Knowing What Type of Artist You Are

On self-awareness, fine art vs design, expression vs technique/craft, why

It’s been a crazy few months for me, as I’ve been seeing career coaches and restructuring much of my existing portfolio.

I began watching this video called “Knowing what type of artist you are?”, and I’ve always been wondering why I felt my art style began to plateau.

One of the things I began to realize is that my biggest strength is I’m very strong at encapsulating a lot of trends in current affairs, and blending them into the intersection between technology, politics, and society.

Which is crazy, because I’ve been doing several AR filters for various brands this past year, and my personality clashes very strongly with merchandising/brand.

I’m much stronger with more conceptual forms of art (fiction, painting, illustration) than industrial forms of art that require a high level of precision and 3D (industrial design, 3D character design, etc.).

It’s not to suggest I don’t enjoy working on 3D. Far from the contrary, I love working with 3D.

Rather, my workflow/pipeline is much closer to fine art & fiction.

I feel like it’s because I read epic books like War and Peace, Tale of Two Cities, Les Miserables, Don Quijote, where I like exploring how writers attempt to convey the wide canvas of society via its characters and the complex social structures that they convey.

Admitting this is very important.

Whenever I work on 3D projects, my muscles get really tense because its a very mechanical process. This is still surprising to me, having done 3D for the past 2-3 years.

Technical precision requires me to really get deep into the knees of how something works. And yes, I can do this really well, but it’s something that I’ve developed over time after lots of brute force.

I think it’s because COVID-19 really made me think about society much more. I became more sensitive to a lot of a lot of shifts in society, infrastructure, and the workforce - some positive, some negative.

And over time, the joy of technical precision became very incremental to me.

I do think some people are way stronger at technical precision than I am. And I’m okay with that.

Technical precision tends to take away a lot of existing energy I have in helping make sense of society.

I accept this about who I am. I embrace this.