Things I’ve Learned While Pursuing My Art Career: Skill is Just as Important as Talent

Yes, art is subjective and there’s nothing wrong with your work being abstract or highly stylized. But if the abstraction and stylization is being used to cover up a lack of skill, you’re doing yourself a disservice by not improving the technical side of your art. 

I’ve definitely fallen into this trap myself, but I do my best to not get too comfortable. Where I’m the most guilty is my reliance on reference images. I can argue that I prefer to work from references because you get interesting and organic details from something that exists in life compared to something conjured up. An example is that I have little splotches on the whites of my eyes that are always included when I use a close up of my face as a reference. I rarely see this on other people and I doubt another artist would think to add them to a portrait unless they too had eye splotches. That’s a decent argument, but the reality is that if I was tasked to draw that same portrait just from my head, the quality would go down significantly.

I’m pleased to say that I’ve worked on this enough that it’s not a horrendous difference. I take the time to study anatomy and lighting when I can, but there is always more to learn. I encourage you to think about your own practice and figure out what you could be avoiding in your skill set. Do your characters all have their hands in pockets because you can't draw hands? Do you paint in black and white because you don’t know how to mix colors? Even as an abstract artist, do you understand color theory, composition, and flow?

I’d like to think that my art now is pretty good, but I keep in the back of my mind the possibility of all the paintings waiting to be brought to life when I have the skills they require and deserve.