Curry Zawa Kaoru’s Creative Counseling - “I’m incapable of judging my art objectively.” Ask yourself if objectivity is even necessary in the first place.
Article by Curry Zawa Kaoru
I don’t know how to judge my art objectively since there’s no one else I can compare myself to
One thing I’ve learned from writing this column is that there are more creators with “unpopular opinion” ships in this world than I thought, each fighting their own unique and lonely battle. First of all, I take my hat off to you for braving this rough terrain. What you’re doing is akin to planting a flower in a post-apocalyptic land overrun by military jeeps; the fact that you’ve managed to blossom and thrive is a pretty impressive achievement.
That said, I have a hard time believing that you find it impossible to judge the quality of your art. Even if there aren’t any other flowers growing in the area, surely you can still tell the difference between a cornflower and a cob of corn.
I’m a commercial manga artist who draws my own OCs and, frankly, looking up fan art of my own works or characters on pixiv is far more terrifying than searching my name on resale marketplaces and finding a personalized signed copy of one of my books. If there are any people who make fan art of my characters, I’m really sorry about the erasure, but at the very least I'm not finding it on pixiv.
What I’m trying to say is that I’m a maniac who’s pretty much been drawing my own characters and stories exclusively for over a decade, which makes us more or less similar. As a result, I’ve become numb to a lot of emotions, the main one being joy. For some reason, though, my ability to judge whether my art is good or bad has remained intact, and I often find myself despairing at how terrible I am at drawing. If I’m being honest, I feel like every other manga artist is way better than me.
Now, I’m aware that comparing characters from two totally different genres is like comparing apples with oranges. To use sports as an analogy, you’re like an athlete in a minor sport with virtually no competitors, such as ferret-legging, which makes it even harder to compare your work with someone else’s. Regardless, I’m sure you can still gauge your athletic abilities, i.e., your drawing skills, by looking at the art of others, even if you aren’t drawing the exact same characters.
I wrote that under the assumption that you’re shipping humanoid characters. Now that I think about it, though, they could even be of a species that only those in the fandom would recognize. If that’s the case, then I can understand why you’d have a hard time judging the quality of your art. Still, not having anyone to compare yourself to has advantages; no matter how “distorted” your ship might have become, you could simply come up with some excuse to explain it that no one else will challenge. ("It's inspired by cubism!")
Is objectivity truly necessary?
Do you really need to be “objective” about your art in the first place? I would say that the only time you truly need to judge your work objectively is when drawing for a large audience and wanting to gain their approval and support.
Judging from your message, while you still care about what other people think of your art, it's more like an idle thought that you probably ought to put on some underwear before you go outside, not something you worry about very often. If anything, you sound like the kind of person who’s capable of just staying home and admiring your own body without any need for others’ recognition or approval. That’s the impression I get: that you have an unwavering belief in your own work.
Many hardcore rarepair artists draw their ships because no one else is doing it, but most of them inevitably long for more shippers to join the fandom so they can gain that thrilling satisfaction that only fan art by other people can provide. In your case, however, you sound as if you’re perfectly content being the only one in your field. Very few people can continue making art regardless of the lack of recognition and support, and happily so. This isn’t a skill you can develop through sheer hard work alone—it’s a talent. You should continue utilizing it in your artistic endeavors.
As difficult as it is to improve the quality of your work, it can be even harder to boost your self-confidence in your art. People who are objectively skinny but call themselves overweight aren’t fishing for compliments; they’re probably either striving for an unrealistic and unattainable beauty standard and/or have incredibly low self-esteem. Similarly, no matter how objectively good someone’s art is, if the artist isn’t confident about their work, they’ll think it looks like trash and find it hard to be enthusiastic about their headcanon.
No matter how much love and support you gain from other people, it means nothing if you’re constantly dissatisfied with your art.
There’s no reason to have other people judge your precious child (i.e., your art) and point out all their “flaws,” and it’s even worse if that causes you to start obsessing over the gap in their once-perfect teeth, so to speak. Despite knowing that the most important thing is whether or not it brings them joy, most people who draw fan art as a hobby tend to care about what others think of their work or struggle with creating art that they’re happy with. In that regard, you could even be considered the ideal fan artist, my dear reader.
While I don’t think it’s necessary to improve your art based on how other people might view it, I don’t think it’s a bad idea to improve your drawing skills to increase your satisfaction level either. To do that, you simply need to draw more, so keep drawing glorious fan art of your ship like you’ve been doing.
This column was made into a book!
The popular column Curry Zawa Kaoru’s Creative Counseling has been made into a book titled Otaku no Tanoshii Seisaku Ron (The Delightful Art of Otaku Creation, Bungeishunju).
In addition to fan-favorite episodes such as “Coping with fanwork taking a little too many liberties”, “When you can’t get feedback in an underdeveloped genre”, “Is 40 too old for doujin events?” and “Understanding the troubles and contradictions of killing off your favorite characters”, the book also includes brand new topics and advice!
