Taking criticism

Today we turned in our last drawing. As with other projects, we hung them up and the class was allowed to critique them. For some this can be nerve wrecking, for others, it's not a problem, but ultimately learning how to take criticism is key to becoming a great artist or great anything for that matter. You can't always see with better eyes when half the time your focused on the one part of picture you think you nailed, forsaking everything else. You must train yourself to see the whole picture. This has proven to be harder than I thought it would be. Placing yourself in the shoes of the viewer can't be learned overnight, it's become an ongoing process for me and I get down on myself when someone points something out to me that I "should've" seen. Contrary to popular belief, this feedback is invaluable!! Corporations spend billions of dollars on focus groups just like these and we're lucky enough to get all the good stuff from our peers "for free" and assuming they all want to see you succeed, there's absolutely no reason why we shouldn't be utterly gracious and super thankful that they are taking the time to give you valuable feedback that everyone else wouldn't.

So the moral of the story is GET FEEDBACK!!! Demand it! Criticism is sometimes more important than praise!!  Here ends the lesson!!