I feel like sometimes people don't value writing as a skill as much as artistic skill

[rajillustration]

depends on the field and the writer. If the writer is a celebrity then yeah they'd make more money, but that would be true of anything if you're working with a celebrity/influencer. But in the end if you're a illustator working on a book expect to spend years of your life on one single book.

[TedGravesArt]

This reminds me of something I heard my brother say recently. He's not an artist, nor does he write stories or anything like that. We were at the Museum of Glass in Seattle (there's some really stunning stuff in there, if you've never gone), and he's standing next to me considering a really intricate piece. Speaking from the perspective of someone who has never tried glass blowing of any sort, he says to me that work like that can probably only truly be appreciated by someone who has tried to create it. I think there's a lot of wisdom in that. I think the Dunning-Kruger effect is very relevant here, and I see it a lot when people consider either art or writing. Most people have no idea how difficult or how much work it takes to make something of any kind of quality because they have zero frame of reference beyond "I drew a smiley face once." or "I took a creative writing class." Education is the key, but boy folks sure are ready to have an opinion about these things.
This could really be applied to virtually anything else in life too, not just art or writing. COUGHpoliticsCOUGH

[potatogirl]

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[TheLemmaLlama]

Most people have no idea how difficult or how much work it takes to make something of any kind of quality because they have zero frame of reference beyond "I drew a smiley face once." or "I took a creative writing class."

To take you very literally here, I actually see this more often in the sense that I hear novices go 'wow I could never do X', 'you must be very talented to be able to do X' - they overestimate how accessible a skill is. I guess it depends on the learning curve of that particular skill though. In general, I think it's okay for people to have opinions about relatively harmless stuff like art or glassblowing; it's more of a problem if they feel like it's so hopelessly inaccessible that they don't even try or if they're overly confident about and thus unwilling to critically evaluate their opinion on stuff that affects the lives of real people :'D

[UrMom]

I mean... it depends? If you're talking about art in general then yeah, I agree. It's easier for someone to consume visuals than text, also art can be pretty, and visuals are used everywhere so people are going to be more drawn to that. It's a sad societal thing that probably won't change unless everyone goes colorblind... or blind, and have to start using braille to get all their "visual" information... or if we ban art and film outright.

If we're talking about comics, it depends on the circle you're in. Yes, people on the forum are going to value comic over written lit because Tapas was exclusively a webcomic site originally, and still advertises itself as one despite hosting novels now. A large number of creators on here are part of the webcomic community because of that, people in this community are going to be bias because they work in a visual medium. It sucks, but you know... what are you going to do? People suck.

Now if you were to bring comics into the outside world, things may be a little different. At least from what I've seen they're treated as a lesser artform, can't tell you how many people into art or literature get interested when I say I draw or printed a book, but instantly scoff the moment I mention what I'm working on is a comic. The few times I've presented my book to a local bookshop, with them showing genuine interest, until they see it's a comic. (Granted, they would have turned me down for the content anyway.) Can't tell you how many times I've heard someone say comics are worthless, on and offline. If it's webcomics it's even lower on the totem poll because they're free comics that "weren't good enough" to be picked up by publishers... which... some of them can use improvement on their stories and characters, including mine, I'm sure there are some glaring issues with it. But like, even Webtoons sees their webcomics as a lesser artform than novels:

It really depends on where you go, what communities you hang around. Overall I do agree that writers are treated as lesser in most circles, at least the visual art circles. Also even though I just complained about my own narcissistic bs I do really respect writers because, even though it takes less time to write down a paragraph than it does to draw out that paragraph, writing is hard. I can't do it to save my life because I think in visuals, which is why I do comics. I'm not sure if I'd count the masses because society as a whole treats everything like a product that should be pumped out as quickly and cheaply as possible, and absolutely devalues everything that takes time and effort.

[bulgariansumo]

As someone who can draw, I know how labor-intensive art is, but I think I actually value art less than the average person. Like, I can't see myself paying for a commission because it's like, I could just ... do it myself :'D

This... honestly resonates with me more than what I actually said. It's hard for me to justify buying a commission unless I adore the person's style or we're friends and they need the money. I feel bad, but even then with the former, I'm sometimes like "You're really charging that much? I'll just do it myself."

[Shanny8]

Are you kidding me? The reason there IS a "writer versus artist" discourse is because all these sites and review platforms DON'T value the work of the artist- like you can just plug any old fuckin body in there and the story still works...this type of disregard for the value of the artist permeates and carries on to newer/younger writers who feel and carry on like, "I'm THE SHIT, and I can get any artist I want and my story will work! Artists are a dime a dozen"...there was a situation a couple weeks ago on Twitter where a writer(unfortunately, I know him coz I've did a few cons with him) was like "the artist shouldn't get [co] credit if it's work-for-hire," and comics twitter went off the handle; he's deleted the tweet, but that's gonna leave a mark on him(apparently he's doing a comic that some Hollywood type folks are looking at, plus he had some really good sales; while I applaud his success, I kinda feel like he's getting the "big head" syndrome).

Comics, are a visual medium- and the right artist with the right vision can elevate the writer's story to unparalleled heights. Definitely not saying writers aren't equal to artists- both are integral to the success of a comic; but for some insane reason, critics and media want to ballyhoo and praise the work that the writer has done, without acknowledging the equal contributions of the artist- and now they have the whole industry thinking that "I can snag any old artist off the street and make my comic work"...if the artist is interested and invested in the characters & story genuinely, you will see it in their work; by that same token, if they aren't interested in anything about the story and characters, you will see it in their work.

This mess needs to end, coz the industry is going to end up eating itself.

[TheLemmaLlama]

Now if you were to bring comics into the outside world, things may be a little different. At least from what I've seen they're treated as a lesser artform

I think that's more of a 'respectability'/elitism thing than a visuals thing; it's that notion that comics are for kids or weirdos and '''real''' art is found in literature. In contrast, film is a visual medium but is still pretty respected (afaik anyway)

I guess people do treat more 'accessible' (e.g. visual) media as less 'sophisticated' because it 'doesn't let you use your imagination' and such, but I think that's a backlash against the already existing perception that visual media is easier to engage with; basically, it's valued less because it's valued more, if that makes sense :'D

like you can just plug any old fuckin body in there and the story still works...this type of disregard for the value of the artist permeates and carries on to newer/younger writers who feel and carry on like, "I'm THE SHIT, and I can get any artist I want and my story will work! Artists are a dime a dozen"

Good point, artists are kind of seen as grunt workers who just mindlessly execute a vision that's already planned out by the '''real''' brains behind the operation; the writer. In that sense, I guess artists are valued less than writers ...

In the end, I guess 'value' is just a complicated notion that involved many dimensions

[UrMom]

Huh, this could be because I'm kinda out of it, but I don't know what you mean by visuals vs. elitism? It definitely is an elitism thing, comic visuals don't have much to do with it, just the medium.

I don't think it's the lack of imagination, I think the low perception of comics comes from it's origins. Comics were originally made for kids, and it's always been marketed and treated as such, so there's this misconception that the medium can't possibly be used to tell mature stories. If they are for an older audience they're immature, violent and/or filled with porn. At least that's the perception I take from most people. It's just like how traditional animation is treated. Although unlike comics animation was originally for adults, then molded into children's content since kids were drawn to it, eventually sealing it's fate as being considered less sophisticated than 3D animation and live-action.

backlash against the already existing perception that visual media is easier to engage with; basically, it's valued less because it's valued more, if that makes sense :'D

Lol that kinda sounds like it circles into what Shanny said about artists being treated like work horses. Our world is full of visuals, you can't advertise anything properly without a good logo and/or good ad visuals, the majority of people are more likely to buy stuff that has a visual design that fits their interest. There's a super high demand for artists in various fields, yet they're a dime a dozen.

[Zhengo]

To be honest, writing and art should be equal in value but I feel like it is a bit comparing apples to oranges here about which is more labor intensive. It's more of a "brain power" vs "technical power" kind of thing. Even though both are creative skillsets, writing demands more problem solving for ambiguous problems, while drawing demands you to solve straightforward problems but with a high skill barrier.

I would compare to my experience when I switched my major from design to computer science. I think both majors were pretty hard but in different ways. In design, it was extremely labor intensive, but the learning material itself was not hard to understand. On the other hand, computer science was not as intense in terms of labor and workload (my sleep greatly improved during that time), but I did struggle more with understanding the learning material at times. I would probably equate my experiences with design to art and computer science to writing if we're talking about my experiences working on my comic.

Writing can be hard because the problems you might have to solve in it are hard. For a common problem I've found myself when writing: how do I transition from this plot event to the next? It sounds straightforward but there are so many factors I need to take account for. Like will the transition make sense? Is it contrived? Would this type of transition be entertaining to readers or will it slow the pacing too much that they'll drop off? I don't think I've ran into any questions like this when drawing, but the main thing is I'll probably be spending more hours drawing than I am at writing, and time is money.

[SoaringMoon]

I agree that art is much more time consuming

My issue with this statement is that art being a technical skill speeds up with practice. It can take an hour a page, and hour a panel, or a week a panel depending on your skill level, experience, and dedication to perfection. Some artists can produce 24 pages of fully colored comic artwork in a month; much of the time it takes longer. There are others that can do manga pages in under 2 hours.

Writing simply does not have the same "awe to time" ratio. You can make an amazing, world class recognized piece of digital art in a day. You can make a large artistic effort like a painting in week or a month, and sell it for millions if you are a well known artist.

Writing, while having some technical aspects takes a predictable amount of time. If you, like me, compose about 600 words an hour; to compose a novel sized story of 60k word would take 100 hours. 3 solid work weeks 10 hours a day. That is a short book, and that is just to get the words down. After which may require a rewrite, extensive editing, and auditing. That's if you don't get rejected for the content you write.

Art is interpretive, so people viewing it can derive what it means to them. Writing is callous an cold in comparison. Words mean specific things which can be offensive to a wide variety of people. You have to skirt around all of it. As a writer I feel like I am constantly walking on eggshells with my potential audience. My most popular story is set in another world with concultures to avoid political issues.

"art takes more time" is relative. It depends how much you are writing, a book or a comic. Comics might be faster and this conversation might be focused on that. However, for me art can be done relatively quickly and quality art is dime a dozen.

For valuing that work I can get a full color illustration for about $50-100 dollars from most artists charging for the service. On the other hand, writing an article for a website of about 1000 words I can charge $50-100 dollars for. Both the artist and writer can take about 2 hours to do that same work.

[RedLenai]

I honestly don't think there should be a debate
Any skill is HARD to obtain, is time consuming, requires years of development, constant learning, repetitiveness, patterns, grabbing any kind of resource and munch it like shredded cheese at 3 am.

Writing is hard, that's why I don't write and just focus on drawing because it is something that I already developed and had the resources for one at the time when I was originally interested in learning for both.

But on top of that, both will still have to develop skills like charisma, marketing, speeches, planification, leadership, fellowship, social interactions and more because one doesn't live solely of one single skill and makes it work for the rest.

But still, something that always bothers me is that there are always going to be those few (Or mayority) depends the case, of individuals that thanks to their lovely entitled behaviors the rest is put under the same bag and ends up generalized.

Like, I know a lot of writers who are amazing, with interesting stories, working hard, collaborating but at the same time there are times I see a few individuals, especially on my DMs that... kind of makes the rest to not look good on the spotlight and while one doesn't try to generalize there are certain paths that... just ugh.

Same for artists, you're going to find workaholics who barely take care of themselves, those filled with joy and hopes and then you're going to have those that literally are on another planet and saying nonsense or that just cry and whine so loudly because they can't get a commission despite of 10000 reasons why.

Like, yeah we all make fun or cringe at wattpad kids but then when we get disappointed with media we pridefuly claim that these kids could come up with a better ending for a series or better character development. Which is fun, not gonna lie but to a certain extent we're also denigrating both the professional skill and the amateur skill, despite well, good ideas doesn't mean there is gonna be good execution either.

And most of the time people don't see that a lot of things are scripted, like speeches, even trashy tv-reality is scripted, music, poems, commercials, even the topics of the news are scripted beforehand someone comments on it independently if we're talking about informatives, narrative text, a script, fanfiction, or whatever. Writing is writing, now, deciding to enhance that skill, that will differ from one person to another.

Either way, both careers, jobs, tasks, skills, hobbies, whatever you wanna call the art branches: drawing and writing. There is always going to be someone who doesn't value that skill, someone to screw up and make the rest look like clowns, as well for people who shows exactly that yeah this is hard work, woah the things that you can achieve, look how far you can get! And such.

I believe that the issue not only lies because of well, terms of technique, actual effort or whatever. But because it's more common heard to have illustrators being approached by some person who info dumps the lore of their story with the hopes of making a comic and become extremely rich and famous on their DMs instead of the same situation but inversed. (The fact that is not as frequent doesn't mean it doesn't happen and in both cases, I would slap whoever asks for free stuff like this)

I personally don't know which labour is more time consuming, if art or writing, I just know that it can take me an entire day to clean my house compared to someone else who takes a morning to do it. It all depends on the person and their circumstances.

[LostKelp]

There might be some dismissive attiude because when you make a comic you are writing - dialogue, narration, inner monolouges are all stuff you write in, but another thing is that visual communication is in general more difficult to get across to your readers unless you put in a panel when you specifically zoom in on a detail and your characters say something about that detail then your readers will probably miss it. an early interaction in my comic is between alya - a technician - and Rahat - a pilot with a leg prosthetic. Alya asks Rahat if they need anything rahat responds with "the usual" the next page shows rahat taking off their prosthetic and handing it to alya, Now as I write it out what "the usual" is is obvious right? but because the main focal point of this page was a stage being all glowy I got comments about how "the usual" was a lightshow. Something Alya has nothing to do with. Visually communicating that kind of info is hard as hell.

But at the end of the day writing for a comic is more important than the art. You can have great art but if the story sucks then the comic sucks. But if your art sucks but your writing is good people can still read it.

[smokesalty]

I think I need to clarify that I don't mean that writing is a higher skill than art (they're both hard skills) - more that it gets overlooked as a necessary skill to build and work on when some people are making a comic because it is such a visual medium. Just as comic artists need to build their skill for art, they need to work on their writing if they're also doing the writing.

[rajillustration]

You can make an amazing, world class recognized piece of digital art in a day.

dear lord tell me how I can do this. been doing art my entire life, and making things that trend and get seen is not this simple nor does it take so little time. Maybe the final polishing bit, but there's drafts and research and all this other stuff that goes into art that you're not seeing.

And like not saying writing is easy, because it is apples to oranges but be careful to not devalue digital art. It is very similar to traditional, but without the drying time. Digital artists often get cheapened because people assume the computer magically does everything for us.

[adifferentway2001]

I totally agree. Writing a good and interesting story is as hard as drawing a nice and proper comic. I've been learning traditional drawing and painting since I was a child and a few years ago I got fascinated by this job and started writing and very recently I've started learning digital art.

From my own experiences, I can say that, sure, drawing a perfect panel IS time-consuming, and so is writing a perfect paragraph. When you draw a panel, you always fill up spaces/places and try to make it more perfect as you gain more experience. Just the same way, every time you read a paragraph that you have written earlier, you do edits and try to make it more perfect as you slowly learn more and more about writing skills. And that is very time-consuming too.

So, both are hard and both are time-consuming, but at the same time, both are very interesting in their own way too.

[monotone_ink]

Writing feels so much harder than drawing.
With drawing, at least you can slave away at drawing exercises and improve incrementally with consistent, methodical practice.
But sometimes with writing, no matter how well constructed a story might be, it just might not connect with other people. Good writing requires solid life experience and wide reading on the writer's part. Of course soul is important when it comes to great art, but the need for it is not nearly as apparent as it is in writing.

[UrMom]

However, for me art can be done relatively quickly and quality art is dime a dozen.

WHOO! I was wondering when someone would come in saying artists were quick and disposable.

The thing you're kinda missing with time (And I have no idea why some writers have such a beef with this, like, just because something may take longer doesn't mean the time you take is less valuable.) is, yes, a creator whose found their groove can manage to pump out 24 full color pages in a month... not very many, but SOME. Those 24 pages can be the equivalent of maybe 1-2 pages of a novel depending on number of panels. That's where the time thing comes in, it takes more time to complete a paragraph in comic format than in text because it literally takes more pages, which translates to more time.

Also you seem to be mixing up comics with illustration, which are two different things. Your not just drawing pretty pictures with a comic, you're trying to tell a story visually with lighting, setting, "camera angles", character interactions, expressions, movement, coloring (If you're using color.), style, speech, composition, panel layout. It's like cinematography, a lot more goes into it than people think, that's why so many webcomic creators drop out. The demand can be too much for a lot of folks. Very, very, VERY few people can pump out more than 10 full color pages a month.
If you're going to bring up manga-ka and their quick turnovers for this please know that manga-ka are worked to a really unhealthy degree where they develop really shitty eating and sleeping schedules. If a manga-ka is popular enough to be able to hire help it's a little better, but the extra help pretty much means they'll work twice as hard.

Also DAMN! Where are you finding artists that can make world class digital artists who can finish a piece in a day? I follow, and have met, many world class artists who draw digitally and none of them have such speed.

Look, just because drawing the comic equivalent of a novel can technically take longer than writing it (Because of the whole page thing.) doesn't mean the time and effort spent writing is less valuable. Writing is hard, I quit attempting novels because I hated it, and people with a passion for that deserve the utmost respect.

But if your art sucks but your writing is good people can still read it.

Not true. If the art in a comic is totally unrecognizable/unreadable there will be very few who stick around... because they can't read it.
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...
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Sorry, I get what you mean by bad art, I'm just being a dick.

[RedLenai]

Just posting this to motivate a few folks and laugh a bit

You know what, people? We're a joke, as writers, authors, comic artists, illustrators. Let's just go home
Look at what this monster did, look at what this madman did. Seriously, when I saw that big, insane, scaring sheet blocks I started sweating

[TheLemmaLlama]

Ahh yeah I guess I was kind of talking about multiple things there XD One of them is basically, as you put it:

It definitely is an elitism thing, comic visuals don't have much to do with it, just the medium.

I made a point of mentioning this because I thought you were saying comics are looked down upon because it's a visual medium, but we basically agree it's more about origins/perception it's for kids etc :]

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The second thing I was talking about is the 'lack of imagination' thing. In my experience, at least, I've seen people say that books are better than comics/movies/games/visual mediums in general because it makes you use your imagination, and 'kids these days' are so spoilt with visuals that they forgot how to use their imagination.

I brought this up to acknowledge there are scenarios where people will devalue visual things because they're visual (which again I mistakenly interpreted to be your initial message), and saying this is more a case of it being "valued less because it's valued more" was kind of saying the mere fact those people think visuals are spoiling us means they think visuals are good

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Writing, while having some technical aspects takes a predictable amount of time.

Is that so? I actually find art takes a more predictable amount of time because of how technical it is. Writing, I find, is very 'swingy'; during editing, everything might click relatively quickly or you might have to do a billion rewrites before you find the right words.

But you already mentioned editing etc so I assume what you actually mean is that there's a bound on how quickly a writer can write whereas an artist can always get faster with more experience. That's not really true either. Art might not have a commonly known 'unit' of content like 'word count', but there's still a lower bound on how little time you can finish a piece in, no matter how skilled you are.