Technique v Concept. Where do you put your eggs. The more experience I get, the harder it is to excel at both. I see contemporaries, much younger and less experienced than I excelling beyond my skillset. "Take heart!" I tell myself, "that you are growing conceptually, with an ability to generate ideas which time and again have proven far more valuable than any rendering style." But, I am incredulous at my inner voice. I do not trust it. It has lied before, it will lie again.
Will you tell me the truth? It is exceedingly hard to get an honest opinion from people. The only time I have ever seen a true honest opinion of a project has been when the viewer was A) not involved in the production, conception or use of an idea and B) the viewer does not know the individual he/she is explaining their view to is connected with the concept. That's brutal, unadulterated honesty. Of course, one could argue that such an unbiased view is in and of itself a bias. At the very least, the commenter's qualifications to contribute are in question.
There really is no answer. Critique, I suppose, is over rated. As an artist, one does the work, the work is a reflection of one's heart. What more is there.
TvsC then, I suppose is really a conceptual joke. It's something commercial 'artists' fight with because they have to make stuff that clients want to pay for, and the more they pay the happier the art-whore is. Don't get me wrong. I'm not looking down my nose at commercial artists... take a look at my tax return, you'll find that a substantial part of, nay ALL of my income was from selling my artistic technique to art directors. So maybe that's the impetus for the question. It's not technique versus concept, it is commercial versus soulful.
I am an idiot some days.
But hey, I'm going whitewater rafting. So, this can wash away for the next 5 days. Don't trouble trouble until trouble troubles you.
Torn
