Unsolicited Critique

I was happily painting along when my guy from P.C.Fix came to work on my computer.  My friend Patty was here painting with me.  Or should I say, I was painting and she was drawing different compositions for a painting she wanted to do of the tulip fields.  She wants to enter it into the competition for poster artist.  She was a finalist last year. 

Anyway, here I am happily painting along when Kekoa, the computer guy, (who, by the way, is normally very quiet and the typical nerd computer guy) gets up from the computer and asks "So what have you been working on?"  I show him the painting on the easel and he studies it for 10 seconds and says "How would you make her cheekbones higher?"  He might just as well have slapped me upside the head.  He's the friggin computer guy for Gawd's sake!  What does he know about art?  But I KNEW HE WAS RIGHT!  Patty had told me the bitch I was painting  looked like Miss Jay, the guy on America's Top Model who teaches models how to walk the runway.  Anyway, I knew something wasn't right and she did look like a transvestite.  Besides, I wasn't done!

So Kekoa goes back to work on the computer, I go over and whisper to Patty "Do you believe him?"  "What does he know?"  "But he's RIGHT!" 

Now Patty thinks  I may as well pick his brain too.  I'll show him my ideas and just see what he has to say.  She shows him sketches for her painting and he actually says "That's Bammer".   WHAT?  What the heck does that even mean?  He explains it's bad....not bad meaning good.......but just plain bad.  And........unsolicited......he goes on to explain what makes it bad.  (I had already told her I didn't like the composition, but obviously his opinion held more weight.)  He explains:  A single person in the tulip fields is too lonely looking.  Too many people is not good either........nobody wants to go if it's crowded.  Not in the rain.  He suggests to put a child with the lonely woman or at least her significant other.  Make it happy looking.  Better for selling people on the tulip field experience.  and again.........HE WAS RIGHT!

OK.  What have we learned here? 

1:  As artists, we need to listen to critique from others......even the so-called man on the street. 

2:  You can't judge a book by it's cover.  Even quiet computer geeks could have a wide variety of knowledge swimming around in their heads that has nothing to do with computers. 

3:  The next time I have Kekoa fix my computer I'll be sure to have a problem painting on the easel.
 

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