October 10, 2003
fish, ponds, and talent
In Design, we were working on projects about negative and positive space. The assignment was basically to use negative space and shadow to suggest any number of ideas like smoke, flour, sugar, vanilla ice cream, steam, etc. Mine was suggesting "ghost," and I basically had a silhouette of a woman with long, flowy hair and dress moving off to the side with shadows suggesting facial features and folds in the dress.
Someone behind me noticed what I was doing and asked me to hold it up so she could see it better, which I did. And from her expression, she thought it was really good. She had that kind of "Wow..." look on her face that makes me feel proud and embarrassed (mostly the latter) at the same time.
Next day, in Drawing 1 we were working with ink and crosshatching styles. I was having lots of fun sitting at my table happily hatching my whistles and pencil sharpener and bamboo pen. (I'm having so much fun with this bamboo pen, by the way. I love playing with ink. It seems like an intimidating medium at first, since it's so easy to mess up and not be able to fix it, but I've gotten really comfortable with it lately.)
Then the girl sitting next to me asked if she could see my work, since the teacher had told her mine were a good example.
And during the breaktime, one guy wandered over to see since (quote) "I know yours are going to be good." And he liked my stuff enough to call someone else over to see.
And a couple of days before (yeah, my chronology is screwed up), the teacher had held back one of my homework assignments that I hadn't exactly put that much effort into because it was one of the three in the class that got an A, and she was going to use it for example purposes.
HOLY CRAP THIS IS A LITTLE SCARY.
Most of my RL friends have heard me whine about my insecurity over my talent before, and they generally all whap me over the head about it. To a point, I always attributed any skill I had in high school to being a big fish in a little pond. There wasn't really anyone around to compare my stuff to, so I had to judge it on its own merits, and I always figured that as good as it might have looked next to Eastchester stuff, I couldn't really judge it because I wasn't around people near my skill level. I expected to be able to do that here.
I came to art school expecting to be around the middle of the scale talent-wise, honestly. I knew there were going to be people here that I'm better than, and there were going to be a lot of people here that are better than me. I was glad about that. I wanted to be somewhere where I could feel like I was really pushing myself artistically. I'm actually looking forward to critique sessions because I want to know where I need to improve and where I can capitalize on my strengths.
So... um... now I find that people that are near my skill level still think I'm good in comparison to them.
On one level, that's really cool, obviously. Sure, my mommy tells me I'm good, and sure, my friends tell me I'm good, and it's not as if I don't trust them to tell me the truth, but they're my MOTHER and FRIENDS, they're not the most objective judges.
Besides that... it's almost embarrassing, because I don't really know how to react to it. Usually compliments have the effect of turning me into a lump of gibbering, foot-shuffling, aw-shucksing "um uh er thanks...". I almost always feel the need to point out something that I think is wrong about it, or a mistake, or say "Yeah, well, I was just kinda doodling around, y'know." I seriously think I may have blushed at one point during Drawing. No joke.
So it's a bit of a weird adjustment, going from being a big fish in a small pond to moving to a bigger pond and finding out that I might actually just be a big fish.
Someone behind me noticed what I was doing and asked me to hold it up so she could see it better, which I did. And from her expression, she thought it was really good. She had that kind of "Wow..." look on her face that makes me feel proud and embarrassed (mostly the latter) at the same time.
Next day, in Drawing 1 we were working with ink and crosshatching styles. I was having lots of fun sitting at my table happily hatching my whistles and pencil sharpener and bamboo pen. (I'm having so much fun with this bamboo pen, by the way. I love playing with ink. It seems like an intimidating medium at first, since it's so easy to mess up and not be able to fix it, but I've gotten really comfortable with it lately.)
Then the girl sitting next to me asked if she could see my work, since the teacher had told her mine were a good example.
And during the breaktime, one guy wandered over to see since (quote) "I know yours are going to be good." And he liked my stuff enough to call someone else over to see.
And a couple of days before (yeah, my chronology is screwed up), the teacher had held back one of my homework assignments that I hadn't exactly put that much effort into because it was one of the three in the class that got an A, and she was going to use it for example purposes.
HOLY CRAP THIS IS A LITTLE SCARY.
Most of my RL friends have heard me whine about my insecurity over my talent before, and they generally all whap me over the head about it. To a point, I always attributed any skill I had in high school to being a big fish in a little pond. There wasn't really anyone around to compare my stuff to, so I had to judge it on its own merits, and I always figured that as good as it might have looked next to Eastchester stuff, I couldn't really judge it because I wasn't around people near my skill level. I expected to be able to do that here.
I came to art school expecting to be around the middle of the scale talent-wise, honestly. I knew there were going to be people here that I'm better than, and there were going to be a lot of people here that are better than me. I was glad about that. I wanted to be somewhere where I could feel like I was really pushing myself artistically. I'm actually looking forward to critique sessions because I want to know where I need to improve and where I can capitalize on my strengths.
So... um... now I find that people that are near my skill level still think I'm good in comparison to them.
On one level, that's really cool, obviously. Sure, my mommy tells me I'm good, and sure, my friends tell me I'm good, and it's not as if I don't trust them to tell me the truth, but they're my MOTHER and FRIENDS, they're not the most objective judges.
Besides that... it's almost embarrassing, because I don't really know how to react to it. Usually compliments have the effect of turning me into a lump of gibbering, foot-shuffling, aw-shucksing "um uh er thanks...". I almost always feel the need to point out something that I think is wrong about it, or a mistake, or say "Yeah, well, I was just kinda doodling around, y'know." I seriously think I may have blushed at one point during Drawing. No joke.
So it's a bit of a weird adjustment, going from being a big fish in a small pond to moving to a bigger pond and finding out that I might actually just be a big fish.
# posted by Liadan @ 3:15 PM 
