Art question on emphasising your strengths

[rowanfresh]

I just watched @Ogono 's video on artist confidence, which was great. The main message was about avoiding labeling yourself as not good at something, rather stay confident and keep pushing to improve.

I agree with everything Ogono said in his video, it's a great message about staying positive. But it did get me thinking about another art philosophy that has worked for me: Acknowledge your limits as well as your strengths, and then choose projects that utilise what you're good at.

For example, let's say you're not very good at illustrating with colour, but you do like working in black and white. So you ask yourself, what is a story where the black and white look would be really effective. Or you're good at drawing but not very good at laying out dynamic comic pages. So you find a way to tell a story with illustrations that isn't exactly a comic book.

Is this making sense to anybody? It's a tricky subject, as I don't want to sound like I'm advocating using style as a crutch to avoid improving your art or anything like that. I'm more thinking, what are creative choices some of you have made to play to your strengths and perhaps hide your weaknesses? Does anybody have their own examples?

[awesomefeelsman]

I recently watched something similar to that. Marco Bucci, he talks about his failure when he was hired by someone to do a project he knows he couldn't finish.
I agree with his story, tell your clients what you're good at but still keep on improving. Here's the video.

[joannekwan]

YUP. I definitely play to my strengths while working on the stuff I'm not so good at on the side.

For example, I was never much of a renderer, I don't really have patience to do full on digital paintings all the time, so for color illustrations, I use my flat style.

I don't think playing to your strengths is a crutch as long as you know you have room to improve in the fundamentals. Not everyone is cut out to do realism/anime-style/cross-hatching/what have you, and you shouldn't have to be a jack-of-all-trades.

[punkarsenic]

'tailor your work so your 'flaws' are intentional'? i think that makes sense, thats pretty clever. they discussed something like that in the 'whats your excuse?' episode of dirty old ladies, where they talked about what kept people from starting a comic - if you dont know how to draw buildings, make a world where there arent any, or a world/style where they look how you like. dont like drawing horses? horses do not exist in your world. sorted.

my favourite example of this is anecdotal, abt a guy who couldnt draw hands and hated trying, so he developed a world where hands were dirty NSFW bodyparts, and everyone wore ovengloves all the time.

but thats abt weaknesses - tailoring your comic to make sure your strengths are thematically relevant and prominent in the storytelling? brilliant idea. im big into colour theory, and pride myself as pretty good at it (although i still struggle in places, ill admit), so i try to incorporate a lot of colour symbolism into my comic, to flaunt that skill.

[joe_galindez]

As a writer I try to have a well-rounded skillset. I like to think I can write any situation.

But I can't write pure romance. I just can't.

[BlackRoses_RedRavens]

If I only did what I'm good at I'd be just painting mountains and drawing flowers. Wait... Mountains are the only thing I paint...

[feba5]

I think that the most important thing for an artist is to know and use properly strength and weakness!
I always wanted to make comics, but I was skilled more in painting and illustration, and I hate the inking process!

So more than understand how to use digital painting (super time consuming) in a comics-like schedule, I need to manage the confusion and the lack of precision that a "classic" lineart system allows!

In this way, I searched a way to compensate, using a lot of hard lights, backlights, but at the same time, I sometimes use this weakness as a stylistic choice, for creating some super atmospheric panels!

[LCT_m_a_d]

When I started working on my series I was a TERRIBLE inker. The only thing I had to go on was my coloring. I accepted that I'd never be a great inker, but I did recognize I could improve little by little each day. Im still not fully confident
In my inks but I feel proud of making any meaningful progress there. Some people have told me now my inks are as good as my colors... which I can't confidently say myself.

It's good to want to be positive but for many of us our inability to address our weakness is going to be the thing that holds us back moreso than just playing to our strengths.

[OgonoArtFamily]

Its fun to stylize both strengths and weakness in a project. Especially, when there's heavy deadlines! Sometimes, I see this style in people's choice in world building around their weakness! I feel an artist's improvement rather its getting good at dynamic comic pages, hands, backgrounds ties into a person's psychology . (That's one aspect to it at least). & their willingness to expand their comfort zone.

Though at the time, how much of it is necessary for the individual's path? I know people on tapas that have weakness in drawing. However, they're working on their strengths in comedy/writing! A lot of comedy have a simplistic art style. Yeah, it's tricky subject! & I feel everyone's answer will be different depending on their art path & passion.

[DiegoPalacios]

Is important to know your strenghts and weaknesses.

When it comes to improving any of those aspects i try to follow the "20/80" Principle. A principle about focusing in the 20% of work that affect the 80% of the outcome.

In my case, i realized i had to improve in visual terms. the "20% that affected the 80%" was drawing digitally, using basic shadowing in my drawings and using an app for cleaner panelling.

That gave me a big leap visually.

I started in my most recent page with this change and i'm in the process of upgrading my art for the previous pages too.

[Kimmicomics]

I think you have to find a certain balance in this.
I suck at coloring. So All my Comics are now in black and white and manga tones. But I still do look for coloring tutorials to teach myself the ways of coloring. And maybe once so often if I'm happy with a certain page or illustration, I could made use of it in my comic.

[Kimmicomics]

I can imagine people trying to avoid things like building. ( I have a few friends who try to avoid it like the plague )

One thing I usually do is make a good introduction of the building or the place, So Like one panel or one page with the building very detailed, In this case the reader knows where the characters are. With this, you don't have to draw the background in every panel.
( Though I do want to aim for proper backgrounds as many as possible, and where needed )

[Cronaj]

Hmmmm.... I went to art school, where our weaknesses were challenged a great deal.

There are still a few things I struggle with, of course, but I really work hard at improving my weaknesses. For example, I hate drawing backgrounds. I always have. Honestly, drawing a comic at all has forced me to draw them.

I will say, however, that my decision to draw a color comic was not one easily reached. I initially wanted to have a black and white comic for many reasons: to save time, because I tend to go a bit overboard with inking detail, and because of my admiration for manga and other B&W comics. In the end, I decided that since my strength was color instead of rendering, it would be more beneficial to focus on color.

[dawgofdawgness]

Hum... I’m horrible horrible horrible with color theory, so I use flats and hard shadows to bring out the linework instead. (Also I like the way hard shadows look, reminds me of film noir so it all works out )

[xanedis]

To bring out some writer's perspective, I myself was originally only good at description and character interactions. I was bad at writing dialogue and only slightly above average at writing battle scenes.

What changed me was competition. I was writing fanfiction at the time, and seeing others rake up these great favorite/follower counts made me a TAAAAD bit jealous. And amusingly enough, if one threw out a dozen average chapters, they could actually surpass the subscriber count of someone who wrote well. But I didn't know that. I just wanted to become better at writing.

So, I asked a friend of mine who had this kind of OOMPH to his fight scenes to teach me some secrets. He taught me a few tricks, and I researched other fight scenes and picked up a few of my own. I got a lot of good feedback on my fight scenes afterwards.

I think that if we hold our art to an impossible standard(the fixed "perfect story/art idea" that we have in our minds), we start to get afraid of the process of learning and making mistakes. And if we get scared of learning and making mistakes, we never learn. That said, I am still really bad with learning from critique - mostly because I'm my own worst critic. XD I have to work on that.

It should also go without saying that I am here because of those hours I spent writing the other stories. It is only now that I think I can write the story of my dreams, because I practiced so much. If a person lacks the drive to learn, I would recommend starting a passion project. Wanting to get that passion project to as good a level as possible will FORCE YOU to learn and pick up new stuff, even if you feel a little overwhelmed by it.

I don't mean to sound preachy here, my words are mostly directed towards someone who's on the cusp of starting a comic of their own or something. I certainly like to see up-and-comers take their place among us writers and artists. Anyway, naive rant over.