Hi all :)

Just wanted to say something about critting other people's art, which btw, is a good thing. :)

For the artist:
Now, as the artist submitting art, you should always expect critique on your work (mind you, writers are also artists, so you can submit drafts of your written work here as well). NEVER take critique personal, because realise a person dedicated some substantial portion of their time in to analysing your image, trying to point out things which you can either now or in the future improve on in your work so you can create even better art!

If you're unsure of things, or just want to know what people think of what you've got sofar, are on the verge of making a decission to take your art one way or another, you can ask other people's input by posting in here.

Also, don't get too defensive of your work, because people are usualy trying to help you. You can always see for yourself if you're going to use the critique or not. If you become too defensive, people will not try to provide proper critique in the future when you ARE ready to receive it, being afraid of being attacked by you or because they think you won't use it anyway.

If you DON'T want to receive any critique, you should always state so, because people expect work posted in the WIP section to be critted. This doesn't mean that 'finished' work can't be critted, because ask yourself this: have you ever created something you felt was completely 'done' and could not possibly ever be improved? Meaning you're satisfied with every single aspect of your work? Often you or other people see things that could use some more work, often the artist is more critical on particular things but overlooks other aspects completely. Therefore obtaining critique and other peoples input on your work is always a good thing. That is, unless the people are enforcing there view and style on you. This last thing you should not allow to influence you, make sure you focus on the crits that help with developping and improving your own style technically, not cosmetically.

For the critter:
Posting art in this forum section means artists are either still working on an image or have more or are nearing completion. However, as they're still working on it this means they can still change and improve things, often they find there's something wrong with their image but they can't lay a finger on it, often they don't see things you do see.

Throughout my history online at online artcommunities often I've found people don't dare to provide critique, either because they feel they're not capable of giving it, especially when you feel the artist to be critted is 'better than you'. Don't worry about this, even they make 'mistakes' or don't see everything.

Even if you're new to art that doesn't mean you shouldn't crit. You should be a bit more careful perhaps due to inexperience. Often you can point out things that look weird or off even if you can't lay your finger on it yourself, in that case mention it and say you don't know what it is. Then someone else can take a look at it.

One thing you shouldn't do is only say "I don't like that" or "it's not my style so it sucks". Style is subjective and are thus a personal preference. The thing is to find those things or 'errors' what's not due to a personal style but what just is out of line with the rest. For example, you could have this brilliantly drawn robot, where it's obvious many hours of hard labour were put in, but after all that time the background has been rushed or in a completely different style and therefore detracts from the overall image as they don't fit eachother. Or, there are lightsources that should or shouldn't be there. (Like flames casting light on something, or a very bright cave without there being any torches). Or you could have it where the background is in a different perspective compared to the foreground, wrong colors, clearity of what exactly is going on, emotionless, etc. etc. etc. You name it. Whatever you think could be improved, name it. If you know any ways of how this could be improved suggest it. It's not always neccesary but it is usualy the most helpful way.

To both:
What you should be careful about is when critting becomes bashing. This is pointing out, or actually completely focussing on the negative things, or only saying that something completely sucks, trampling all over the artist's work and feelings, without providing any ways to actually improve the images technically. Now normally people don't do this but there are occasions where people are being incredibly rude, if you encounter such behaviour, ignore it in the forum, but report this behaviour to a moderator who can then procede to kick aft for you. :)