PikaKiraKuzu

Hello everyone, PPK here!

I wanted to express something thats really been bothering me for a long time in regards to art. I am sharing this with you today in hopes that any artists who stumble upon this article will find this helpful and possibly even inspiring.

There is this common notion within the art world, usually by art professors or art content creators, that art has to be realistic and have meaning. That characters, backgrounds, and everything inbetween has to have all proportions and features consistant with real life. I’ve seen content creators actually take someone elses art (sometimes with permission and sometimes not) and correct it to be more realistic when the corrections were just over stylistic preferences and not actual mistakes.

In my opinion, this idea is not only extremely outdated but its also very damaging to young or in other words inspiring artists.

I have been a ‘professional’ artist for over 10 years and my art became so much better once I realized that things such as cartoon style artwork should not be held to the same standard as realistic art/portraits. I spent the majority of my time as a artist trying to make my cartoon style art have the correct proportion/perspective of a real life photograph. To be completely honest, most of the art i’ve created is what I would consider stiff and uncreative. Thats simply because for cartoon style art is not made to have realistic rules applied to them.

If someone needs to hear it: Its okay to put eyebrows over the hair, its ok to have huge eyes or arms that curve and not bend. Yes things like proportions matter, but they are also dependant on each individual piece and the artist’s vision!

Another issue I see artists facing is the pressure to push themselves to only create things with grand meaning and a subliminal emotion/message to convey.

I experienced this personally in art school; I remember being told by a professor that art can not be a decoration and to imply it could be was offensive. While theres nothing wrong in creating art with a grand meaning, I think pushing yourself to do so with every artwork incredibly unproductive.

All art has meaning but sometimes that meaning can simply be to look nice, to make people smile, or to make you as the artist happy. To argue that isn’t true is denying that art can be a business as well as just a hobby. Both are valid and not one is better than the other.

To be abundantly clear: creating art with meaning is awesome and if you’ve never tried to compose something with a deep meaning I do suggest you get it a try at least for artistic exercise. However, the problem is when you try to force yourself to only create art that has a message. In my opinion and experience, art is better when it is not forced or surrounded with pressure to be made with strict set of rules.

Another thing Id like to illuminate is that creating realistic art is completely valid and requires incredibly talent and skill. I do not want people to think that I am shunning realism in anyway. I am only trying to state that realism is not the basis of which every artist should try to adhere too like some may say.

Also, please do not think I am implying you should not accept constructive criticism. Constructive criticism is how we learn whether its art or anything else we do.

At the end of the day, you’ll have more fun (which helps you create better art) if you let yourself freely create without trying to adhere to a specific standard. Doing so even helps develop your style. Of course there are rules and standards within the art world but they are incredibly flexible and I think so many people forget that. Art is a vast variety of creation types and styles that has no strict definition.