The Critique Award
Welcome fellow Smeargle-goers!
Critique is one of the best things an artist can ever get. It encourages them and helps them improve with an outside perspective and constructive advice. However, excellent critique hasn't really had a way to be specifically rewarded, and the Critique Award hopes to remedy that.
This award will be given to users giving helpful advice to the many artists in our Studio hopefully every one to two weeks. Their names will be recorded here in this thread, and winning the award will definitely be taken into account when choosing users for Community Contributor — for example, our Community Contributor Bummer was partially nominated for his excellent critique with posts such as this.
You might be thinking right now, fine, but what makes good critique? Here are some handy hints on how to help improve your advice.
• Look at examples of good critique.
Looking at critique by our Community Contributors and other respected artists/contributors can give you a great idea on how to structure your critique. There are many great role models to follow in critique with many great posts; Bummer's post linked previously is a great example, as is this helpful critique from ium in the Smeargle Card Project.
• Critique where you are knowledgeable.
While looking at the critique of artists is helpful to improve your own, if you're not as experienced then DON'T feel you have to match their level of detail or give advice on how to improve. In fact it'd probably be better to stay away from these things, but this doesn't mean you have nothing to say. Anyone can tell what they dislike in a piece or feel is badly done. In the words of lovely smod Zracknel, "you don't need to be a chef to know the steak is burnt." Critique in your comfort zone.
• Don't be afraid to critique other critique.
Critique works best as a discussion. If you disagree with a point somebody else made, then feel free to respond saying that! This is just as helpful for an artist, to see the opinions of what people like in their work, and often these discussions will resolve with a single piece of improved advice, rather than two pieces of advice offered separately, which can be confusing. A great example of this is Zracknel's post in Art for Articles.
If you combine all of this with a friendly nature you'll be a great critic in no time! So get out there and get posting :)
Happy critiquing~!