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I'm not that kinda artist

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Revengeofthenerds, Apr 1, 2017.

  1. Revengeofthenerds

    Revengeofthenerds
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    Seeing toytoy posting about his LP, and over the years about his old music "career" has me raging with jealousy. It's the whole deal where athletes wish they were actors and actors wish they were sports stars. I've tried (and failed) dozens of the times over the years to play the guitar and the most I could get down were a handful of barely recognizeable chorous from The Beatles and Eric Clapton hits. Never mind my singing, which could take paint off walls. One day....

    On the other hand, though, I can cook. I throw together stuff I've never made before, using ingredients that make sense to me. Recipes confuse me, like boxer briefs and the "grower" fettish. I can't tell you any of the measurements for anything or how I learned it all. But it looks and tastes beautiful (I really need to get to the cooking thread....).

    I am a horrible artist. Can't draw a stick figure and have you recognize it as such. My father has a decent side job doing commissioned pieces and my mother has drawn the archetecture for every house I lived in growing up. I must have been the postman's son (or my favorite theory, my step father's), but I can write and neither of them can. Before the brain surgery, I had an NBA press pass and between 60-70 articles published online.

    Focus: what kind of art can't you do but you want to vis-a-vis what kind of art do you make that others can't replicate?

    Alt. Focus: if you could scrap your current abilities, blank slate, what would you choose to be an artist at?
     
    #1 Revengeofthenerds, Apr 1, 2017
    Last edited: Apr 2, 2017
  2. Juice

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    Cooking for me as well. It's the only somewhat artistic thing I really enjoy. I can't draw, paint, or play music, but cooking relaxes me. Especially on Sundays when I plan out the whole meal and can really take my time with it.
     
  3. Kubla Kahn

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    I fucking hate that I could never pick up any instruments. I took piano lessons as a kid and played guitar for a while and was in the school band. I also still get the pangs of wanting to become a rock star every time I get half buzzed and sing along to my favorite music. A shot at karaoke or raising my voice around someone who does sing puts that dream to an end right quick. I get how people get so caught up in it to delusional levels you see on American Idol. Im always half amazed and half pissed when I see someone start singing that has real talent and a voice that sounds so good I can't believe it is coming out of that person's voice box just feet away.

    I can cook pretty well and it's the most "creative" thing I do. I couldn't take an Iron Chef challenge and come up with something delicious on the spot out of random ingrediants. Being a good cook, Ive found, is just having good ingrediants and not fucking up a recipe. You take the time to grow herbs, smoke meats, and cook your own stock, you're ahead of 90 percent of the game.

    alt focus: As far as pure art I'd like to be good at, besides guitar and singing? I'd like to be able to sculpt. Something Ive wanted to try for a few years now. Ive put off a lot of this type of stuff because I should be focusing my 10,000 hours towards a career and being able to provide for myself, but I don't do that much either, plus Netflix.

     
  4. audreymonroe

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    I've been really getting into a wider range of design lately, and have therefore also been getting jealous of designers. I think I have good taste and that I could design something, but I don't think I could design anything truly original. Everything I've tried or thought of is really just a slightly different version of something someone else has already designed. I've done some design for things like magazine/books/websites/publications and a little bit of fashion design, and those efforts have been solidly fine, but especially other kinds of design like graphic design, architecture, furniture, fonts, products, packaging, all that really blows my mind. It's just so cool to think about how people can imagine an entirely new thing, and then make it happen. It's nuts to look around you and realize how every single little thing around you had to be designed by someone. As creative as I am in many other outlets, I just don't think I could do it, but I think it would be a great skill. Plus, it seems like a relatively easy way to combine creativity and actually getting paid for a living. A recent Netflix series, Abstract, was about designers and it was so amazing to watch them work.

    This isn't as pressing, but it also always bugged me that I don't play an instrument. It's just that I dabble in literally every other kind of art and every kind of subcategory of every other kind of art, and yet I'll never be the one you invite over for a night where we're all just going to sit around and jam, man. I was pretty good at piano when I was a kid but I dropped it because it wasn't cool, and I briefly attempted to try to learn the guitar and drums as a teenager, but I don't know, it just didn't catch whatever that thing is in your brain that makes you need to do whatever it takes to learn how to do something and be good at it. I wasn't instantaneously great so I said, meh, never mind.
     
  5. Kubla Kahn

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    The whole not good at it instantly was the killer for me growing up. I blame video games and my parents not forcing me to play sports. They left me up to my own devices, which turned out was to be lazy as fuck. I didn't learn the value of working on something endlessly for hours on end day after day until I was forced to in the working world.
     
  6. Czechvodkabaron

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    Focus: I can't draw to save my life. It provided me with a lot of embarrassing moments in elementary school and middle school art classes and even in some high school classes when we had to do assignments that required creativity. The only class that I have ever failed in my life is middle school art, and I failed it because I couldn't even complete a few of the assignments after I kept screwing them up and having to start over. Luckily it was only a 6-week exploratory class that I could afford to fail. I also nearly failed middle school Home Ec, because I couldn't complete the required sewing project.

    The only instrument that I have ever tried to learn was the trumpet, back in the 4th grade. That was a disaster. Band may have worked out okay for me if I picked an easier instrument, like the clarinet, but I have still decided to stick to being a consumer, not producer of music.

    I can't think of anything that I'm really good at. I can cook just fine, but I don't enjoy it and I always make a mess when I do it. I was an okay athlete and made some all star teams in rec baseball and basketball, but I wasn't good enough at baseball to play in high school and was too fat for basketball (a huge regret of mine now).

    Alt Focus: I guess music, since I really enjoy listening to it. I can't begin to imagine how great a feeling it is to play for a cheering arena full of fans.
     
  7. Durbanite

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    FOCUS: This sort of thread just makes me sad. I am, sadly, good at virtually nothing. I can usually figure out how to get electronics/phones/PCs set up (you have to be a real idiot to screw those up, with all the Help functions around now anyway), I can cook if I want to (I don't really enjoy it, much like the previous poster described), I am adequate at some PC games but completely rubbish with many and I can sing well enough to not embarrass myself - I demonstrated this to "friends" back in the old days in a car to music and they seemed a little shocked that I could hold a note. I told them I had been in the choir at school for 6 months before I dropped it, due to never getting time to eat as every break at school was spent in detention or choir practice. That's about it.

    I am bad at:

    - soccer blogging (been doing that for 3 years on-and-off but gave up as I am rubbish and ran out of ideas) as well as writing in general; my handwriting is also poor so that may be why. I went to occupational therapy for two years as a kid...
    - any form of art outside of singing (was crap at painting, colouring in, drawing, regularly failed art class, etc.)
    - can't play any instruments, which was really disappointing for me, as my grandfather was a semi-professional jazz pianist and had an unbelievable ear for music - he couldn't read music but he could play by ear. My parents may have contributed to this by not paying attention and often closing my fingers in the car doors - my pinkies and middle fingers are bent and/or slightly twisted in some way and always have been as long as I can remember.
    - creativity in general. I prefer to stick to recipes and methods where possible.
    - health or fitness stuff in general. Asthma doesn't help but having one slightly shorter leg than the other also fucks things up for balance and any sort of speed - this gets coupled with back pain that is basically constant. As such, I was shit at basically all sports. I also have fairly weak shoulders so can't really lift weights without experiencing pain (not muscular pain but joint or bone pain)"

    ALT. FOCUS: Just to be really good at something, it doesn't bother me whether this is making 20-second long five-octave range farts, being able to head-shot monkeys at 200 yards with no scope, ANYTHING. Just something. Fuck.
     
  8. Revengeofthenerds

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    I'd give my left nut just to be able to do this.
     
  9. katokoch

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    Focus: I can't make woodworking pieces that require square angles and precise joinery worth shit (not my work, that's just a pic from Pinterest) but I can carve and finish stuff pretty well (I made that from scratch by hand). Part of it is a matter of practice, I've spent a vast amount more time and effort in a specialized area that only relates to the other in certain ways, but I also may just be naturally better at working with flowing shapes than right angles. I am starting to get a better eye for proportions and create styling that is a little more distinctive, which is where I may stand out.

    Alt-focus: Porn star.
     
  10. dixiebandit69

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    FOCUS: As has been mentioned above, I wish I was good at music. I'm totally clueless when it comes to the actual mechanics of music, which really sucks for me, because Li'l Bandit is a budding musician, and Jungle Julia's current career is based on it.
    Over the years, I've tried learning violin, saxophone, guitar, cello, harmonica, and drums, and I just don't seem to get it.

    However, I've always had a knack for all things mechanical. And I don't just mean changing out parts, but actually fabricating my own stuff for custom applications. I think I got that from my dad, who was a broke farmer, and would often make and/or repair his own equipment because he either A) Couldn't afford it, or B) Thought: "Shit, I can MAKE that!"

    Alt. Focus: I sometimes wish I was a financial genius of Gordon Gecko levels. I would have all the money I want to do what I want (which is mostly automotive projects), without having to break a sweat.
    But I realize that guys like that bust their asses in a different way. I think I'll stay a mechanic, and try to make some smart investments for my future, instead.

    Oh, and I've always wanted to be a master criminal. Not a fuck-up like Tony Montana, but be someone like Neil McCauley (Robert Deniro in "Heat") or Rick Masters (Willem Defoe in "To Live and Die in LA").
     
  11. JWags

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    I hope you mean sweat in a non-physical sense, cause those dudes are insane with their work and preparation. Reading 20 page company statements for fun. Also Gecko is an amusing example, cause of, you know, the cheating.

    FOCUS: I'm pretty equally right and left brained. Analytical, good with numbers, memory, etc.. but also fairly creative, musically inclined, soft skills. But I feel as a result of this, I'm kind of muted artistically. VERY into music, love the structure of it, breaking it down, have a great sense for rhythm and tempo. But in terms of pure musicianship, I'm pretty average. I can play guitar, piano, and sing, but I'm not great at any of them, and they certainly didn't come naturally. I understand basic music theory, but that also never came easily as well. I had a friend growing up who was a fantastic piano player and he could sit and transcribe songs, change keys, etc.. all on the fly. It was remarkable. I envy that sort of ability.

    I'm also not "artistic" in any way, as in drawing, painting, sketching, etc... I'm absolutely awful. Which is interesting cause my two youngest sisters are quite talented in that regard.
     
  12. TJMax

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    Michael Jordan used to get pissed off at his teammates for not being able to play as well as he could. When you're good at something, you don't think it's anything special, that a retarded chimp could do it, right? Yet I'll bet you know intelligent people who can't set up electronics/phones/PCs to save their own lives. You can sing too? You contradicted your second sentence in almost the same breath (a good thing, in this case).

    Focus: I can write well, but can't draw to save my own life. As a kid I could do a little more if given prompts from art instruction books, but even then I'm pretty bad. I know one person who can draw and write well, and I'm insanely jealous.* I wouldn't trade skills here, though.

    *=Side note: (Gerald) Brom has this gift too, writing and drawing well, which makes me wonder if dixiebandit read Krampus. Rural criminals vs Santa Claus, you'd like it.