O-O
Ayo not related to the topic at all but check out my new artwork of my oc using his epic fancy fire slasher ^^
Alright....
Before my last few braincells are leaving, I wanted to talk about a topic I have seen for years and a topic I myself am Involved in too. For both, giving and reciving it. But what am I even talking about? I am talking about the so named quality lables in the art community. Those lables are disliked by many.
Labels such as LQ, MQ and HQ (= low, medium and high quality)
I dont want to start off or talk about my definition too much, maybe a bit, but moreso wanna talk about a few different things related to it because, unlike many others I might have a few.. maybe "unknown" perspectives about it and stuff that isn't usually talked about, at least not too often. Rather than "it is awful bad bad >:("
I wanna start off by saying, I used and was involved in these terms since I can remember. I always saw it floating around and because of that also picked it up. There was literally zero bad intent about it. It was simply used to describe how experienced someone is. Often we labeled artwork high quality that was simply outstanding and done by someone who has knowlage. Whenever it be background, anatomy, render or composition, colors and more. And that is what these terms mainly mean and should originally mean. How good someone is, based on skill, because there are just things that are obviously higher of quality, no matter your interests. Take realism as an example (no, not only realism is "high quality", any style is and can be)". Not your cup of tea, you probably like anime or toony scribbles? But artwork like this is still very high in quality. Do you look at it and say "bad low quality artwork"? probably not. It is simply solid. Clearly, the artist knows what they are doing which is one of the main things that define "quality artwork"! Also, you might simply enjoy LQ, or MQ artwork more, have you thought about it this way before? Just because you love a way of drawing does not make it high quality, is just means you have specific interetsts. My own interests also changed and I used to enjoy different things. That however has nothing to do with high or low quality.
Now I wanna pick something else up, which is misuse, or lets name it "incorrect use" that, especially for beginner artists, is very misleading. My artwork back in the day was awful compared to how it is now. The thing is, people have different opinions and especially as a none-artist, you will view things much much different than someone who draws also. Whenever I asked for advise in the past all I got was "your art is perfect, I can't critique anything", when clearly it was not, but for that person it was.. simply because they liked my way of drawing. Does that mean my artwork was high quality? No!
People who use or see these terms in a negative way, are very very often beginners. Would you, as a more experienced person feel awful about people calling your art high quality? I highly doubt it. Believe me when I say that I not once saw a medium-high quality artist and thought "low quality" of them. It does not matter if their style is not my cup of tea. Many styles out there arent my cup of tea, and said artists still are high in quality to me because of overall artform and skill. Almost all the time you can see they learned the rules before they broke them.
Being a beginner is normal and completely fine! Telling a beginner their art is perfect or high quality however is very damaging and something I see very very often. No, that does not mean you have to be negative about beginner art or bash the artists. Which, I hope is very clearly obvious to you. But if to you, the artist is lacking a lot of knowlage and needs to learn a lot, don't convince them they are HQ. These people will probably face LQ lables and awful "bad art" comments because they offer their art to others and think they are very skilled and expereinced, and then of course start to hate the "quality lables" and think everybody is mean. I really, really wish people would be more honest with this, and I wish people would have been more honest to me too rather than convincing me my art has no flaws. For that reason I actually didn't improve a single bit for a very very long time until I started to notice the weird ugly stuff in my art myself, or actually got 1 or 2 honest opinions on it.
Here is a protip for beginners: ask for advice and how you can improve, not if you are high quality. If you have got no solid base and haven't built a decent skill level by practicing and studing, you probably won't recive the "everything looks amazing" kind of feedback that you are hoping to get. Which, I know feels amazing but it's not going to get you anywhere.