Recently I stumbled across an uncomfortable situation with another artist and this time it let me wonder a few things. I’m seeing a lot of confusion between a compliment and comment and would love to read some opinions. By no means, I’m not attacking anyone, but I’m also putting my grain of salt by providing my opinion.

I say things the way they are and people who know me personally know what type of person I am when it comes to crucial events. I learned during the years of college to accept constructive criticism, and if there was something that I didn’t agree with, instead of putting up a whining, I just refuted the argument with justification (without taking it personally or disrespectfully).  In the field of art, you will not only get praised, but that’s also for sure!

The Incident

I told a fellow artist that her storyboard, which she shared on a local open group, reminded me of a character from a Disney movie. My comparison didn’t go well, and she took offense to my observation by saying, “Comparison isn’t really compliments…”. I was worried that I did something wrong. I thought I had to learn a lesson and not repeat this “mistake” again…

The Difference

• Compliment – is a polite expression of praise, admiration, congratulations, encouragement or respect to someone or something. Like taking your time to say a nice gesture if it’s worth saying.
• Comment -is a statement where you express an opinion or reaction.  It can be used for expressing positive as well as negative remarks, but usually, comments tend to be neutral in nature.

The Pros and Cons of Comparison

So I began a search about this topic and found multiple forums of people saying how awful it feels to be compared to other artists/artworks and how a small portion didn’t bother with it. The problem is, not many people take this lightly, while others say it depends on the context.

People who didn’t love it:

• Felt frustrated or failed because of high expectations.
• They didn’t felt acknowledge of their “originality” or style.
• Felt insulted because they think they got accused or unable to come up with something original – (what?) –
• Feel demoralizing or unmotivated

People who love it:

• They found it encouraging to discover new faces never met before
• They felt intriguingly on how small similarities could connect the original artist with the compared one.
• Learned from other observations

Overall

If you are just here to get praise or gain followers, I think you are in La-La-Land; and if you can’t take an observation lightly, I can’t imagine how can you gulp up constructive criticism and apply it to your work. There’s nothing original left in this world, the wheel has been invented a thousand years ago. All that we do here is take or “borrow” some elements, mixed together in one, redefine them and call them our own. Once you stop caring about how other people are going to see your work, it will stand out on its own.