Strengths and weaknesses.

So, a journal posting, because let's face it, today I feel like ranting. And fortunately for me, there's a great alliterative title I can use:

Ragnarok's Random Ranting

With the corny title in place, we may set this trainwreck in motion.

Anyway, they (whomsoever the generic objective they may prove to be) say that every artist has a weak point. This is the area that to them proves to be a greater effort, that they don't enjoy, or that they know they have to cheat on. Not of course that cheating on art is necessarily inappropriate, but I'll leave that as the subject for another journal.

So, whatever this weakness may be, the artist in question is simply just not quite as good at it as they are at anything else, because in the end, the effect is relative. They still might be great at it of course, but it is their Achilles heel (and appropriately, on the note of that myth, it should be said that his heel was no weaker than that of a mortal man).

As you would expect, given the many artists out there, there are a great deal of different ways of dealing with this weakness. Where some people try and tackle it head on, some try and avoid drawing it at all costs, some can't give a damn and just draw it badly, and some decide to go on the internet to rant about it.

Obviously, I'm currently falling into the last category, but outside of that, I don't go to any lengths to avoid, or assail my weakness. I just draw it when it's needed. Now, there are times when I deliberately face down a weakness - rare, but I'll expand slightly on that below.

What is this weakness of mine? I make little secret of it, because to be honest, it'll come up anyway. Although I'm not great with hands and faces when they're small, I can usually succeed in them with a small number of attempts, so therefore the obvious candidate by a mile, is feet - in a rather poetic return to my talking about Achilles heels.

I reserve quite a major hatred for having to draw feet in drawings. It takes me an nigh on innumerable number of attempts to sort them out so they look like they're the right proportions, perspective, angle, shape. To add insult to injury, I've not improved on my talents with feet in years - I've tried, but it's an art that eludes me, if you'll pardon the horrific pun.

If you look at my gallery, there are several pictures in which they don't appear at all, cut out by the "crop" of the picture. Where they do appear, they're either drawings from a reference image (like the Confederate sentry), or something I probably swore about a few dozen times, and then probably still got wrong.

Take Excessive force as an example. I have no problem with the unfortunate's right foot (the lower in the image), mostly because I waved my boots around in front of me for reference - the left foot is definitely much less good. Aside from it being drawn somewhat small, a regular mistake I make with feet, the angle on it is uncreative and isn't what I wanted. It, in my opinion at least, lets the rest of the image down.

Hopefully, I'm going to be able to avoid any glaring feet errors with ragnarokeotw.deviantart.com/ar… - but it's not a given, looking at past performances.

Of course, a weakness might not pertain to an artistic element. It might relate to a style, medium or even the size of the work.
On that note, my weakest style is probably any form of caricature, to the extent I never really try it, save for one time when I drew one of Gordon Brown on a potato (the spud being the surface I drew on, not part of the picture); my worst medium... anything where I can't go back and correct mistakes; and I have to admit a deep envy of those people who can draw a realistic scene on the back of a beer mat.

To take a more positive angle for a moment, it must follow that if one has a worst area, they must also have a best area.

Personally, I consider the artistic element I do best to be arm and upper body musculature, something that I very much enjoy drawing. I may be far from the world's best, but it's not something I ever get glaringly wrong either.
My best style is fairly plain if you look at my gallery. Somewhere between comic art and a sketch, it's something I enjoy, and although not unique to me, has a character of it's own.
My best medium is hard to tell. It's possible that colour pencils will become my best, but only time will tell on that one.
My best size - these days, I almost exclusively draw on A3 paper.

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So to close, to anyone who reads this - painter, sketcher, photographer, whatever you prefer; the few of you that there are likely to be - I invite you to identify your own strengths and weaknesses in the comments below.

Then, with that list, you've then got a list that tells you what areas you need to be playing to, and which areas you should be trying to improve. Indeed, it wasn't all that long ago that I considered colour work a weakness. Now, having faced it, I'm reasonably sure it's actually a strength.