not to be a dick but if you've been through actual university level art school and you still think that it's unreasonable bullying to be asked to push yourself or experiment with different art styles or to have aspects of your artwork criticised by people you asked for an opinion. what was the point of art school for you exactly?
when people say shit like 'my art school tutors told me my art was bad bc it was too anime and cartoonish ☹️' that may be true but I'm not gonna lie what I suspect happen is they told you 'you should work on developing a solid foundation for any art style you choose by pushing yourself to try more representational art Anne getting comfortable with ways of seeing and understanding images' and what you heard is 'NOBODY IS ALLOWED TO DRAW CARTOONS EVER AND YOUR WORK IS WORTHLESS'
and furthermore I suspect that you were really annoying in crits and took any even slightly negative comment or suggestion as a personal attack even though literally the point of art school is to learn to take and grow from constructive advice from your peers.
shout out to the girl on my undergrad who burst into tears literally every crit for three years even though about the nastiest thing anyone said to her was 'it might look cleaner if you rubbed out any of your pencil lines after inking and also used a clean rubber while sketching.' and guess whose art didn't improve at all over three years and whose technique actively got sloppier while other people were moving forward in leaps and bounds? yeah.
there were people who started uni as the best in the class and ended as some of the worst bc they just weren't prepared to listen to criticism or change how they did anything. and there were people who started out very mediocre and went on to produce incredible professional work to a high standard bc they listened and were open to change. and that's got nothing to do with who was more painterly and who was more cartoony or whatever it's just. when you ask advice and get something you don't want to hear do you chew on it and try it out or do you dig your heels in and do more of the same?
and like I'm not saying there's anything wrong with sticking to your guns and doing art the way you want to do art and the way that brings you joy. I'm just saying if you don't want feedback, teaching or advice on how to improve I'm really not sure what the benefit of art school is that you couldn't get several thousand pounds cheaper by staying home and drawing there.
(and I'm also saying if you come out of art school like BOOHOO NOBODY LIKES MY STYLE AND MY ART IS WORTHLESS you might. need to pull yourself together and say either I'm committed to this style regardless of whether people like it and I'm going to keep building on this style and make it amazing, or I want to make art that's more like the work people like and I value, what could I change to get more where I want to go? but if you lie down and say waaaaaah it's so unfair that my art is bad and everyone else is just more talented than me then bullshit. by the time you've graduated art school talent is not the deciding factor in the quality of your work. it's a question of your willingness and capacity to put the work in, take criticism, understand what you want to achieve, and slog through trying and failing to get a certain effect until it improves. professional level art is not an innate talent it's a trained skill, and some people might start further along the path than others bc of their talent, eye or training, but the distance between someone who's talented but unpractised and someone who's less talented but puts a lot of thought and work in closes extremely rapidly. it can be disheartening but if you want to do this professionally rather than for yourself you gotta feel your frustration, have a good scream and cry about it, then get back in to figuring out what you need to build on. bc we're all guilty of sometimes going HOWEVER HARD I WORK I'LL NEVER BE AS GOOD AS MY PEERS but no offence if you just lie down and give up where does that get you? if you just start going 'actually you should all feel bad for not liking my work more' instead of making your work more appealing or finding the right audience for it, that's on you not on anyone else. what was the point of art school????)
