"I could paint/compose/write that too, if I wanted to" (art rant)

The BBQ Pit
21

Too many posts to respond to! You guys have shared some great tales. Outrageous. Outrageous, some of these people are!

I am now starting to become more convinced that Mr. “I can be a master at anything” is just blowing hot air for effect.

But, if he is, he’s eerily similar to those who really, truly believe their delusions.

His latest tactic is to say that everything he’s tried he’s been a master at (yes, Fish, I did make some comment about him only attempting things that he assumed he’d be good at—avoiding those things which he’d probably suck at). This guy says that the reason he stops doing some of these things that he’s “tried” (whatever that means) he became “perfect” at, so it became “boring.” Yeah, that’s right. He’s a master, but ho hum, it’s so boring so he stopped doing it.

Now, personally, I rarely find someone who is really, really a master at something to be “bored” with it. Sure, plenty of people with a natural aptitude may never go anywhere with something because it doesn’t interest them, but they are not a MASTER. And since the thing bores them, they’ll never be a MASTER because they’ll never spend enough time on it to get really good at it.

It’s really, really rare to find someone who can be called a “master” at something yet stops doing it early on because, ho hum, it was so “boring.” I am sure such people exist, but they are far outnumbered by people who are passionate and obsessed and driven to create and work and they can’t get to sleep at night because it’s all so exciting.

Usually when someone claims that they were really, really good at something, but it was “boring,” what they really mean is either:

  1. They actually sucked at it, and want to save face so they claim they got “bored.”
  2. They do have some aptitude for it, but it’s too much work and effort and they’re lazy or afraid of not living up to expectations. So they bail out, claiming “boredom.”

Already in Use: YES, YES, YES, I know exactly what you mean. I am also told how “talented” and “artistic” I am, (as if that’s all there was to it—like it just was dropped on my lap) when in reality most of the ability I have is due to a great deal of practice, sacrifice, and so forth.

I truly believe that anyone can learn how to draw, for instance. If they work hard enough at it (getting “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain” is a place to start) they can learn to draw reasonably decent realistic drawings. But will they be “inspired”? Will they be a “master”? No way of knowing. Probably, a lot won’t. Either because they simply won’t want to devote so much time to working at it, or because they don’t have that “spark” to go from “pretty decent” to “master.”

Just like no matter how hard I try, I’ll never be able to draw machine parts with the same devotion and energy as my former classmates, who loved drawing machinery. It just isn’t in me. No amount of practice and effort will make up for that.

22

Someone thinks they could draw like you “if they just wanted to”?? What a maroooon (from bugs bunny for the few uninformed out there, I am aware that it’s really moron).

I too visited your website. VERY talented, talent that comes from more than just study. Idiots.

Gee, maybe they could practice saying and doing “I could be humble and appreciate others’ talents without feeling threatened and insecure, if I wanted to” instead.

23

The mystery writer Dorothy L. Sayers must have run into someone like your toad, or so I imagined when I read Strong Poison (1930) and came across this interchange when her protagonist Peter Wimsey first meets Harriet Vane the novelist,

My co-author and I liked the passage so much we included it in four editions of our public speaking text book, in the section on not being self-delusional on how much effort goes into making a good speech.

24

There’s something else at work here too.

Every time someone in the US gets good at something creative, whether it be music or art or photography or whatever, some well-meaning fool is going to come along and tell them, “You should do that for a living.”

This never comes from anyone who does this for a living, of course. A professional would understand the heartbreak and pain and effort and just plain work that goes into doing creative work for a living.

But just the same, everyone who’s noodled about on the guitar pretty well has been told, with whatever degree of sincerity, that they should make money off of their talent. Everyone who draws for fun has had pressure put on them to sell their work. Everone who writes gets told that they should cash in on their efforts.

There’s nowhere left for the mediocre musicians, the half-assed hobbyist painters. We have no respect for people who aren’t masters of their craft. The guy who knows a few chords, plays a few songs on the guitar is compared to Hendrix, and found lacking, and well, duh. There’s a constant undercurrent, every time you attempt something creative, of pressure to excel.

When someone says, “I could do that,” I agree, it’s insulting. But realize that they’ve been taught that anything you can’t excel at isn’t worth doing. That if they can’t be that great a painter, they shouldn’t try. That if they don’t make a living off of some pursuit, it’s worthless. They’ve never been told that art can simply make you happy, whether you’re good at it or not. And they’re afraid to even try to create something, for fear that they won’t be as good as the very, very best.

It’s pretty sad.

25

Oh, wow, MrVisible, that is so true. Thank you for pointing that out so eloquently.

I have a friend, bless him, who has great faith in me and my abilities. He’s very sweet. But sometimes I almost fear telling him about some new project that I’m doing for enjoyment, because he’ll nag me to try to market it or push it in a way that I am not ready to do. He’ll make this big deal out of it.

He’s right up to a point. I should be more aggressive and I should have more confidence in myself. But sometimes my way of doing things isn’t so bad.

I have a website with my photography on it. No big deal; just wanted to share, like a whole lot of ordinary photographers. This friend bugged me about “wasting” time with that site, because he didn’t see how I would make any money off of it. I did it for love, not for money. But, one day, out of the blue, some ad agency found one of my photos to their liking, and bought rights to it for $700.

Well, after that, my friend shut up about me “wasting” time on that site.

And a similar thing happened just recently. I had an idea for a “free” tutorial site about art related things. I just wanted to ramble and write tutorials. He bugged me about that. “Don’t give it away for free, sell these tutorials!” But I knew that I would never do that. Who am I, anyway? I’m not famous. I’m not a professional writer. Why would I think that my modest tutorials could sell to people who have never heard of me?

But, my “free” site was a modest success. Visitors liked it and thanked me for writing it. Enough visitors suggested a book, and I’ve done that. The visits from the site help bring attention to the book and things are doing okay.

Now this guy says that I should approach some college and offer to teach there, based on the fact that I wrote this book. (It’s just a self-published effort—for crying out loud!) NO. I am not doing that. Not now. Maybe if the book gets picked up by some big name publisher (yeah right) or becomes really popular (not holding my breath), then I might consider it. But not now. Give me a break. Let me breathe.

Sorry. Got off on a tangent again. Too much Pepsi.

Once again, I’ve appreciated everyone’s posts here. I am glad I am not the only one that knows about this phenomenon.

26

I remember going to the Tate Gallery – a fairly prestigious institution – in London and seeing this Rothko piece that just annoyed me to no end. It was an enormous rectangular canvas that was 95% red, except there was a thin vertical black stripe on the right, followed by another red stripe and, I think, another black stripe. Of course, maybe it was really GOOD art because it got a strong reaction out of me, that reaction being, “Jesus Christ, is THIS all you have to do to get into the Tate Gallery? How impressed am I supposed to BE at the thought process that caused him to paint a big canvas red except for a couple of extra stripes?” And, yes, I imagine I could have reproduced this piece given the necessary materials, but it wasn’t that fact so much as the piece was BORING.

If a piece of art is simple but interesting, I can dig that. Duchamp signing a urinal is interesting and damn funny, even though it’s something anyone can do. But at least there’s some clever thinking behind it. But a lot of simple art seems created by people who expect you to celebrate their wonderfulness when they haven’t put out a lot of thought or effort. If it’s offensive for an artist to be told, “I could do THAT,” it’s also offensive to be looked down upon by an artist who wants a pat on the back for everything he shits out. If you want to draw a smiley face on a piece of paper and insist it’s great art, you can do that, but I won’t be impressed.

27

There’s that side of it too, of course. I completely understand what you’re saying.

If, however, you told an artist who did smiley face art that “you could do it too,” and that artist pushed their sketch paper over to you and said, “Go ahead, prove it” you probably would, right? I mean, if it’s just a smiley face. You have a pretty good shot of actually doing it. Because you’ve drawn smiley faces in your life. And if the art is truly that simple then you could do it too.

But to say that to someone who has written a novel, a symphony, a touching landscape or portrait, and it’s completely different. If you’ve never done those things then you really have no idea whether or not you could do them. And as others have said here, sometimes something looks simple when it’s really not. And not until you start trying to learn it do you realize that.

28

Lucky for me, I am all too aware of my limitations when it comes to drawing. (And sculpture and painting and music composition and any number of other artistic disciplines, but drawing is the one where people most frequently say, “I could do THAT,” which is why I single it out.) So, in most cases, I really COULDN’T do that!

I used to be able to draw Smurfs pretty well, many years ago.

29

“I could do that too, if I wanted to.”

“Yes, and I could be lazy too, if I wanted to.”

I’ve always (and I mean always, since I was 14 months old!) drawn as a hobby, and I’ve sometimes heard the same sort of thing as the OP. Generally from people who could probably just about manage a convincing stick figure. I have concluded that these people are not merely lacking in artistic skills, but social skills as well.

I have sometimes seen art by other people that made me think “That’s really good, but I think I could do something as good”, but I certainly don’t say that to the artist. I might say “That’s really good” or even “That’s really good, and you’ve inspired me!”, but I don’t need to add “And I’m just as talented as you, neener neener neener!” There’s no reason to be petty and childish just because I can draw a nice picture too. If I think I can really do something as good, and I want to do something as good (like yosemitebabe, there are some styles or subjects that would bore me), then I simply sit down and do my best to produce something as good. That’s what seperates people who actually accomplish things from lazy, pathetic losers who stand around talking about what they might have done in some alternate world where they weren’t lazy, pathetic losers.

I have also sometimes seen art by other people that made me think, “That’s really good, but I think I could have done something as good if I’d worked harder/practiced more/gone to art school/whatever”, but that’s not something I say out loud either. If I’d worked more seriously at art then I’m sure I would be better than I am, but I didn’t so I’m not. All that means is that I’m the sort of person who didn’t work all that seriously at art, and that sure isn’t anything to brag about.

30

Y’all might enjoy this Dilbert strip:

http://www.cafeshops.com/cp/sotd.aspx?storeid=dilbert&date=12/14/2003&getnext=1

I was a graphic artist for 12 years. I wish I had a quarter for every person who was convinced that they could have done my job - after all, it’s sooo easy!

Uh. Huh.

31

Preach it, ybabe, preach it.

Many people can do many things, but not everyone can do anything equally well. I doodle and ocassionally come up with a clever panel gag but like hell I’m doing Calvin and Hobbes(*), shit, I couldn’t even do [insert your favorite truly lame comic here]. I just enjoy it and it is a form of liberating expression for me. But neither amateur dabbler nor hardworking professional in anything creative needs to have the joy sucked out of it by those who want to dismiss it as nothing special. Any act of creation is special. Sure we may fail at what we tried to create, but that is an entirely different issue.

32

THANK YOU. DogDad loves to cook. He’s very good at it. Unfortunately, time and again some of his relatives keep pushing him: “you ought to go into business and sell that.”
No amount of “Thanks for the vote of confidence, but that’d be just way too much work and money for me to spend,” will get them to STOP PUSHING.
And, while it’s nice that they think his food is worth paying money to have, it’s not anything he or I want to tackle. We’ve looked into it, and the cost in time and money is just prohibitive.
It wouldn’t be so bad if they’d say it, then accept his, “thanks; I’m glad you like it.” and move on. But they push and PUSH. “Why don’t you do it?” and blow off any objections WE might have to that kind of major disruption in OUR lives with, “Oh, you’re exaggerating, it wouldn’t be that difficult.”
Yeah? Well, if it’s that easy, YOU frigging do it.
MrVisible, I’m sending that part of your post to DogDad. I think he’ll like it. Thanks again!

33

Well, I certainly couldn’t draw as well as you or take such beautiful pictures - I fully admit that! (Interested in doing a wedding in VA in September??:)).

But I completely understand what you’re saying. I am a writer. I’ve written screenplays, I’ve written stage plays, I’ve written childrens’ books, and I’ve written novels. Every single one of my works started out completely crappy - it was through blood, sweat, and literal tears that I actually managed to scrape out a workable story, decent dialogue, and a semblance of a plot. There are days when I spend four hours writing, there are days when I spend half an hour writing, there are days when I don’t write at all. I’ve had nibbles, I’ve been a finalist for a primetime writing fellowship for ABC, I’ve got a major publishing circuit interested in a series of my children’s books and I had investors to produce one of my plays off-off-Broadway (which unfortunately fell through because we were unable to get ENOUGH money invested). I’ve been told I’m talented. And I might be - but I also know that this has been a lot of hard, hard work and there are days I wanted to give up. I’ve done all of this stuff in addition to earning a living and having somewhat of a social life (well, less of a social life than most:)). I do it because I love it, and I have to do it - otherwise, a part of me dies.

So for someone to read one of my pieces, pronounce it “This is really good”, then say “But I could do something like that if I wanted to. I just don’t have the time to spend writing.” absolutely sucks. Part of me just wants to say “Well, then, I can’t wait to read your 120 page screenplay with edits. Oh, and tell me when it’s a finalist in a network contest.” I don’t claim to be Hemingway. In fact, I’d be happy to be a minor author in a back shelf of an independent bookstore. But I absolutely can not stand being treated as though the hard work that I’ve done is worth nothing.

I know this is long-winded, but I’m guessing you know exactly what I mean by it.

Ava

34

Another contributing factor in the whole “I could do that just as well” scenario is the affliction that I call LADS - Lousy Artist Denial Syndrome. The LADS sufferer is unable to look at their own creative work objectively, and they are literally in love with their own creations. LADS sufferers are either offended or oblivious to honest critique because they are unable or unwilling to divorce themselves from their creations and they very often see no reason why they might want to continue to work to improve their skills because they believe that they’ve already ‘arrived.’ Some of these people were unwittingly enabled by their family and friends while growing up; everyone encouraged them and reinforced the idea that their art was so very good, and maybe they never were in a situation where their peers were all at least as good as they were, and many of them were better. Art colleges are pretty good at breaking people of that. But if they were the ones that got their design on the cover of the school yearbook and everyone in their family has had their pastel portrait done by them, there may be little hope in preventing LADS.

LADS isn’t limited to the visual arts; pretty much anyone that is unable to make an honest self-evaluation of their skills and abilities has a variation of LADS - you can see examples of people with Vocal LADS on American Idol, you can usually find plenty of people with Acting LADS in low-budget commercials on TV, many men (including myself) have Fashion LADS…but that’s another story. Anyway, I have found that most of the successful commercial artists that I’ve known have been LADS-free; they not only can take and use critiques to improve their own work, but they have no illusions about their own level of ability, are self-critical, and they strive to improve with each piece they do. The truly great ones don’t even need a whole lot of critiques from outside sources, they critique themselves more thoroughly than anyone else.

35

I teach two classes of art at the public school where I work. Next job I have, it’s not going to include art.

First there are the LADS-afflicted students. They can usually do one thing fairly well: copy drawings of Tweety Bird, draw goth caricatures of their buddies, write in tagger-gang-graffiti style, or copy those dewy-eyed Keane-esque Latino girl stickers. The majority of them come to class thinking they’ll get an A just for flashing the front of their notebook at me. Imagine their consternation when they discover that in my class, they will learn how to draw. And paint. And create collages. And use pastels. I expect them to learn the Elements of Art, how to draw from life using line, value, color, and texture. Imagine, that I explain up front that earning an A in my class takes work. You’d think I was squeezing their skulls until their eyes popped out of their sockets from the complaints I hear.

Then I get the kids who can’t do anything at all, and they hate art. Every now and then, one of them will have an off day, where they actually do work. Once in a blue moon - when their buddies are absent, and there’s nothing else left to do - they even get into their work and produce something respectable.

But critiquing their work? Fuggedaboudit. Telling them that Skill One is doing quite nicely, but Skill Two needs some work? All they hear me say is “you suck! I hate you! Go work in the salt mines!” Heaven forfend I should suggest that if they want to be a successful artist they need a solid grounding in the basics, and that copying may be a valuable technique, it does not make one an artist. In fact, it takes one further away from being one.

And what kills me is that its an elective. They don’t have to be there. They could be taking shop, Spanish, computers, or Yearbook. They could be student aides or take a study period in the library. But no. They take a class they have no interest in, don’t want to work at, and resent me for trying to teach them. I would worry that it was my own abilities as a teacher, but my English and Writing students (required courses, both of them) do just fine.

So, yeah, YosemiteBabe, I know where you’re coming from.

36

I agree. I can sketch a little. And I mean a little. I am by no means an artist.
Put it this way: I Kick Ass at Pictionary. Everyone always wants to be my teammate. But that’s it. That’s the limit of my artistic talent. And I know that.
I can copy comic strip characters fairly well, if I have the strip right in front of me (and haven’t had six cups of coffee recently).
When people see that, they always say, “You should draw a comic strip!” No, I shouldn’t. If I tried to draw my own character, it would end up looking suspiciously like Dilbert or Calvin or Charlie Brown. I’m also nowhere near creative enough to come up with the funny little storylines and punchlines needed for a daily strip.

Before I had kids of my own, I used to draw “coloring book pages” with a Sharpie for my nieces to color when my family was all together on holidays. They’d tell me what to draw (a cat, a horse, etc.) and I’d do a simple outline drawing and then they’d color it in.
My mother would constantly tell me I should illustrate children’s books. Yeah, like there weren’t enough real artists pounding the pavement in New York, with actual portfolios, trying to do just that.
It comes in handy now; I teach Nursery School. I can do simple drawings for school - pumpkins, apples, whatever - and it looks like what it’s supposed to be. Nifty trick.

I’m not one of those people who carries around a sketch book all the time and draws every moment of the day. I just do it for fun, when the mood strikes me.
But God save me from the well-meaning folks who tell me I should do it for a living. I’d starve on the streets!

37

Couple of anecdotes/quotes that directly relate to the OP, and that are actually tangentially related to each other:

A contemporary of Robert Benchley whose name I cannot recall (Sherwood? Sherman? Something like that) had a stock response whenever he met a cretin who downplayed his craft, which was writing humorous prose. Usually it was an innocuous remark: “You’re a writer? You know, I’ve always wanted to be a writer.” Sherman/Sherwood/Somethingorother would respond: “That’s interesting. I’ve always wanted to be a brain surgeon.” That tended to take the wind out of the sails of Mr. I-always-wanted-to.

Stephen King, in his book Danse Macabre, noted his views on talent/hard work in the creative arena thusly (and this is paraphrased wildly):

Writing well is like doing brain surgery. When you do it well, it looks so simple. You hold the knife just so, and you cut. You compose the sentence just so, and it reads well. Simplicity itself.

No one is born great at writing, or anything else. Talent (in any aspect of life) is like a knife. Some people are given a dull, rusty knife that will never cut well. Some people are given almighty big knives that can scare you with their sheer size. But no one is given a **sharp ** knife. Sharpening occurs when the talent is used, and used, and used again, honing it, refining it. When the knife is sharp enough, and its owner skilled enough, using it can appear to be effortless. You hold it just so. And you cut. Simplicity itself.

I find both of these observations quite compelling, and very telling in their own way.

38

I am – he sounds very much like a master baiter to me. Thank you! I’m here all week. Try the veal.

On the one hand, I’m all for encouraging amateur art. In my view, far too many people stifle their creative urges simply because they can’t produce work on a professional level. If it makes you happy to plink around on a piano or dabble in watercolours, by all means go for it. But do it because it does make you happy, not because you desperately want to be rich and famous.

What most people fail to realize that there is an enormous gulf between being even a talented amateur and being good enough to make a living at any form of art. Heck, I’m a pretty good singer and have made a bit of cash on the side doing that, but I’m a long, long way from being able to do it professionally. The difference is that the professionals not only have the talent but have spent years perfecting their craft. Art is hard work.

OTOH, luck and chutzpah goes a long way, especially in modern visual art. In the case of Tracey Emin, for example, my reaction isn’t “I could do that” but rather “Why would anyone bother?”

39

Interestingly, I’ve noticed exactly the opposite problems with maths and sciences. People immediately say “nope, sorry, my brain is incapable of handling that.” I mean, maybe they’ll never be Newton, but any normal person could learn up to, say, calculus if they put some time and effort in. Though both problems can be intensely aggravating.

40

Fantastic art, Yosemite.