05-01-2015, 03:58 AM
A lot of people misunderstand what self-taught means. It doesn't mean that you don't seek outside help, in fact it can sometimes be the opposite in that you constantly seek outside help and feedback from others. I don't know of any self taught artists that lived in a bubble only reading books and working on their craft with no critiques, never watching other people work, never participating in some sort of group activity and so on
Self taught really just means that you have no institution or curriculum guiding how you learn and when you learn. You decide it 100%. How you gain this knowledge is up to you, but I highly doubt its even possible to gauge your own work without ever being told whats wrong with it. I'm pretty sure every artist thinks their the best at some point early in their career, and if that attitude persists too long it can become a bad habit and lead to constant disappointment or inflated egos
You develop the ability to see mistakes in your work in a few ways in my experience
1. Getting critiques on your work
2. Hearing crits of other peoples work and seeing if it also applies to yours
3. Studying the real world and comparing where you're making mistakes to how it is in reality
4. Varying how you think and go about studying/making your own work so that you gain different perspectives on how to work, how to analyze things, how to plan out a picture etc
You might be lost doing work strictly from imagination and not able to gauge why it doesn't look right. Over time, however, your ability to see naturally and subtly develops to the point where you will be able to spot mistakes in your studies very easily, and hopefully you will have an inner dialogue that will allow you to remember those mistakes and at least attempt to correct them in your imaginative works
Self taught really just means that you have no institution or curriculum guiding how you learn and when you learn. You decide it 100%. How you gain this knowledge is up to you, but I highly doubt its even possible to gauge your own work without ever being told whats wrong with it. I'm pretty sure every artist thinks their the best at some point early in their career, and if that attitude persists too long it can become a bad habit and lead to constant disappointment or inflated egos
You develop the ability to see mistakes in your work in a few ways in my experience
1. Getting critiques on your work
2. Hearing crits of other peoples work and seeing if it also applies to yours
3. Studying the real world and comparing where you're making mistakes to how it is in reality
4. Varying how you think and go about studying/making your own work so that you gain different perspectives on how to work, how to analyze things, how to plan out a picture etc
You might be lost doing work strictly from imagination and not able to gauge why it doesn't look right. Over time, however, your ability to see naturally and subtly develops to the point where you will be able to spot mistakes in your studies very easily, and hopefully you will have an inner dialogue that will allow you to remember those mistakes and at least attempt to correct them in your imaginative works