ataraxy
RSS Archive Likes Ask
my name is sloane and i have this condition.

other:
website/ art blog

“Pretty Art” and superficial appeal

pauflip:

pollums:

Okay prepare yourself for a long post anon ahahahah! Sorry!

I have this term that I’ve been throwing around for a few years to refer to a very specific tendency in art- I call it “Pretty Art”. 

Pretty Art in its most simplest explanation is when an artist spends SO much effort on making the subject of their art “pretty” that the quality and progress of their work actually suffers.

There’s no way to cite examples of what I mean without insulting a whooole lot of young artists that you probably know and love, but it’s not like I’m exempting myself from this tendency. I think many of us, if not ALL of us, are guilty of this tendency so long as we’ve been exposed to the false idea that superficial beauty regimens determine the value of a person and have at some point in our lives transposed this horrible idea onto our art without realizing it.

Read More

I spent a lot of time writing a response to this.  But then I realized I actually have very little idea about what exactly you’re getting at because it’s incredibly vague and cryptic.

So I guess I’ll just make some simple notes sharing my thoughts.

Pretty Art in its most simplest explanation is when an artist spends SO much effort on making the subject of their art “pretty” that the quality and progress of their work actually suffers.

But is that actually bad? 

Any time you see a drawing where the face was given more time and careful rendering than the rest of the figure. Any time there is a conscious effort to “apply makeup”, add big beautiful eyelashes, add blushing cheeks, plumpen up the lips of a character in a drawing. Any time that conscious effort to “apply makeup” is so excessive that it actually makes the drawing CREEPY and uncomfortable to look at. Any time you see an original character with anime hair and a bajillion scars and piercings all the way down their body with a scarf and earmuffs with shorts and a t-shirt. Any time you see a fantastic painter that seems only capable of painting gorgeous headshots of their favorite anime characters in a “realistic style”.

What is the problem?  The lack of variation to suit your tastes?  That you don’t agree with the artist’s fixation on certain aspects of their work?  

I mean I get that it can be annoying as a viewer to see an artist who for instance gives all their characters exactly the same face, whether they’re male or female or full grown or a child…  but if that’s what they want their art to look like then you can’t really fault them.  And certain people with that exact problem are considerably popular.  I’m not saying that popularity makes their work good - I’m just saying that popularity indicates that a lot of people might not have a problem with the artist using the same face on all of their characters…

 I don’t like it though, so it’s not for me.  I can understand not liking it, but that still doesn’t necessarily make it bad.

Any time you draw a character just STANDING there looking PRETTY.

If the purpose of the art work is to convey a person standing looking pretty and it depicts a person standing, looking pretty - then that art is still successful.  Sure the bar may not have been set very high, but you can’t really fault them for anything other than perhaps lack of new ideas.

The pretty OC with bishounen hair and a million piercings is a cheap imitation of beauty. It’s a hodgepodge of things the artist saw at one point in their lives on some hot guy and thought “hey, that appeals to me”. But they only saw the superficial most layer of that appeal. They didn’t see the whole picture and think, for a random example, “hey, I didn’t expect that conventionally dressed guy to have so many piercings- it was unexpected and challenged my idea of what kind of person wears piercings or how piercings affect the body- the surprise and contrast of that really appeal to me.” 

I mean, I don’t know your specific reason for liking piercings if you’re into that, but I can tell you, it’s not as simple as “piercings are cool.”

This I see as a completely different matter.  This is a problem with the artist lacking insight into their own motivations for creating work a certain way.  

This is pretty common and I agree there are lots of artists who are technically very good - but give no thought to why they make what they make, and why they find it appealing.  This type also tends to think artist statements are stupid because they have a hard time figuring out how to put the motivation behind their work into words.  They just haven’t grasped why they like what they like and why they do what they do.

This is the person who knows what they want, but they don’t know why they want it.  

If you can get over this urge to make things “pretty”, then you can get started on understanding what makes something truly appealing. You can learn how to draw ugly people in an appealing way, you can have fun learning how to draw nonfigurative work, you can make your work narrative and interesting, and you can go from a technically skilled artist to a GREAT artist.  

I don’t think anybody should ever feel the need to get over the urge to make things pretty.  URGE is good!  If it motivates you.  However if an artist doesn’t know from where their urge springs, they ought to sit down and think about it for a while in my opinion.

Because - and I’ve said this before, and I’ll continue to repeat it ad infinitum:  Art’s only purpose is to do what the Artist wants it to do.  Everything beyond that is ancillary at best.

If the only motivation you have when making art is “to make something that looks cool” - then that’s all your art will be.  Cool looking. Can you define what looks cool to you?  Take it further, why does X look cool to you?  find out what is driving this in you.  Trust me it’s never that X looks cool just because it does.  Nothing is inherently cool looking.  

And don’t be fooled into thinking that art just looks good because it follows the “rules” - that’s a load too.  If you could make good art simply by following rules, then anybody could pick up a book on making art and become the next Picasso or Dali.  

Some people for instance think that displaying a great knowledge of anatomy in your work makes it good.  That’s really no better than just giving your OC a bunch of piercings because you think piercings look cool.  If you don’t understand why you think accurate anatomy looks good to you then that’s not any more sophisticated or valid a point of criteria than “characters with lots of piercings look cool”.  It’s just as superficial. 

BTW: Sir Joshua Reynolds taught art during a period when people seriously believed that art was just good if you followed certain rules, and just bad if you didn’t.  God forbid you do something stupid like join the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood for instance. 

good points powpowpow

(via furippupau)




  1. maridee42 reblogged this from pollums
  2. bythetimeyougetthismessage reblogged this from pollums
  3. triforce-kun reblogged this from pollums and added:
    my artist friends hanging around here might
  4. pattysan reblogged this from pollums
  5. 3gokei reblogged this from pollums
  6. seblaze reblogged this from pollums
  7. quillusquillus reblogged this from isnarniainyournose
  8. sonicsora reblogged this from pollums
  9. sadnessfactory reblogged this from amazinglyartisticadvice
  10. cruxofthebiscuit reblogged this from amazinglyartisticadvice and added:
    I don’t much want anything to do with art that’s just “pretty,” or adores a certain type of pretty person, because—well,...
  11. mr-makerr reblogged this from amazinglyartisticadvice
  12. quietcorvin reblogged this from z-raid
  13. reddoorsandlemontrees reblogged this from amazinglyartisticadvice
  14. nai-nye reblogged this from z-raid
  15. op3rador reblogged this from monkeyscandance
  16. j-hon reblogged this from vrisuu
  17. vrisuu reblogged this from amazinglyartisticadvice
  18. z-raid reblogged this from amazinglyartisticadvice
  19. quoththechola reblogged this from amazinglyartisticadvice
  20. tsaizheng reblogged this from amazinglyartisticadvice and added:
    another… THANK. YOU. Seriously, all...gigantic tealdeer marathon was, “BLAHBLAHBLAH BLAH...
clear theme by parti
powered by tumblr