abbyc33•2mo agoMost Upvoted

Shoutout to the guy at the art fair who called my digital print "flat"

I was showing some of my fantasy landscapes at a small booth in Portland last June. A guy in his 50s stopped, looked at one for like 10 seconds, and said "the colors are nice but it feels flat, you know? No depth." I was kinda annoyed at first. Then I spent the next two weeks studying how to layer shadows and highlights in Procreate, and it totally changed how I build my scenes now. Has anyone else gotten a blunt critique that actually pushed them forward?

3 comments

3 Comments

hannaht292mo ago

The "feels flat" critique is something I actually disagree with in a lot of cases. Flat doesn't always mean bad, it can be a whole style choice. Some of the best fantasy art out there works because it stays flat and graphic, it's not trying to be a photo. I get that studying shadows helped you, but I think the real trick is knowing when flat works for your vision and when it doesn't. Not every piece needs deep depth to hit hard.

henry_moore552mo ago

Three hundred years of flat design in Japanese woodblock prints and people still act like depth is the only way to make art work. I get that shadows and form are important but half the time when someone says "flat" they just mean "doesn't match what I like." It feels like a way to shut down a style choice instead of actually talking about it. Maybe people just need to decide if they're judging technique or personal taste.

skylercooper22d ago

@henry_moore55 dropping three hundred years of Japanese woodblock prints like a mic. Yeah the "flat" critique gets thrown around as a catch-all for "I don't get it." Funny how nobody tells a Matisse he needs more drop shadows. It's like critiquing a haiku for not being a novel.