 I am my own worst critic, and honestly, I'm okay with that. I think I'd actually prefer that over someone else being worse than me. Hello everyone, I am back with a new video, and if you're someone like me who's always looking to improve their art, always trying to improve their skills, their drawings, whatever creative endeavor you're doing right now, then you've most likely evaluated yourself and come to a conclusion that goes along the lines of, I'm not good enough. That feeling sucks, and those words are pretty harsh. I for one am no stranger to self-criticism. I have a love-hate relationship with it. I both relish in the benefits that it can bring, and I can certainly fall into the deep, dark abyss of self-loathing if I am not careful. So in this video, as I create this painting with gouache, I will be talking about the impact of self-criticism on my art, more specifically the painting that you see on screen. Before we get started, I think it's important that we build some context, so it might sound repetitive, I don't know how many times I'm going to say this, but I recently just got back into art. I had a whole video talking about how my skills dropped because I lacked practice and consistency with drawing. However, now that I'm back, I'm more determined to get my skills back up to speed and to improve my art. So that is why I want to talk about self-criticism. One of my biggest art goals is not only to improve my art, but also to continuously improve. Keyword is continuously. And there were many reasons why I stopped making art. I didn't have time, my priorities changed. I had school or work or this or that, but one of the reasons was definitely social media burnout. Wanting to keep pumping out content and artworks that I knew would attract attention and doing it quickly. And in order for it to be fast, I had to be efficient in how I draw and how I made the content, whether it was videos or photos. So I tried to come up with a step-by-step drawing process or like a template that I would use for my videos. And eventually I kind of just did that repeatedly and that became my comfort zone and I stayed in my comfort zone to a point that I started to get bored with my art all because I didn't have the mindset to grow. And last year I read the book Mindset by Carol Dweck and it actually played a significant role in my determination to get back into art. So in this book she talks about the growth and the fixed mindset. Having a growth mindset would be believing that intelligence, abilities and talents can be learned and developed through effort. Whereas having a fixed mindset, they would believe that these things are predetermined or unchanged, like the talent to draw. Some people think it's a skill, some people think you're born with it. I definitely don't have a fixed mindset when it comes to art. I definitely see it as a skill that can be practiced, can be learned, improved, mastered, all of that. So when I got bored with my art a couple of years ago, I actually tried to switch things up. But because unfortunately when you do something for the first time, it doesn't always guarantee that you'll be amazing at it. And when you go outside of your comfort zone, it doesn't always guarantee that the drawings you create are amazing. So a lot of the experiments that I made actually discouraged me. Plus also pair that with the lack of time that I had to draw. So I didn't have a lot of time to draw therefore the only time that I could draw, I didn't really want to draw something bad. So I would either just stay inside my comfort zone or I would just stop drawing. So fast forward to now, I am back to drawing and painting again. Yay. And I have also adapted a learning mindset, more specifically a relearning mindset. There are definitely a lot of things about art that I've forgotten. And in order for me to gain those skills back and then for me to improve further, I actually started practicing self critique. So I refer to it as self critique, but you may also call it self assessment or self compassion, which are different to self criticism. However, a lot of us including myself often group the terms as self criticism, because that's the more popular word. But self criticism, apparently by definition, would mean holding yourself to high standards. And when those aren't met, it's often expressed through negative talk or shaming oneself. Self compassion, on the other hand, according to Dr. Kristen Neff, is being warm and understanding towards oneself when you fail or when you feel not good enough. Self assessment or self evaluation is looking at your performance against a rubric or a goal. And that is often used in educational environments like school. So I actually adapted all of these into how I practice self critique of my art and my skills. And notice how I said art and skill and not of myself. That's important. And because I've placed myself in a learning mindset, I've given myself my own rubric that I then assess myself against. I have also embraced the fact that I will make mistakes, and those are opportunities for learning and improvement. And I also know that perfection is not existent, but there is always room to grow. So when it comes to how I practice self critique, I find that it's important to identify your goals and make sure that it's not vague. Vague goals, I believe, are what can lead to a downward spiral of negative talk. For example, I want to be good at art. This is a goal that many of us have, but it's too vague. Like what is good and what is art? We need to be able to specify our goals. So for this painting, I wanted to achieve using the wet on wet technique with gouache, where it didn't result in muddy colors. That was one of my goals. Another goal for this painting was to finish this artwork with less than three layers of gouache, which meant that if I only did one layer, fantastic. Two layers, great. Three layers, not bad. Four layers, try again. So with those, they're all specific. And I even gave myself a measurable standard to reach, like three layers. And also I gave myself a cushion just in case I didn't quite achieve the goal. And if I didn't achieve the goal, the mindset would just be to try again. And having a clear goal can also prevent you from falling into shame, where we then associate our entire identity with a wrong thing that we did. Renee Brown actually talks about the concept of shame in her book, Daring Greatly. And when I read her book, I realized how I can apply it to self critique, which should never actually focus on the self. Instead, it should focus on the action, because shame focuses on the self. So instead of saying, I'm a horrible artist, I could just say this drawing is horrible, although I actually wouldn't say such vague critique, nor would I ever use such harsh words on myself. In fact, I always try to say these critiques in a compassionate and encouraging tone. And that is reflected in the words I use for myself. And best believe I do say these things out loud, because I do believe that talking to myself is good. Plus, I'm also literally recording a YouTube video and talking to nobody. But anyway, that's a different topic. So I try to avoid vague negative words, like horrible or bad, because it's too vague. Like what is horrible? What makes it bad? And also surely not everything is bad. In fact, I also make sure to practice the feedback sandwich, which is the method where you start with a positive feedback, go to a negative feedback, and then you finish with another positive feedback. And I think that 2 to 1 ratio to positive 1 negative is what makes a critique constructive, rather than just plain insulting. And it's also just not too negative, but it's also not too positive either. For example, with this painting, I would say that I did a pretty good job with the wet on wet technique, since it didn't result in muddy colors. However, I think I could have done a better job with the gladulous flowers, because they look too abstract. And honestly, I can't even tell that they're gladulous flowers. They don't look like gladulous flowers anymore. But to end on a positive note, I did a really good job of mixing the colors. So if I find myself saying this painting looks bad and everything about it looks bad, and then I list all of the things that I didn't like about the painting, trying to be more specific about it, I will then try to list out as many positive things to balance it out and try to get back into that 2 to 1 ratio. And I try to also be a little bit more forgiving with myself when producing positive feedback. It can be vague and it can be simple. Like, I like the colors or I like the eyes. I feel like as long as I end it on a positive note, then I'm good. And another thing that I will do is ask myself why and therefore. So why is this thing bad or why is that thing bad? And then I ask myself, therefore, it essentially gets me out of my shaming mindset and into a more analytical mindset. For this particular painting, I won't be asking why it's bad because I actually really like this painting. Instead, I would ask myself, why did I do a good job on the wet and wet technique? It's because I plan the colors beforehand and I used a color reference. Therefore, next time I'll take the time to gather and create color references instead of skipping over the step. Another example would be why are the gladulous flowers unrecognizable? I think it's because I didn't add the leaves or the stem or the flower buds that I feel like would give gladulous flowers its distinct look. Therefore, next time I will make sure to include the stems and leaves and flower buds. Or another one, why did I do a good job on mixing the colors? It's because I washed my palette and my brush after every section and it stopped it from getting muddy because of the multiple practice sessions also I learned how to properly mix gouache without overloading my brush. Therefore, next time I'll continue to wash my materials thoroughly instead of just dipping them in a glass of dirty water. So I feel like by doing that I'm focusing on the actions and I'm focusing on new actionable goals which then pumps me up instead of discouraging me. And also I would say don't be afraid to critique your own critique. Like was it too harsh or was it too vague? Were there more negative than positive things? Practicing self-critique definitely takes time and patience and it can be a slippery slope which is why it's important to know when it can be negative self-criticism versus self-compassion. If you can learn to balance it, I 100% believe that it can lead to great things. This painting is actually a testament of what self-critique allowed me to achieve. I am incredibly proud of this painting. I managed to achieve some of the goals that I set myself for this particular artwork. The other goals that I didn't quite reach were goals that I realized just probably need more time and more effort but nonetheless, each painting that I create after this one will definitely bring me one step closer to achieving those goals. In fact this is the painting where I applied the lessons, all of the lessons that I learned with gouache so far so if you want to know what those tips and techniques were you can find out here. If you want to know more ways to critique your art without critiquing yourself or if you have other methods to self-critique let me know in the comments down below. Thank you so much for watching and I hope to see you in my next one.