As Art enthusiasts, artist’s, or art students, we all know about constructive criticism, giving it and taking it. We may spend hours on a piece of work, only to get back comments on how to improve it, telling us it is not exactly at it’s full potential. Although it may be painful to hear, after making those fixes and spending the time to listen to others’ opinions, the final result is always much better than the original, thanks to criticism. Throughout college especially I have learned that receiving criticism is one of the greatest aspects of the art world, because you get to hear other people’s opinions to improve your work. Personally, I used to struggle with giving it, because I never knew how to properly and respectfully tell someone they should change something about their piece to make it extraordinary.

From my experience, the best way to give criticism on someone else’s work, is to bookend your opinion with positives. For example, compliment a specific aspect you like about their work, then state something they should work on or change to improve their work, and end with overall theme and tone that you believe it conveys. This way you are not too harsh, but you are helping out your peers to become even better artists. It is important to not only point out what works, but also what should be changed, so that the artist knows what they succeeded in and can build off of that aspect to improve from there.

Overall, it is good to keep in mind that criticism is to help make you a better artist, but is also just a suggestion. Not everyone will love your work, but art is made to create emotion out of an audience, so when someone says that your piece may work better if you change a certain color, they are artists also only trying to help you improve.

Featured image courtesy of here