Late to the party, sorry.
I made a living in graphic/web design for a good many years. My wife still calls me "Bezier God" because of my touch with Illustrator. I've smeared a some oil around and spent too many years in screen printing everything that would sit still, including doors of trucks and chicken eggs.
My very first art teacher told us that good art comes from what the artist is expressing of his/her self. It didn't matter what other people thought about it if the execution was well done the end result pleasing the producer was all that really mattered.
Of course that was a pile of it as the fact is an artist has got to make an impression on people or one can't make a living. That's not a problem with a sponsor or being born Richie Rich, much like pro golfing. For the rest of us it was conform or don't do art.
What drove me crazy was getting a base idea of what the customer wanted, doing a roughout, getting that approved, and then spending 6 to 8 hours refining an ad (or whatever) only to have the whole idea scrapped in an instant. All too often the customer had no idea what they wanted to get across, but they just knew what they
didn't want. No matter if I came up with the cutest T shirt design since "Shit Happens" it would be rejected because of a color placement!
actual scenario wrote:
No, don't change that color, let's see what it would look like if we go with something else.
What else?
Not this.
Dilbert3
Being an artist for the sake of being an artist is where some truly great stuff comes from, but interest driven work can be amazing too or movies wouldn't pull in the insane money they do. I think of the cave artist(s) in southern France so very long ago. It's what they felt, lived and saw. There may have been some lost
reason for the cave artwork, like training/planning hunts and such, but the art remains, and I think there's some amazing stuff there. Is it as
good as some of the Hudson Valley stuff? Is it better? Who cares, they're both great.
RS
Sleeping in the hen house doesn't make you a chicken.