. And everyone who pointed out that it was actually honest critique and that she had asked for critique was also a 'troll'. ("Obviously you don't know how to give ciritque, you troll! You give a lot of good stuff, a tiiiiiny little bit of bad stuff, then lots more good stuff!")

On the internet, you cannot tell how your critique is going to be taken. That shouldn't stop you from giving it, but you need to have a thick skin if you're going to give critique because you can't tell how others are going to react.

 

You are a sweetheart.

I get it now. Absolutely. Thanks for explaining. This is what I would call technique (or one of the things I call technique). And yes, techniques are related to other stuff, like how the eyes work, how the brain works, how culture works, how morality works, to name but a few.

Quite, and this is where choice attaches to technique. If you want to paint a picture that mimics how your eyes work, you'll probably want to use perspective. But if you want to paint a picture that is chiefly about your emotions, how you feel about the people and things in your world, then perspective might not be so relevant. Chagall painted a picture of his wife where she's vastly, hugely enormous to show her emotional, psychological and spiritual importance in his world. He and their son are teensy-weensy at the bottom.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Chagall_Bella.jpg

Chagall, like Mary Poppins, also felt that gravity ought to be optional. Also those pictures of lovers floating in the air.

At this point I could go off on a long thing about the difference between the medieval world view and ours, but I've decided on balance that I might have a hard time showing a direct relationship with bjds, so perhaps best not.

 

Absolutely. But I'd go further and say I don't think honesty has anything to do with brutality or harshness. Honesty is when a person tries to get to the truth of something. Honesty is not the same as truth. Honesty is me trying to tell you the truth, you trying to tell me the truth. Perhaps honesty is a process -- you and me fumbling towards the truth. The truth of something is out there in the world and doesn't change -- it doesn't depend on me and you. What can get in the way of being honest? Well, ignorance for one. Your "brutal" teacher was able to be honest because she knew lots and lots about drawing. Ego is another thing that gets in the way of being honest. The more I'm trying to comfort my own ego by telling you what's wrong with your drawing then the less honest I'm going to be. The more I feel that you're being arrogant in the way you reject my critique and that you're putting me down in some way, the more my bruised ego wants to assert itself and the less honest I'm going to be. Honesty becomes a life-long process of putting myself out of the picture.

Honesty has no interest in belittling others -- it's ego that loves to belittle others.

But what's cool is the way children create art and drawing quickly, un-self-consciously, with enjoyment. They don't have the hundred nagging voices in their heads that adults have when they try to draw, write, do a face-up, etc. I came across this great quote:

 

I have to agree with that point so very much, and that is a fabulous quote. One of the reasons -- and this may just be me -- that I started buying dolls in the first place is that for me, they tap into that child-like 'and now I'm just going to play with looks and putter around and not worry about the fussy old rules' part of my brain. It is an incredibly inventive aspect of the imagination. The fussy part of my brain never shuts off completely, but the dolls leave the door to NotFussyLand open, and let some fresh air in. It is an incredible boon to my over all creative work and general thought processes even beyond the dolls themselves.

A great deal of my work is incredibly, mind-numbingly fussy. Fussy to the point of squinting into the wee hours over details almost no one would ever see -- but are still critical. Means of breaking that pattern formation in the brain is pretty important to prevent needless rigidity, which ultimately kills creativity rather than fostering it.

It's one of the reasons I 'get' the need for crit-free space as well as space for critique. Sometimes, you're dancing for the crowd. Sometimes, you're just scampering around in a meadow screaming, "WHEE!" at the top of your lungs in front of friends, who may or may not be doing the same thing. Both -- metaphorically speaking, at least -- are things people need in their lives.

 

This makes absolute sense to me.

There are a lot of books around about freeing the creative, child-like part of yourself from the grown-up fussy part. Two I like a lot are The Artist's Way and Becoming a Writer. One or both of them calls the part of the brain/self which makes all the fuss and nags and criticises "the editor". Both make the point that the editor is necessary for creating a finished piece of art, but the problem is a lot of the time the editor goes power-mad and tries to start editing before the creative, child-like self has had a chance to begin. Both books suggest exercises for shutting the editor up for a while, so we can simply connect to the creative self.

 

O gosh, yes. In my line of work, I think the reviews are the worst thing and have detrimental effect on my creativity. Like someone before said; honesty is confused with rude abuse and especially on the internet do reviewers have this habit where they just go all out insulting the creators of movies, games, tv-shows or whatever. It's hard to keep enjoying your job when you know the next review you'll read is either not mentioning your work at all (which means you did good), or another variation of "she ff-ing sucks" (meaning the reviewer didn't like it).
It's one of the reasons I stopped reading them in the first place. I don't want that little critical voice in the back of my mind to have reign over me. I want to create and not worry beforehand if someone is going to like it or not. And ever since I stopped reading, I love my job again. (although I do wonder what the use of reviews is if creators don't read them anymore)

Perhaps that's why children are still able to unconciously make art. They aren't yet constrained by all the "must do's" and "should have's". Their mind is still free.

 

There's a difference between critique and reviews. Critique is meant for the creator; reviews are meant for the consumer.

 

I like this.

 

It's mostly for the consumer, yes. But if, let's say, 75% of the reviews state that a certain feature in the game didn't work out, it would be a mistake if the creators would use that feature in their next game. Likewise, when a bookreview says the author uses too many corny sentences for the book to be truly enjoyable, it tells said author to tone it down a bit in the future. It is still critique.

All in all, the same basic principals for giving feedback do, to a certain extent, also apply to reviews. And just like with critique, reviewers often mistake honesty for rudeness.

@PunkyPhresh: I don't think it's the internet necessarily. I don't know about the USA, but the stand-up comedians in Holland have become much more brutal in the past decade/twenty years. It used to be considered an honor to be mentioned during one of those acts (even if it was a bit negative). Now politicians etc dread it, because those acts have ruined careers.
And for some time now a politician in my country gets many votes, because he 'dares to be honest' (aka, is insulting). The crowd seems to want to hear these insults and so others act accordingly. I don't think it's such a surprise we start to mistake rudeness for constructive criticism.