Nuki News #12 - Quantity vs Quality?

So, if you happen to have shown up in one of the last streams I had before I moved out of the old apartment, I was expressing a struggle I was dealing with on my approach to art, discussing it with viewers of the stream. It can be summed up as a debate between what I perceived as quality vs quantity.

You see, when it comes to drawing/making art, I like to fully realize it as best as I can with the time I have, putting in many hours on every picture I do. I have a hard time settling on ‘just a sketch’ - hell, it’s never ‘just a sketch’ to me, I have to use a bunch of polishing techniques and filters just to make it ‘pop’ and look more ‘finished’ even if I don’t color it. I often cave and throw in shading too. I’m always trying to impress myself and others with it. I always want to make quality art, and it’s rare I ever give up on a picture - in fact, in my 8 years of taking art seriously, I’ve maybe given up on 4-5 pictures I started. 

I can bet you’re thinking “What’s wrong with that? That’s a real awesome achievement!” And I do think there is some good to it; it shows that I’m very dedicated and finish what I start, and because of it people trust me enough to commission me and pay me up front for example, because they are confident I’ll get it done and not leave them hanging. 

But, like everything in life, there’s also a drawback to this approach. I don’t iterate enough; I don’t explore ideas further, and settle on the first thought or two that comes to mind. I’m also quite slow at getting a picture done, which in the long run isn’t going to pay the bills and leave me with a healthy amount of free time. The last thing I want with launching my full time art career in furry freelance is to sink myself into a day-in-day-out job for me to grow to hate because I never have time for myself! 

Ok, so, what’s the hang up then? It turns out that I had a pretty unfair thought that, if I didn’t approach my art-making like this, then my work would no longer ‘have as much meaning’ or it would be ‘worth less’ if I didn't go all-out. We’ve all seen it otherwise though - there are times on social media where the sketches of ideas, more simple pictures get a lot more attention and shares than the most beautifully rendered imagery and details. There are some, especially newer artists(including myself at one point) who thought this was unfair! It does suck to have a picture you spend 10 hours getting less attention/recognition than a sketch that took 1 hour.

But the truth is, of course, a picture/piece of art’s worth definitely doesn’t get defined by how immaculate or accurate the shading or anatomy is. Maybe it does in an art class, or to other artists who care about improving their execution… but that’s not actually what I’m here to do in this world! I’m not actually here to try to impress art students or art teachers! And that’s where I realized this negative thought process came from - I spent a lot of my first 4 years of art purely studying and honing all the fundamentals and techniques of representational art, that my view of my own work was skewed by the process of my art mentors’ critiques. It’s not their fault! They’re doing their job, I just internalized it the wrong way, it turns out. As a result, I’ve been holding myself back in my art development.

So after this reflection, I've come to my  conclusion! That if I want to do what I want to do with art(to make intimacy and affection more accepted) it makes NO SENSE to try to painstakingly render every picture if I’m wanting to reach more people. Making as many pictures I can for people makes more sense, because there's only going to be so much I'm going to be able to do in my lifetime, and that means making more people feel happier or comforted by my work. 

To retrace back to the start of this post, Quality vs Quantity… it all actually starts with quantity - not for the sake of posting more, either - but I’ve realized I need to let go of trying to justify quality! Quality is purely up to the viewer. But *I* can control the quantity of posts I make and what is depicted. This revelation honestly has been empowering for me, and I can now line up where the next stage my art is going to take! Once I’m closer to formulating  that, you can be sure I’ll talk about it in a future Nuki News post!  This has been a long one already, so thanks for reading!