Social Waste Product: Fan Art

painted-bees:

swegener:

I spent the morning un-following a bunch of very talented people on Tumblr.

That feels like a really weird thing to say. And it is.

It was nearly a dozen different artists in all, and they were all extremely talented. Part of what moved me to Follow them in the first place was their skill. In…

I think there’s an unfair expectation placed on ‘talented’ artists that because they have ‘talent’ or a certain admirable skill set in art making—that they owe it to the world to take art and art making seriously. That “talented” artists cannot simply be hobbiests who have a day job outside of the creative field, and produce art on their free time for a hobby—a hobby that’s on par to playing video games, or going swimming, or playing a sport for recreation. 

 If you are an artist, and you are a story teller, and you take your art ‘seriously’ and develop your original ideas and take a lot of pride in that, that’s okay! Similarly, if you prefer looking at other people’s original ideas in conjunction with skillful illustration, that’s totally understandable! And if you don’t get a kick out of seeing fanart, regardless of the artist’s skill level, there’s nothing wrong with that!

  However, if you’re an artist who does work for fun and posts it online to share with your friends, you don’t owe it to anyone to ‘mature’ and fetch yourself some ‘creative ideas’ of your own. Even if you’re really insanely good at it, you do this for yourself and you still share it with the world. You open your hobby—something you do for the love of doing it—to the judgement of strangers, and you do so charitably! You do so with the thought in mind that someone, somewhere, might get something positive out of it. This, to me is a really great gift that only you can give! It is by no means a waste of talent. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. 

  And to have it heavily suggested by some stranger on the internet that you some how owe it to everyone to ‘mature’ and start taking your work seriously, start developing your own IPs, and stop doing the fanart you love doing so much—that you invest a lot into as a fun past time, that to me is unfair.

 I feel like the folks who approach fan artists with this sort of entitlement are the folks who have to “mature” and really come to understand and make peace with the fact that there are some people who are in this for fun. Not everyone does art to please the taste and desires of others. Most people aren’t even aiming to make art in a professional context. If you want to see more creative ideas, that’s awesome—you and I are on the same boat there. But to tell folks who produce fanart for their own entertainment that they need to ‘mature’ and cut it out—who are you to them?

 Again, it’s okay to not like fanart, and it’s okay to unfollow people for exclusively producing stuff you do not particularly care about. Again, I feel similarily—fanart isn’t my cup o’ tea either. But you miiight do well keep your sense of self entitlement out of it. It’s definitely not some noble thing you’ve presented that will inspire betterment in the hobbies/efforts others, I assure you.