Ideas of Criticizing and 'Cringe'

[punkarsenic]

it's highly damaging to one's growth to refuse critique from ANY pool. Deviantart hobbyists, grandma at the supermarket, little kids on the playground -- if the aim is to expand artistic prowess, it is imperative to keep your perspective wide open.

i dunno. i think theres such thing as bad advice - particularly since on places like deviantart theres a trend of all feedback from certain groups being 'this is shit' and 'make the titties bigger.' thats not useful and should be blocked out. dunno about mad grandmas, but sometimes... you just cant get anything from people that dont get it? (children are always helpful tho, they see things different)

and if you have people with art knowledge willing to give you advice and guide your progress, why would you go to a bunch of unkind amateurs?

[phen]

but sometimes... you just cant get anything from people that dont get it

Yeah no, you make an excellent point and I agree with the bad advice notion. There's bad advice but it's important to remember that bad advice can come from educated professors and acclaimed art critics just as it can come from deviantart trolls. As some of the others here have said, establishing and reinforcing standards for accepting constructive input is vital to one's art career.

and if you have people with art knowledge willing to give you advice and guide your progress, why would you go to a bunch of unkind amateurs?

Foundations is critical and I think for anyone starting out, those with an academic background in art are vital contributors for growing artists (especially since everyone is an "amateur" at one point). However, this is a field that draws from many, many sources itself so it can be contradictory and elitist to exclude communities from contributing to the dialogue.

Critique is valuable but ultimately, once established and out on their own, it's up to the artist to gauge what bit of feedback is most valuable. If your intended audience is professors and art critics, then that will be the source of your valuable feedback, bearing in mind this isn't universal since artists have different audiences at which they direct their work/want their work to be acknowledged and successful.

[J.Z.Castillo]

I'm my biggest critic, so whatever people tell me I have already beaten myself over 100 times worse hahaha

Honestly I find those memes hilarious because it reminds me of the "cringe" things I used to do, like drawing HUGE kawaii eyes or having that Maximillian Pegasus hairstyle on all my female characters because I thought that was cool.

Just don't take those things seriously, focus on your things and on improving your skills

[indagold]

I'm literally just saying in the face of adversity make something good out of it. You can't change what other people think or do, but you can change what you do in these situations.

Lighten up, you silly goose.

[heterodont]

Cringe compilations are very rarely actual critique and more harassment than anything else. Critique is supposed to help you improve as an artist - how the hell is "This is terrible lmfao" or any kind of variation of that comment supposed to help? And if the cringe compilation creator or commenter is popular enough, it can lead to people dogpiling on the original artist as well.

Not to mention, the people who make said comments are often also bad at art or not far off from the skill levels of the person they're making fun of. Ofc you don't have to be a chef to tell when the soup is shitty, but it adds on the extra level of "my arts bad but I'm gonna put down other people so I feel better about myself!" I used to enjoy cringe art blogs for a while but as I grew up I just realized I was wasting time I could've spent drawing lol.

There are some cringe blogs or videos or whatever that do at least give some helpful advice, if bad, but it's still better than the people who are just doing it to make fun of others. There was one blog I found where the people were making fun of an oc based off the fact they didn't know that backdrafts were a thing

[mechafeedalert]

Some people are just pessimist by nature. I myself with my snobbish elitist thinking, skill notwithstanding, can't help but want to shout out loud "this is straight out garbage" or "this is a drawing only a parent could love", etc whenever I see bad artworks, which seems as abundant as sedimentary rocks on a beach.

I mean in the age of the Internet there's no reason for art to be that bad. You have all the greatest of human knowledge free to access, you have art programs that will stabilize your Parkinson's stroke, you can press the ctrl+z to infinity (or you break your keyboard, whichever comes first), producing bad artworks seems to me like a product of laziness.

Then I took a step back and look at my own shitty art and be like,"yeah I shouldn't say mean things, we should start somewhere". Even pros have a period of bad art that they themselves can't stand looking at.

That said, I think the problem is posting your very early bad art and expect people to say nice things. I mean you don't really need other people to say to you that your art is bad, you yourself can browse a prominent artist within your own artistic style and compare how bad you are right now. Except if you like inflicting yourself with emotional wounds.

Actually I kinda fed up with all the sugar-coating going on with every webcomic forum. Patting at each other's back wouldn't do anyone any good. Every once in a while you need to face the cold hard truth.

[Luminosophy]

Pretty much this. I used to frequent an art blog and someone once asked for a critique. Our community didn't care for fluff, we get to the heart of the problem. That doesn't mean insulting, it just means pointing out technical issues without compliments. Well, this upset the person to the point where they became psychologically and mentally unstable. They stalked the blog for 3 years and harassed regulars and myself particularly on anon. They were so unhinged you could tell it was them though. This eventually culminated into them making an ED page about me defaming my art and comics.

3 years later she still stalks my page on occasion but I've made crazy strides in improvement, and herself, none. Why? She spent all those cares channeling her time and energy into attacking people who didn't praise her art rather than just improving it so people would. She still wants to pretend she's a victim of some cyber bullying ring though so too bad for her.

If there's anything I've learned on my time on the internet though, it's that the "outside world" (random internet communities at large) as the worst place to ask for serious critique. Even minus baseless attacks, people don't know what they're talking about half the time and can't discern taste from technical flaws. You also run into people like art students who just started a course and want to pretend they're a master by telling comic artists to "Draw more artistic things" and that the OP should be ashamed because they're "25 and drawing like a child" - legit comment on a subbreddit for comic crits. >: |

If you want serious, useful critiques, find and develop a tight nit group of artist friends who're driven and serious about their work, and learn and grow together.

[heterodont]

Except the issue is, not everyone is interested in improving their art. Some people are literally just doing it as a hobby and not interested in utilizing the bountiful amounts of art-related knowledge that can be found on the internet, or not interested in taking it seriously. Some people just do it to relieve stress or get their thoughts out in some tangible way.

Though it does become an issue when it's very clearly Bad Art and the artist is fishing for compliments while screaming at anyone that tries to give them Helpful Advice. Usually, you can tell those types of people vs the former but I don't necessarily think people post their bad art expecting compliments. When I used to post my amateurish art on dA 10 years ago I was just uploading it for the sake of uploading b/c I thought it was fun.

Critique will fall on deaf ears for either group unless they ask for it, so it's not really facing the cold hard truth. If people want to stagnate, then that's their issue. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink.

[mechafeedalert]

Yeah that's my point if they're not at all serious in their art then they shouldn't take issue with anyone not taking their art seriously. I mean they can, and anyone can ridicule their complaint then anyone else can can defend the creators and so on. A circle of life.

Sure cringe compilation is something I don't even know exist until today and I don't think it should exist, the creators of cringe compilation could have better use of their free time than listing comics with bad art. Things like badwebcomicwiki however I find quite accurate and could be used as a reference to improve ones work if they could manage to swim through and occasionally inevitably swallow the Dead Sea's saltiness of personal insults that's thrown together with the constructive criticism.

I'm from a culture that believe salt water heals wound.