How to Improve (with Sidney Davidson)
Image by Tom Hart.
Seeking Improvement
Seeking improvement is a part of being human. Most of us want to “upgrade,” “one-up,” and consistently advance in our life, especially in our creative journey. It’s natural and just comes with the territory of being human.
But how does one improve?
How do we get better, when progress feels so slow?
How do we improve our art, when everything we draw or write seems like complete junk?!
Why even keep drawing at all?
Sidney Davidson, a Teacher at SAW, offers some insight after being asked “How to Improve.”
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Sidney Davidson writes:
“Somebody asked me how to improve. I had no idea what their work looked like, and I don’t know them at all.
The best I could offer was wisdom based on my own introspection and observations I have made about myself, students, and other people. I’ve been drawing seriously for 15 years— most of this is about the emotional work I do so that I don’t get discouraged, and keep motivated without having to deceive myself.
So here we go—
1. Get comfortable creating trash. It’s hard, it’s ungratifying, but it must be done in the beginning. Every piece of “unacceptable” art we make is a learning experience. Try your hardest to reflect on your work in that specific context— otherwise creating becomes an unbearably masochistic.
2. Be patient with yourself. Our culture’s obsession with meritocracy and a “success” mindset just makes us rigid and contemptuous of our own limitations. Drawing and writing are difficult— we always run into a lot of limitations— and we need to respect them to be objective. If we aren’t patient with ourselves, we can’t accept how large the gap is between where we are and where we want to be. We just deny it because it’s size is overwhelming— and we won’t grow. Or we will just get discouraged and quit. Without patience with our limitations— we only have two options: denial or self loathing. Our culture tries to rebrand this lack of patience as something empowering. Consequently, people develop a self-destructive, masochistic work ethic and develop a psychotic enthusiasm about this “empowering,” self-imposed serfdom/slavehood. It’s just ideas that the ruling class shoves down our throats so we are obedient workers— its really counterproductive and is a recipe for unbearable discouragement in the arts. We have to throw all this out the window. This is difficult because it feels like we have to believe all that stuff to feel good about ourselves. Really, all we need to feel grounded is intimacy and patience with our limitations. We can achieve those things by getting validation with people we respect and kind of idealize.
3. When you need validation, go and get it deliberately. Everybody needs validation. Do not seek validation under the guise of “honest feedback.” When I know my work has problems but I am trying to get a gig— I show it to people who will validate me rather than give me brutally “honest” feedback. This allows me to go into a situation where I will get harsh feedback, and I can process it in a productive way rather than deny it or take it too hard. It’s not that we need to be tough enough to hear our art is bad over and over again— people like to say that’s an important part of grit. It’s not— it’s just another example of the nonsensical meritocratic masochism I discussed in #2. The trick is to be humble, look inward, and identify, “Am I confident and stable enough to hear harsh truths?” If not— go connect with people you really respect and seek validation from them. I’m explicit with this, I’ll say things like: “Hey Ryan, I’m feeling insecure about trying to impress this editor. I want to go in confidently— can you go through this and tell me what you like about it? I’m being hard on myself and I could really use some positive feedback so that I can be open to the negative feedback.” People’s souls get crushed when they seek validation under the guise of “honest feedback.” This kind of thing will make you give up if you don’t recognize it.
4. As somebody that draw pretty well, I can tell you that ideas are more important than drawing ability. If you find ideas that are bigger than you, and you use your art to serve those ideas— you can sustain a healthy humility which will help you make level headed creative decisions. If you want the long term motivation and drive to keep improving despite years of having no commercial success— develop some refined, good ideas that you think people need to hear for their own betterment. If you use art to serve good ideas— rather than only have good ideas serve your art, you can keep going with endless motivation. The former is humble, the latter creates an unstable, grandiose, egocentricity. This is confusing— but here is why.. the grandiose energies that compel us to create can sort of blow out of our circuits. It feels good to draw, so we make the assumption that because it felt good to make— it must be good! This makes the necessary objectivity impossible to achieve. It means you can’t be objective without being self loathing— because the grandiosity that makes us feel good when we draw also compels us to apply standards to ourselves that are unreasonable. So if you take these grandiose energies and put them in service of benevolent, refined ideas— you can hang onto the great grandiose feelings that make us create while remaining humble, objective, and patient.
I hope this is helpful. These are very abstract ideas and may be difficult to understand— please ask me to elaborate on any of them.”
-Advice on “How to Improve” by Sidney Davidson
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Key-Takeaways (by Karr Antunes)
Sidney is completely correct. Although we all have our own journey to embark on creatively, it becomes inevitable that most Creatives, like you, will come to a standstill at times on how to improve.
Here are some key-takeaways that I got from Sidney’s words:
1. Drawing is better than not drawing at all. Creating is better than not creating at all. In my experience, sometimes thoughtless doodles that I hate, later turn into rendered illustrations I love. If you don’t end up ever loving that work, you at least learn what you don’t like in that work and know what to improve on.
2. Be gentle with yourself. You’re only human and you learn, draw, think, and see things differently than anyone else in the world. You are on your own journey, and there’s no need to compare to others on their “success,” “how well they draw,” etc. Be patient with your unique journey and your unique limitations.
3. Seek validation from people who will validate you, not give you harsh “honest feedback.” Seek validation from people you really respect and maybe even idolize in the creative world. It will allow you to process feedback in a productive way rather than deny it, feel bad about your work, and possibly give up on yourself. Don’t give up on yourself! Seek effective validation if you’re feeling insecure about your work.
4. Talent and “drawing well” should not stop you from creating, because drawing ability is useless without ideas on what to draw. Sure, you may want to improve your artistic style, work on perspective, stabilize your line-work, etc., and that’s all perfectly good and fine to do. But, it isn’t the most important thing in improving your comics (or writing, or art in general). As Sidney put it, “If you use art to serve good ideas— rather than only have good ideas serve your art, you can keep going with endless motivation.”
Thanks for the profound words, Sidney!
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To create sustainably, improvement will be a slow process. It is a life-long process, in fact. It requires motivation and dedication to your craft and ideas as well as hours of practice to bridge that gap between what you’re making and what you want to be making. Still, at the end of the day, you may still think what you made is complete trash. That’s okay. Learn from it. Tomorrow, you may not feel that way about a new piece. You just can’t give up on yourself.
Keep on.
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Cheers,
Karlo (Karr)