Too aspie to be an artist?

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Sometimes I think I'm too shy/awkward/critical to even think about pursuing an art path...

I'd like to express myself, but find myself too self-conscious and hyper-critical of what other people think...

For example, I remembered doing a horse painting at school, and a girl inmediately wanted to buy it for her sister, but I said "don't buy it, it's too ugly"
also an art teacher told me "do a painting of jimmy hendrix, i'd like to give it to my husband", but I did something that I didn't like so it ended there

I'd like to be less critical and more care-free
Not thinking that everything has to be perfect

About the shy thing: I have stuff HIDDEN, that I've never showed anyone! I think I have problems...
And now that I think about it, it was nice stuff, better stuff than most of my classmates I'd dare to say

I think having a job has helped me be more forgiving and less critical, but still I find myself not knowing what to do, what path to choose...

Evidently you work in design which is, after all, deeply involved in art discipline. The concept that your work seeks perfection is, it seems to me, an awkward stance. I do things myself but they are studies, efforts, attempts at understanding and experiment. If perfection occurs it is somehow a lovely accident. The point is exploration and discovery.

being hyper-critical of yourself makes you a better artist.

I used to do potrait drawings and was really good at getting peoples likenesses, I think the reason I have talent is that I'm hyper-critical about it. I think that is a trait that makes you a good artist.

hi zak, thx for the quote, first time I heard it I totally agreeded it with.

thx sand and bogan, being critical is, to a certain degree, good, because it pushes yourself to give more. But there's a point where it starts to get in the way, not allowing me to start or even finish something, thinking "it'll look like crap"...

Maybe I need to drown my superego in a glass of alcohol...

maybe you need to let yourself go on the initial plans and drawnings, be really messy. I'm sure that is what you do, that is how I was taught and what I naturally do.

Then go hyper-critical etc when you are at the finishing stage.

I know exactly what you mean, I wont go to any of my exhibitions and find them really upsetting. I just pretend to myself that they are not happening

Im a bit nuts about it though and do tend to slash up my paintings quite often, my mum takes stuff as soon as I do them to "save" them lol.

I also cant price the stuff as I find it so worthless, sometimes the people running the exhibitions will price it for me but sometimes they wont.

Im putting together a full exhibition of my stuff at the moment so I am hopeing that I can distance myself from the work enough to have the courage to do it.

I think its to do with being a perfectionist with a dose of self hatred thrown in, I think when you do a piece of art work there is a bit of oneself in it which draws the self hatred to the work.

thx bogan. Yeah, maybe that could help, try to be the total opposite, instead of everything neatly arranged and all that, be a total mess, and DO a total mess

lotus: wow, exhibitions?! that's cool!
I don't go as far as slashing or burning my work
what do you do?

This is my background. Both my parents were artists. I was working in clay and plaster of paris and all sorts of graphic material since the age of 3. I studied cartooning at The Cartoonists' and Illustrators' School before it became The School of Visual Arts. I attended Pratt and graduated as an industrial designer. So I have worked in all sorts of media and materials. I also was trained as a radar technician in the Army Air Corps so I am technically adept. I found throughout my life that my best approach to creation is to turn out lots and lots of stuff that I knew was crap and eventually I knew instinctively what not to do. My best work comes from working quickly without thought and letting my subconscious direct my lines and forms and colors and other connected techniques. I suppose it is a form of Zen although I have no formal training in the area. It is very personal and I doubt everybody can work that way but it seems to fit well with an AS personality.
I also write lots of poetry and the same technique works well there.
Tickling a piece of artistic crap to give it some validity just does not work with me. I either knock it out instinctively well and easily or find it is a waste of time and throw the damned thing away and start again. Every piece I do is a learning experience and whether it is good or bad is a side issue. The important part is that I learn something from each effort.

To put it more simply, the essential product that an artist produces is him or herself. More or less like an engineer who is inventing a piece of production machinery, the product he is interested in is the production machinery. The first attempts will be, usually, all sorts of useless crap but as he discovers his mistakes and understands how to remedy them the machine approaches what he wanted it to do. When he is satisfied with the final product, the machine is ready. Unfortunately it is not that simple with an artist whose final output must change as he or she learns to be more interested in different things. Nevertheless, it is the artist, not the product that is the important factor.

This was done by my Rorschach technique where I made a random imageless pattern and pushed it to an image.
[img]http://<a%20href="http://imageshack.us"><img%20src="http://img440.imageshack.us/img440/9654/redfemalefigur[/img]

I'm not acquainted as to how to transfer the image to this site. Perhaps it is available with the above url

hi sand, unfortunately the link is incomplete.

To show an image you have to put it like this:
[img]http://img440.imageshack.us/img440/9654/redfemalefigur.andtheextension[/img]

the link has to finish in something like .jpg, .png, .bmp or .gif, those are the most common, so the complete link will look like this:
http://img440.imageshack.us/img440/9654 ... efigur.jpg

Here's another try.



Maybe it was too large. I'll try cutting it down in size.



still doesn't work.



[img]http://[url=http://img510.imageshack.us/my.php?image=redfemalefigureveryreduvq9.jpg[/img]

OK, I give up

nice, I like it Sand (:


I think I used the "alternative forum one" (the third option) after going here:
http://img148.imageshack.us/my.php?imag ... ureyx0.jpg

all you need to do is paste the url, no need to click the Image icon before