People never want to hear about the hard work that goes into making comics or any art and want to believe that their reason for not progressing is down to others having more advantages. :)
Some people are always going to have more advnatages than you, that’s just something you have to plow through. All these well-heeled Westerners complaining about other’s advantages, and I have collaborators in Malaysia and the Philippines with a tiny fraction of those advantages, and they work like real pros.
Ironically, I thought everyone deserved better than me.
But artists and people I admired, I thought they deserved to be valued much more for their work than "certain other people," whose work I couldn't feel anything for, reading or watching.
I'm not a fan of the Gladwell theory. If you put 10,000 into something you will probably be better at it than you were before. But...it won't necessarily make you good. Just better than you were. I mean, if I put 10,000 into playing basketball, I still wouldn't be a great basketball player. The arts is...not quantifiable like that. But I know plenty of people who go into the arts with shit work ethic and big egos and they run around crying about why they aren't famous all the time while doing almost nothing.
I like to use the 10,000 hours in conversation as a guideline to determine the “minimum cost” it takes to master a skill (rather than to build it from nothing, especially in the absence of talent). But also to remind myself that “working with others” is a skill to be developed. I recall recruiting a colourist who was quite talented but I wanted a sample page for the style. The sample page was paid for. The artist submitted the sample with a caveat “the best I could do given the crap art” without even thinking that the artist was also part of the selection process. Understandably the colourist didn’t get the work.
Brilliant as always Colleen.
People never want to hear about the hard work that goes into making comics or any art and want to believe that their reason for not progressing is down to others having more advantages. :)
Some people are always going to have more advnatages than you, that’s just something you have to plow through. All these well-heeled Westerners complaining about other’s advantages, and I have collaborators in Malaysia and the Philippines with a tiny fraction of those advantages, and they work like real pros.
agreed :)
Ironically, I thought everyone deserved better than me.
But artists and people I admired, I thought they deserved to be valued much more for their work than "certain other people," whose work I couldn't feel anything for, reading or watching.
I'm selective, it seems.
Sometimes I wonder:
How would I feel if I couldn't make a living from my art?
And honestly, at first the feeling was awful. But recently that has slowly changed.
Something about "mortality", and how we can't control everything that happens to us, has made me see things from a new perspective.
Of course, it's not easy for someone like me, who likes to plan long-term projects: ten, twenty, even fifty years in advance.
My struggle with the desire to want, but not being able to, now...
Again, it's so good to hear someone whose words resonate so much with me.
Amen. The only thing over which you have control is your own reactions.
I'm still young, I have a lot to learn yet, but I pride myself on having emotional maturity.
Makes me awe as wise you are Miss Colleen.
Of course, emotions and feelings, depending on their intensity, are not easy to process; the time it takes varies according to the circumstances.
This is that sage advice I stay tuned in to hear!
10,000 hours…
I'm not a fan of the Gladwell theory. If you put 10,000 into something you will probably be better at it than you were before. But...it won't necessarily make you good. Just better than you were. I mean, if I put 10,000 into playing basketball, I still wouldn't be a great basketball player. The arts is...not quantifiable like that. But I know plenty of people who go into the arts with shit work ethic and big egos and they run around crying about why they aren't famous all the time while doing almost nothing.
I like to use the 10,000 hours in conversation as a guideline to determine the “minimum cost” it takes to master a skill (rather than to build it from nothing, especially in the absence of talent). But also to remind myself that “working with others” is a skill to be developed. I recall recruiting a colourist who was quite talented but I wanted a sample page for the style. The sample page was paid for. The artist submitted the sample with a caveat “the best I could do given the crap art” without even thinking that the artist was also part of the selection process. Understandably the colourist didn’t get the work.
OMG, that colorist should be yeeted to the moon.
I believe the artist found work in data processing after insulting his own agent.
Good lord, dude had a death wish.