~mleiv

I just finished reading The Portrait. It was... disturbing. It was written very like Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, a meandering journal of observations with plot thrown in on the side. And the plot was good, but I think the novel stood on its own without it - maybe even stood *better* without the finality of the story - just because the musings were so frighteningly perceptive.

Excerpt 1:

To impose yourself, to take the public by the scruff of the neck and give it a good shaking; to scream in its provincial little ear that I am a genius. And if you scream loud enough and long enough, it believes you.

Excerpt 2:

"It's like an addiction," she said. "I go mad if I can't use my hands. It's all I have, the only thing that makes it worthwhile getting out of bed in the morning."

I was talking with a friend at work this week about the many crippling events we experienced during our lovely years in public education. And we were talking about what *should* have happened, how things could be better. He's not an artist, but we both saw that the saddest thing our education beat into us was a fear of failure. We learned conformity, of course, and that was a pretty terrible lesson, but more than that, we learned to play it safe, to only do what we knew we could do well. Because you are punished when you fail, ridiculed in front of the class, graded poorly. And don't you think it would be so much better if the reverse were true? If you were rewarded for taking risks? If the point were to explain what you were trying to accomplish and where it went wrong; to prove that you learned something rather than just produced something?

Once when I was in eighth grade my science teacher asked us to build an apple corer. Most of the students went for the straight-forward dropped-weight approach. Me? I designed a Rube Goldberg contraption with a marble and the whole shebang. The rickety thing fell apart before it even started, of course, because I have no engineering skills whatsoever. But my teacher looked at the design drawing and laughed so hard that she gave me a good grade anyway. It was the first time in my life that had ever happened. That someone rewarded me for ambition instead of achievement.

I wish I could remember that more often in my present life. Because I do fail on a pretty damn ambitious scale - I can't just make a tiny mistake like normal people, I have to completely destroy huge expensive canvases and shred brushes to useless snarls and waste pots and pots of paints. And I always feel like such a monumental failure afterwards that I want to crawl into a hole and never paint again. But I'm trying to tell myself that all those voices are wrong, that it's better I be a really spectacular failure than a perfectly ordinary success. And next week, goddamnit, I'm gonna buy some more paper and try again.

So my Significant Other was visiting my dA site this week. And he mocked it. Apparently we are all a bunch of back-patting, feel-good, affirmation-obsessed girly-girls. And then today I was wandering around Penny Arcade and mistakenly found myself on the Art forum. Very briefly. Which is apparently the polar opposite.

I understand that some people out there really need to be taken down a notch. Sorry guys, but it's usually you and your raging teenage testosterone. And I understand that *constructive* criticism can help a person get better. But I mean, really! Calling people names and telling them they suck in an anonymous forum pretty much just screams "I am a 12-year-old dickwad who needs to be kicked in the groin" to me.

I dunno, there's a part of me that feels that the affirmation on dA is a lot like hearing my parents tell me what a great artist I am ("Yes, but Mom, the only paintings in your house are $2 prints of Jesus!"). On the other hand, I've had enough of the negative bullshit to last me a lifetime - at this point, I don't think my self-esteem will ever rise above "I could probably paint bus benches better than the sixth graders" level.

And in point of fact, I *am* a big failure as an artist. So, seeing as I will never, EVER rise to the level of Penny Arcade - much less Mucha or Bouguereau - perhaps my opinion on this is somewhat skewed. Maybe the people out there who will really "make it" can also take the heat without crawling into a hole and crying for two years like I did. Or maybe the art world will just continue to be judged and dominated by the dickwads with balls. Whatever.

Now that I have finally reached double-digits on pages for my comic, I have one thing to say. A picture is not worth a thousand words. Quite the contrary, it would take me a thousand pictures just to express one written chapter. But maybe I'm just doing it wrong.

****

UPDATE: monday morning

I wish I had read this first: [link]

I am staring angrily at my Cintiq and then at the Wacom site where the Cintiq is their only product demanding a 16% restocking fee. For a reason. I will be sending the damn thing back tomorrow. The only people on the planet who could ever use this P.O.S. are people sitting at a desk with a desktop, lots of excess space, and NO OTHER MONITORS. You can not move it. It has 5 gigantic heavy cables and a sizable base station. Portable, my ass.

Notice that in none of the wacom ads is the Cintiq *ever* plugged in. They don't want to show you what plugged in looks like. All the damn positive reviews never even discuss plugging in. It took me all morning. And I never even got to the drivers (yes, it requires multiple). I realized I would have to get a splitter or something to be able to use it alongside the lovely supplemental monitor I already have (I have only 1 video connector on my laptop), and there is no chance I could ever bring it home. They don't sell the 40 lb mass of cables separately, so I couldn't even create a duplicate dock for it at home, and just shuttle the tablet back and forth.

I am so pissed. I wish there was someplace I could properly and publicly express how pissed off I am to all the other Wacom fans out there considering this purchase. I was a Wacom fan for almost 15 years. No more. I loathe them with all my soul. If it wasn't still worth $840 I would smash this tablet to pieces and scream profanities.

****


Previous:

I am getting a Cintiq on Monday. Not the big one - the little 12" I can hold in my lap. I've been debating over sinking my savings into the Cintiq or the Modbook (the Modbook is 15", but doesn't have as many Wacom features, plus it costs more than twice). I've had the typical Wacom tablets for almost 15 years and frankly I am just sick of that whole screen-switch-tablet-switch-keyboard process. I was just having trouble imagining which of my two upgrade options would make it easier for me to lie on the couch watching tv and doodle casually.

And so my boss went and resolved the debate last week by buying me the Cintiq on the company dime. I think it was an apology gift (like when you buy your wife flowers after cheating on her) because it had been a really crappy week with a lot of irritating demands on me. Or maybe the corporate tax refund was burning a hole in his pocket. Regardless, I am one Cintiq happier. I think this is the first time I've really looked forward to going to work on Monday in my life.

So let this be a lesson to you young-uns as you read the trials of Holly in the techie workplace. 10 years of suffering and maybe *you* can guilt nice hardware out of your employer too.