“ You suck.”

It’s not something that we, as artists, want to hear. Hell, no one likes to hear they suck. Generally that’s why we consider it as an insult. But in the world of the creative professional (read artists who work professionally), the negative comments can often be far more useful that the positive. Obviously, there are qualifications, but in general the negative critique is actually as good or better than the positive.

You might be scratching your head going, “Buh?”, but here is how it works.

Firstly, most artists, be they young, old, professional or amateur, generally want to improve their work. We all want to do better, be more than we are. But the only way we can do that is to see where we are falling down so we can focus on picking that up. Most artists are their own worst enemies when it comes to critiques, but there are some primadonna types that think they are god’s gift to art. So the negative critique serves as second pair of eyes, helping the artist pick out

The reality is, if you cannot ‘take’ a negative review, you aren’t going to get far in the world of art, so its best to learn to embrace good critiques, positive and negative equally and separate a good critique from a bad one.

What makes a good negative Critique?
Obviously, not every negative comment is going to be useful. There are idiots out there that just have to put down other people to feel better about themselves. The ‘you suck’ comment from above is a very good example of ‘fluff’, as I like to call it. A comment without substance that serves no real purpose other than to try and get under your skin or annoy you. I’ve developed a very good fluff filter, and stuff like this doesn’t even phase me anymore. There will always be idiots, jealousy, and petty people, but this isn’t the type of comment we are concerned with. If you get these, your best bet is to ignore them, or ask them if they want to back that statement up with something intelligent. Here is an example of a “you suck” comment with substance:

“ You suck. Your muscular anatomy on the arms is wayyy off. People don’t have muscles like that! And your composition is too boring, everything is the same size, and I can’t read your type.”

Okay, this is a negative comment we can work with. This comment tells you several things. 1) Your anatomy is really off in this picture. 2) your composition is boring. 3) and your type is unreadable.

Most artist’s kneejerk reaction is get angry at seeing a comment like this. “OMG, I worked for hours on this picture!” or “You criticize my art, you criticize me!” The first thing is, you have to separate yourself from the image. A picture is a picture. Just because someone doesn’t like one of your pictures right now, doesn’t mean they won’t in the future. And just because someone doesn’t like your picture, doesn’t mean they hate you or were talking about you. Get over yourself. Secondly, that frustration of the creation of the image can spill out very easily when we see something negative popup, but what this fellow has given you is a very honest reaction and put up some redflags. It might seem mean, but this guy is doing you a bigger favor than the hoards of “ You R0x0rz!” comments that may flood your gallery pages. A good comment of “you rock!” is just as useless as “ you suck”, remember that. A truly good comment will pick out particular points of your picture that worked or didn’t. If you ask or leave open for comments, be sure that you are ready to accept the good and the bad.

Another kneejerk reaction is to respond to negative comments right away. DON’T.
We, as artists, tend to be a rather sensitive bunch. We often get all hissy and pissy about something that trounces on our latest work of art, especially if we aren’t very confident about what we are doing yet. But it is very important not to start freaking out on people who leave negative comments, especially useful negative comments. So before you freak out, consider the following:
1) Did the comment point out specific areas that could use improvement?
2) Did the commenter offer suggestions for improvement?
3) Have I heard the same type of negative comment before?

If there are answers to the above conditions, any of them, the comment is useful. We should not chastise or yell at the people who give us useful feedback. Its hard to accept, yes, we might have screwed up, but this is how we improve. If a negative comment has no redeeming qualities, put it on fluff filter and ignore it. It’s just fluff after all. But don’t sit there and get yourself all bent out of shape over it. Its not worth the time, efforts or digital pixels that make up that lovely bit of typography.

The value of ‘gut reactions’
One of the things we were taught in design school was to listen to the gut reaction. Your initial reaction to a piece is usually the strongest and most honest. If someone reacts to a piece different than you had intended, you have to ask yourself ‘why?’, because if you get one strong wrong reaction, you will probably get more. You have to do a little work and determine what it is in your picture that ‘isn’t working’ and is giving the wrong message. If someone makes what seems to be a very passionate, negative gut reaction, even if it doesn’t necessarily say anything specific about your work, you can still use it as a sort of barometer that can gauge how successful a given piece is. The key here is not taking the reaction to an emotional level. You have to look at it academically. If you take it emotionally, you won’t be able to figure out what went wrong and fix it for your next work.

Look ahead, don’t look back
The art world is a very fickle thing. When we get a piece with a particularly bad reaction, or at least one not as successful as we might have hoped, sometimes we are tempted to take it to heart. Don’t. We also get tempted to go back and try to fix a work. Don’t. Move on. Take all the information you’ve gathered and try to improve for your next work. There isn’t a lot of point in going backward, you are trying to move forward to bigger and better things. Don’t let yourself get stuck in the past trying to fix a ‘bad’ piece. If you really like it, wait a while, work on your weaknesses, then try to reinvent it and see if you get a more successful version. But going back without taking the time to move forward in your skill level only means you’ll keep repeating your mistakes.


The power of laughter
A trick to getting over negative reactions, is to laugh about it. No, I’m serious. Just sit there and giggle. Giggle until you start laughing like a villain. The fact you got a reaction is triumph enough. Look upon it as a personal victory. Start a collection. Do anything to turn it upside down and make what might seem like a failure into triumph. Some artists do things JUST for that reason, to piss people off. Revel in it a little that someone was so moved by your art in any direction they felt they had to comment. Often times, bad comments or critiques become like an artists battlescars. And remember, chicks did the scars and guys are jealous they don’t have any. Make sure you have a good laugh about any bad comments before you respond to them. In retrospect, they won’t seem so bad.

Don’t take it personally
The worst thing you can do with a negative comment is to take it personally. You must learn to separate yourself from your work. Especially if you ever intend to work professionally in art, because frankly, employers don’t care about your feelings. If your picture doesn’t work for them, it doesn’t work for them. You have to be able to look at your work as an object that is a part of you, but apart from you. People who criticize and artwork, even if if they say ‘you suck’, they don’t mean it. They mean the artwork sucks. Its important to make that distinction. You have to be able to look at negative comments as tools for improvement, not as a personal attack. Its hard to do, but if you want to ever make a ‘name’ for yourself, its something you have to learn. You might thing ‘well when I’m popular, I’ll only get good comments’, I hate to break it to you, but it doesn’t get better as you get more popular, its gets worse. Why? Because opinions are like assholes. Everyone has one. And there are a hell of a lot of assholes out there. As your work gets seen by more and more people, you’ll encounter those assholes… in spades.

In closing, a thought to consider. Your ability to turn a frown upside down, turn it around, spit it back out again and keep on trucking will determine your fate in the art world. Its not for the faint of heart, it is highly competitive, and you have to be able to take your knocks and get back up again. People who freak out at one little bad comment are not going to be the Next Big Thing™ and will not have the staying power to make themselves a name. Success might come to a select few overnight, but chances are, you aren’t one of them. And to those that do, well lets just say they can’t always take the fires of success, and very quickly find themselves burned right out.

A though for the artists.