I’m want to take a moment to have a discussion that I have a lot, but usually in much less detail.
This is aimed mostly at people who aren’t part of the art world, but it may be useful to artists as well.
I think about all of this a lot myself: As an artist I often get told things like “Wow, you’re so talented.” Today, I saw a post where someone didn’t realize “Talented” is often translated as an insult, and trying to clarify that they say the word in aknowledgement of the time and energy we put into what we do when they say it.
And this post got me rolling in my thoughts- I appreciate that they make the distinction.
But the term “Talented” is still a very loaded word in my experience, and I want to talk about why.

Whenever this term is aimed at me it striked a nerve. There’s a lot that goes into my mentality regarding “Talent”” and why I dislike the term, and I think there are much more constructive ways to complement people.

Before diving in, I want to say that this isn’t just like- a quibble of mine. I know this mentality may come off to a lot of people as petty, like “why can’t you just take the compliment for what it is?” and I’ve tried to do a lot of work on that but the reality is that there are too many negative connotations that come with the idea of being talented to think of it as someone saying something positive about what I do.
And I know a lot of artists who feel the same way- so buckle up while I break it all down for you from my own experience.

To start with:

As an artist, when many people say you’re talented regardless of what they mean by it, it usually implies that the person is either ignoring or unaware of the effort that goes into what we do. I appreciate that the original post made the distinction, but a lot of people who use the term really don’t.

The word talented isn’t an insult per-se but it’s a word that IS used in patronizing ways by adults while we’re BECOMING artists and learning. It’s also a term that people will use to describe us/our work when they can’t think of anything nice to say about it. It’s what parents tell their five year olds doing crayon drawings.
It’s also over-used by people who don’t really understand the work artists put into what we do, and afer awhle it starts to come off as disengenuous or hollow- like telling the gifted kid they’re “so smart” every 5 seconds in Elementary school- YOU may mean it but THEY don’t FEEL it.
On top of this, those same people as we’re learning that continuously say we’re so talented, eventually start throwing other things in “-But do you really think you can support yourself with you art?” “-But it’s not really realistic as a career is it?” “-But you should start thinking about what you want to do with your life.”
They start adding to it in ways that tell us that THEY (our parents, our teachers, and the other people responsible for guiding us in life) don’t actually BELIEVE in that talent- or the skill, or our dreams.
Usually around middle- or Highschool is when these “Buts” start being added in. Like it’s totally fine for us to be artists as kids, but there’s NO WAY our talent will take us on to be successful animators, or painters, or character artists (regardless of how much artistic media those same people consume and put their own money into).
It starts telling us from a young age that TALENT as an artist is meaningless- and many of us have to start pushing through JUST the talent and scrambling to learn and put as much effort into what we do to be successful at it. At least those of us who aren’t defeated by those “Buts” and quit- because that lack of belief in our abilities kills a lot of artists before they ever get to doing it as a career or in college.

And I want to add an aside here- I grew up being told I was talented at every turn by some of the most supportive people of my art. They wanted me to thrive and most of them didn’t end up turning those same “Buts” on me. My experience was arguably a lot worse. I went to my first portfolio-review when I was 13, hosted by a very large and popular comic book publisher at a small comic book convention. I got to meet the man who owns the publishing company and their top artists at the time- two people who I respected an INSANE amount because all of MY favorite comics had been published or drawn by them.
And when it came my turn, they looked at a couple pages in my portfolio (that had around 100 drawings in it), closed it and said “You’re not what we’re looking for- with art like that you’re never going to make it in comics.”

No critique. No mention of what they WERE looking for. No advice on wat to change about what I was drawng to improve and do the work that they were looking for. They just closed my portfolio and shuffled me on so they could look at the next one.
In one sentence, any idea I had of being “Talented” was destroyed, and it suddenly became meaningless to me. All the work I had put in specifically aiming to do work in Comics, all the praise I got for the work I had done up to that point, had been invalidated in the harshest way, and I was left for over a decade to flounder and try to find a NEW goal in art that wasn’t comics- and I couldn’t, because that was ALL I had ever wanted to do.
So instead I kept drawing without direction, for years, and years. Learning as much as I could with no idea where I would eventually direct all of the things I was learning.

This kind of experience is COMMON with artists. Every artist who’s college age or older probably has at least one story like that they could tell you.

But I digress- on to my second point.

As artists, we also meet a lot of people who see our work and call us talented, and it’s like they’re saying “Wow, I could never do that.” And some of those people follow up with that exact phrase- “You’re so talented- I could never do that. I can’t even draw a stick figure.”
To these people, “Talented” is a state of being, that has always with you. It’s like they see it as some kind of genetic trait- It’s unatainable to THEM because YOU were born with it. They believe that artistic skill is inherent, not learned- and that mentality also often makes them think that because it’s inherent, doing it is like second nature to you. It’s easy. It’s fun. You LIKE doing it and you WANT to do it, and you were BLESSED with the ability to do it- so it must be the easiest thing in the world to you.
They don’t appreciate the work we put in, and they also don’t care for the details. We could sit there explaining to them how much time and energy we put into it all, but all of our explanations just roll off of them without a shred of empathy regarding what we’re trying to get across.
These same people will often turn around a few months later, after basically “Love-bombing” us about how talented we are, and then start trying to demand that we do art for them for free because “You’re talented so this should be an easy request for you!”

And if you give in to those people they quickly become more and more demanding, and treating you worse than even the best-paying clients (who depending on how much they’re paying actually have something of a leg to stand on with their demands) would ever dream to- abusing you when they don’t get whatever artwork(s) out of you they want, and micro-managing everything you do as if they WERE paying you, instead of just being happy that you set the time and energy aside to do whatever project for them- and then going so far as trying to smear your name because you eventually snap at them about their treatment when it finally reaches your breaking point.

Entitled doesn’t even begin to describe what these people are, and it’s because of people like this that I can’t actually trust most people who ask for things like art trades, or who say they want art as a birthday gift, and it’s why I have such a hard time bringing myself to do things like Art Raffles and Giveaways- because on a deep-seated subconscious level I am worried that giving art away to someone for free will result in them turning around and essentially abusing me to try and get more because they don’t understand or appreciate even the most basic aspects of what goes into what I do.

But, those people are like 1 in every 10 or 20 people we come across- and while dealing with them is so taxing and sometimes traumatizing that it has made me literally stop drawing for months at a time afterwards, they thankfully aren’t the status quo.

Point Three:

In the art world, “talent” doesn’t mean much.
You have people becoming successful artists for no reason other than the fact they had thousands of dollars to throw at art that 99% of people didn’t have: They had parents ho could pay their thousands of dollars-per-semester tuition at a high-end art school only for them to go there and fuck around the whole time doing barely any of the work- They never practice, never train, and never learn or improve their skills. Art is the easy way for them, and they treat it all like a game, but then still get lauded as “Talented” despite having no actual talent or skill- inherent OR learned: Because they have the money and connections to get the word out about their “art” at breakneck speed and start out at the top of the pecking order without having earned it by any stretch of the imagination.

But then on the other hand, you could spend a decade REALLY studying and practicing, be born with all the talent in the world, and land an awesome entry-level art job based on that talent and the art you have in your portfolio: only to find out later that you work too slow to keep up with the job requirements, you fall behind, you start to realize that you aren’t putting ANY of what you consider to be your talents to use because they aren’t what the company actually hired you for- and eventually all of your “Talent” suddenly doesn’t feel as much LIKE a talent because everyone else at the job is making the work you’re struggling with look easy. You also quickly learn that not only can you not get by on that talent and have to learn a massive amount of things that art school or college never taught you about the industry, but that everything you DID learn in art school doesn’t actually matter because Commercial Art is an insanely different thing than Fine Art- which is what most schools (even the specalized ones) will teach.

It quickly becomes apparent to you as an artist that “Talent” is useful when you’re starting out, and learning and having people cultivate that talent by giving you praise in that stage goes really far in helping you KEEP GOING, and turning that talent into an actual skill- but once you’re actually DOING art- as a professional, in a career, on your own and in the real world- that “talent” that carried you through most of your schooling and the learning process suddenly feels like the least important, and least relevant part of what you do.

And then you have to add all the other stuff that the art industry throws at artists to the mix on top of that.
Companies advertising jobs for “Graphic Designers” only to be trying to hire a single artist who will be responsible for not just the graphic design for their company but web design, video editing, branding and marketing design, plus the actual social media marketing role- all of which are their OWN individual fields that require years of training in to do, that each should be done by their own specialized person, but are being demanded of ONE person for bottom-of-the-barrel pay (usually minimum wage or barely better), while the role is being marketed as “Entry-Level.”
And add to THAT, the fact that most art and design jobs add “Entry-Level” to roles they’re requiring a Master’s Degree for- which, when I was in highschool a Master’s Degree was counted as WELL beyond Entry-Level and would have (hypothetically) meant you would start off with nearly double the entry-level salary.

Couple all of that with the fact that we’re watching the art world become harder and harder to survive in due to AI, while companies continue to devalue even the MOST talented- and it’s a perfect storm for artists to start hating the term “Talent” or other such hollow praise.
Because what does it matter if someone is praising your talent if you can hardly feed yourself and have to take on a second job just to make ends meet?

Point Four:

“I wish I could support myself with MY art- That’s the DREAM!”
The dream is hollow and soul crushing. People idealize and romanticize being an artist while not looking at the reality, thinking that anyone who’s succeeding at it has it easy.
They sunconsciously act like the fact that you even being able to make it work- even if barely- means that you are somehow rolling in it. The moment they say you’re living the dream, they start to disengage from you. They have put you on a pedestal where they stop looking at your struggles, or if they are forced somehow to see your struggles they get the minset of “Why are you complaining- you’re living the dream. Anyone would be happy to be in your shoes.”

They ignore the emergency commissions posts. They ignore the fact that you’re late paying rent for the fifth month in a row. They ignore the fact that you haven’t posted anything but art or sales posts for months because you don’t have the time to do anything social or liesurely- that you haven’t had free time while you’re drowning under the stress of your career choices- to DO anything else that would give you more to post about than just art and sales posts.

To them, your talent has made you succeed- even if you can’t afford your next meal and don’t know where your next payment will come from- or when it will be.
You start to see those reactions and start to realize that people you thought were your supporters or fans are drifting away from you because you lost whatever grip on your Art drew them to you in the first place and they don’t want to support you when you’re not publicly living the dream like their warped perception told them you were.
Because you have too much talent to be complaining.
Because you can live the dream while everyone else is struggling to make ends meet at a day job- despite you also struggling to make ends meet.

All of that takes the already negative opinion you have of Talent, and drives it further into the ground- because surely if you were ACTUALLY talented, then what these people were thinking about you would actually be TRUE. If you were Talented, you’d actually be able to pay your rent on time, to feed yourself, to have free time to enjoy with your friends, to spend money on things you WANT and not just what you NEED.

Before I moving forward with this point, I want to add a disclaimer here that I love and appreciate my supporters, and the following is in no way an admonission or attack on you all- I am describing the mindset that myself and other artists get into when things reach a fever pitch and we are at our lowest points.

The ideas of “Artists are their own worst critics” and the “Starving Artist” exist for a reason. The general populace looks at our art and sees things they like about it, but as a whole we look at our art and think about what we could have done better or should do differently next time- it can take decades for us to get to a point where we personally start seeing things we like about our art- and that’s made harder by how hard it is to support ourselves in this field and how hard we have to look for NEW WAYS to try and survive every month because for all of our talent people don’t appreciate our work enough to pay us for that work.
But we can’t see reason to like our art a lot of times, because surely, if we were TALENTED like people are saying, people would want to buy our art. If we were TALENTED, we would be doing more than just scraping by. If we were TALENTED, we would know when our next paycheck would be coming in. If we were TALENTED we wouldn’t have to grind for 40 or more hours a week just to get ONE paying client who would drop more than $5-10 on an artwork from us. If we were TALENTED, our merch shops would be making more than three sales a year. If we were TALENTED- any number of things.
And so we MUST NOT actually be talented, regardless of what everyone aroun us is saying. Because if we WERE Talented, wouldn’t they WANT our art? Wouldn’t they be buying it? Wouldn’t we be able to support ourselves? Wouldn’t we NOT need to try so fucking hard to be appreciated for what we do? Wouldn’t people be listening when we tell them AI is fucking everything up for us in an already devastatingly hard field to succeed in?

And so, we start to view ourselves as NOT Talented. Not good ENOUGH. And we have to constantly work towards improving what we do- because surely if we get BETTER at what we do then people will appreciate the work more and want to buy, and see the value in our art.
And then we get better, but nothing changes, so we STILL must not be actually Talented, and we STILL have to keep going and improving-
And chasing “Talent” becomes a toxic cycle because at the root of things whether you as a viewer believe we are talented doesn’t mean anything or act as a compliment if you aren’t also supporting us in the ways that keep us floating and let us keep using those talents.

But instead of that, looking for commissions is a processof wading through thousands of listings with the tag “No Pay” or “Entry Level” to try and find ONE that says “Paid Per Project” and apply to it hoping that the pay they’re offering- which isn’t stated outright- will be at least enough to cover a week’s worth of food and bills. And then a thousand more just to find one where the client tells you it’s $150 for the work- and you know it’s a LOT of work for that low of a payment, but you’re desperate enough that you’re considering it anyway.
And then you apply to those TWO listings during an eight hour day, feeling defeated because you KNOW that your portfolio is one of HUNDREDS being sent to those same two people, and you’re probably never going to hear back from them, only to have to turn around the next day and do the whole process again.
You post about your art and commissions, and prices on every social media platform, you troll the Facebook groups looking for people who aren’t looking to purchase 10 hours of your work for a total of $5 in pay, feeling like you’re beating your head against the wall as the hundredth person that month tells you “Oh I would love to get a commission but I just can’t afford it right now” and you have to calm your hands down from the stress before you can actually type back to them “Don’t worry, I totally understand. I’m just trying to get the word out to as many people as possible!” and then move on like that one response wasn’t the only one you’d likely get today, and convince yourself that it being a decline wasn’t soul-crushing.

Because at the end of the day, it’s not anyone’s responsibility to actually buy your art, regardless of how talented you are, or how desperate you are- and giving them any sign that things are that bad for you in the moment would be the same as manipulating them into buying, which is you selling Pity and not Talent.

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But, again, I digress, because I just came out of the worst of things again this past couple weeks so those feelings are all fresh on my mind and I don’t want to just VENT here.
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I especially loathe the term “Talent”- probably more than a lot of artists do- because I have a really rough time most months trying to support myself: and the vent above comes from me not going through all of that just the once, but consistently- every couple months for the last 18 years. Ialso hate it because on the technical side of art, I’ve dropped untold hours daily for that same 18 years as a professional, honing my craft. In that time, I’ve rarely encountered a positive situation after hearing someone say I’m Talented.

Prior to that 18 years, I went to art school, and prior to Art School I took every art course I could from the ages of 9 to 18 to keep learning.
Throughout that entire time, from ages 9 to 36 (3/4 of my entire life so far), I have never stopped learning or putting effort into what I do- and I’m talking sanity-destroying, back-breaking, effort.

I spend an average of 20-40 hours on each artwork I do to make sure it comes out exactly how I inteded and I still fall short of my OWN expectations sometimes, leading to me putting even more effort into learning between projects.

I had to increase and improve my visual memory and my dexterity, and I have to keep those things sharp. I had to learn every art tool that I use from the ground up: Digital tablets, art programs, oil, acrylic and watercolor paints, graphite, charcoal and pastels, inks, markers an pens- which brands are good which suck, how to clean and care for them to get the most out of them- not to mention how much work I’ve put into art fields that I don’t want to be in just because it’s what people want to spend money on (My fine art and traditional work doesn’t sell when I try to sell it. I’ve never sold a single charcoal drawing that I did because I wanted to, and I’ve only been commissioned for a couple of paintings). Graphic design, Character design, anime style art, comic book illustration, 3D Modeling. I do all of this because they’re fields where people are more likely to purchase- but each artwork I do in those fields saturates my portfolio with work that draws attention away from the work I want to be doing and makes me have to stop everything to set aside time to work on the art I WANT to do and have my portfolio consist of that ISN’T paid and won’t likely result in any new income.

So.
What I do is not a talent, in my opinion.
Iit’s a learned skill that comes at massive daily sacrifice.

Wrap-Up:

So, with all of this, I’m hoping that you all can understand the negative connotations that come from being called Talented, as an artist- especially for artists who are experienced and deep in the field.
Personally, I would love to be able to just accept the compliment for what it is- and I have gotten to a point where if someone says it, I can at least not react negatively and I can thank them- but it’s such a loaded term that it’s incredibly difficult to do so.

I think what’s really important for people to understand about artists if you want to give them a compliment is that (especially if we went to art school) we’re used to critique sessions where someone looks at our work and breaks it down to the fundamentals.
They tell us what they like or don’t about the work- and more often than not the people critiquing our work would compliment us on things that actively showed they understand the work that went into certain aspects of our art- which means that coming from that mentality into the real world where the primary compliment we are given is that we’re “talented” really rings hollow because we can never tell if a person actually means they like our art, if they’re trying to just butter us up to manipulate us, or if they’re being patronizing- because those are the three most common options, and there are a thousand other ways to pay a compliment but that’s almost the only compliment we ever hear.

So instead of telling us we’re talented, sit with one of our artworks that you like for a few minutes. Think about how the art speaks to you/resonates with you/what it makes you feel/what you like about it visually- and then tell us THAT.

People want to be appreciated for what they want to be appreciated for. I hate being called talented- but if someone sees my work and says “Wow your anatomy is really good” I can live off the hype I get from that sentence for M O N T H S because I put SO MUCH EFFORT into just improving my anatomy in art.
When compared to being called “Talented” even just saying “Wow I love your work” is thousands of times better, because there are rarely any negative connotations in our own hyper-fixated, over-stimulated, and nearly ground-to-dust minds to someone else saying they love our work. WE may look at what we’re doing and hate it but “I love your work” will make us stop and set a lot of that hate aside for a moment to try and appreciate what we’ve done in the same way you apparently are able to.

I think it’s also important to try and learn what your artist friends appreciate about their own work, and try to gear compliments you pay to them around those things. The spirit of a compliment it to tell someone you appreciate what they’re doing/are, and that just works better if the compliment is specific to what you appreciate in your own work.

And I can’t speak for every artist out there when I say any of this, and I know I’ve thrown a lot of generalizations in here, but that’s my perspective on it.

Anyway, this has been a far-too-longwinded tirade brought to you by Ash Something, so I’m gonna go ahead and leave it there.
Hopefully you have come out of this blog post with a bit more of an understanding about the art world, and this helps you engage in more meaningful ways with the artists you love.

As always, thank you all so much for your support, and I look forward to everything we will create together!

Featured Image:
The Dancer
A Patrick-Nagel inspired Art Deco piece commissioned by Sam Siegel, completed by Ash Something in 2022