Hey, quick question.

One Star of David.
Two Stars of David?

"I'm not an artist".

Back when I was sitting in Ana's class, her teacher mentioned that she at times illustrates concepts with drawings, and she showed us an example with the caveat that "I'm not an artist, so...." and said she says that when she draws for the kids.

Funny thing, Ana's teacher last year said the same thing.

This kinda bugged me, but I couldn't work out why so I kept my mouth shut. (Given the conversation on competition that transpired later, that's probably just as well.) Now, after a lot of thought, I think I've worked out why.

I'm sure that people saying this to kids are trying to convey a message along the lines of "It doesn't have to be perfect, see? You can make mistakes!" This isn't exactly the same as the same words spoken in normal life, which self-consciously mean more like "Don't make fun of me", but the idea that people might make fun of you is there, isn't it?

But anyway, they want to tell kids not to beat themselves up if it's not perfect, and on the face of it that's a fine message, but I think they're going about it the wrong way, because there's two - well, three if you count "don't make fun of me" - messages there. And the underlying one is...

Well, let's tangent a second.

You all know sometimes I like to hang out on Amazon and make fun of the more thuddingly dull reviewers, right? The ones who want their children to be ignorant of the word "ain't" or "hate" or "stupid" or "butt", the ones who more or less outright state that a book without an explicit moral or educational meaning is worthless, the ones who think that showing bad behavior is the same as endorsing bad behavior? (Some of these people? I think they just don't like books. But that's a post for another day.)

Well, if possible, they also dislike the artwork. Or, as they say, the "art". "My kid could draw this picture!" or "Everybody knows pigeons don't have long necks!" for Mo Willems becomes "A five year old could do this picture!" for "The Hello Goodbye Window". (Incidentally? Happening to have an interracial family != propaganda. Thanks.)

Jan Brett doesn't get this criticism, which gives me a good basis of comparison.

And it took me some time, but I think I have "the rules of art" for us all. (These aren't the rules that involve naked ladies and plinths, they're the rules that involve art and "I'm not an artist". Don't get your hopes too far up!)

1. Art is HARD. If it doesn't look hard, it's not art. If I could put tracing paper over it and copy it, it's not art. If I think I've ever seen anything remotely similar to it made by my own hand, it's not art.
2. Art is representational. Period.
2a. Since art is representational, anybody choosing to do a picture with people or things in it that isn't exactly like what I pictured in my head has to have done it because of lack of skill, rather than through stylistic choice. There are few, if any, valid options for making art less representational, and those options are probably ugly.
3. Art is USUALLY better when it has details. Otherwise, I can't tell if you chose to have empty space to make a point, or if you just were too lazy to draw anymore. It's possible for a picture with space to be good. It's never possible for a picture to look too cluttered. Less is not more.
4. Comics aren't art, and they sure ain't literature. But that goes without saying. Also? Don't say ain't. EVER.

I think there's some rules for being an artist as well:

1. If you aren't trying to make a living on your art, you're not an artist.
2. Then again, if you're trying AND FAILING, you may be an artist. Unless you just suck.
3. If you draw (or whatever) something and it's not PERFECT, you're not an artist.
4. Art is a talent, and there's no way to improve it, see rule 3.

Of course this is all a load of unmitigated crap. Stinky, disgusting, barely-solid crap on your shoe.

All those people saying "My five year old could have done this!!" may be right - maybe if you gave them some tracing paper and a pencil they could copy the image. Maybe with time they could do it EVERY time, sure, why not? I doubt they really could be consistent in whatever style we're talking about, but let's run with that.

Who cares? There's more to art than just having accurate drawings to scale. Mo Willems got his Caldecotts not through having accurate, detailed, "beautiful" pictures; but through having pictures that are funny and that accurately capture the *mood* of his characters. (And I've heard that he's made a conscious decision to have his artwork look like a kid could do it in order to make his audience relate to it more easily. If true, that argument is blown right out of the water anyway.) Kevin Henkes got a Caldecott for The Hello Goodbye Window because his pictures, though "messy", reflect the genuine warmth between grandrelations. David Shannon's illustrations strike me as appallingly ugly, but a lot of kids really dig them; and Jazz Baby? Dude, I love that book and I think the people have incredibly misshapen heads. I ignore it, though, because I also think that the pictures sing and dance on their own when the book is shut. They're not even remotely "accurate"... but they are. They're accurate to the words and the feelings. It's like a quote I read on metaphors: "There's true, and there's true. I've never seen the wind run, but the horse still ran like the wind".

And how this all relates to the teachers who "aren't artists"? Well, when they say that they think they just mean "It's okay not to be perfect", but what they're SAYing is that there's some form of "perfect" to begin with. They're reinforcing all that nonsense I just said up above, that art is a talent, that it all depends on doing pictures that look the same as the outside reality and have some appropriate level of detail (stick figures don't count), that most people aren't gonna be able to do that.

And that's just not an accurate representation of the world as we know it.