Blue Period - The Dichotomy between Talent and Hard Work

What is

talent

? What does it really mean to call someone

talent

ed? The official definition of talent is a person with a natural aptitude or ability. that some are born with yet many talents is a word fraught with an underlying implication of underestimating the

hard

work

that was required to achieve such high skill similar to sabasa yamaguchi's

blue

period

main character, people complement those creative in attributing their

hard

work

to just talent alone and never mentioning the time or effort it took to get them to success from where they are in all fairness to most people who unknowingly do this is not often said with malice or in a belittling sense it's their own way of trying to complement the creative's work, but unconsciously or not, the word talent can spawn a variety of misconceptions and, in the case of

blue

period

s, towards artists in particular.

Lar is with this common misconception an artistic paradox of talent vs. hard work where sabasa yamaguchi takes the opportunity to show the sacrifices and difficulties artists have to overcome while at the same time simplifying or neglecting their hard work to simply be talented and nothing sums this up better than yamaguchi's. my own words i wanted to create a manga about working hard blue period successfully shows just one example of a misconstrued view of art on its first page alone a visceral example of ignorance and the page contains phrases artists will be all too familiar with what it is so good picasso's paintings and they look like something i could paint these sentences are said so often by people who have never picked up a brush in their life or ever tried to draw themselves the yatara is callous pathos that insults our work rather than critique or give constructive criticism, especially given his own lack of artistic experience, and yet strangely enough, when he comes across a painting he likes is when he sees the value of an artist's skill, but realizes that even when he takes the time to compliment morty senpai's work, that magic word comes up again and no, not that word that probably is teas thinking about talent i am i am talking about talent yata says tomorrow senpai i am jealous of your talent and rightly so she replies thanks for the compliment but actually i did my best to study art and the methods of creating art haphazardly call this my talent is like saying I did nothing to achieve this, some may think it harsh of you to say that yasra hadn't meant her comment to have negative connotations, however for artists this quote-unquote compliment is repeated over and over again. again throughout the life of an artist and many creatives know what it normally means to be jealous of your talent i'm jealous of something that comes so naturally to you something that comes so easily to you and is often said without regard to weeks, the months, the years, potentially, even the decades that so many artists struggle through what yata doesn't know towards the beginning of the manga is that people develop skills through Artistic arts at varying paces, some can take a lifetime to reach a high skill While year after year a young prodigy is found, the creative arts are not subject to a parallel learning curve, even prodigies have to learn from the start. basic concepts and develop their skills, but it is the time of artistic growth that differs from person to person. summing up such an effort in simply being talented is biased and demeaning to the time they spend on creativity, so just like in the case of mori senpai, some people don't think they are talented, since it was their drive and passion that took them where they want. they are not some incredibly lucky natural gift and to show that this is such a common problem faced by many creatives let me show you an example of morty senpai's words in blue compared to a recorded interview with established actor will smith i just have no talent i spend more time thinking about art than other people i have never seen myself as particularly talented i see myself as you know a little above average in talent and where i excel is ridiculous and sick work ethic and no wonder artists continually engage in art related hashtags the time it takes to develop your skills when so often the average person believes an artist blinks and their work is created hashtags like before and after sketch versus the last decade of art glow-up art are ongoing in the art community and those hashtags not only serve as a good reminder for artists to see their progress, but it is They are there as a reminder to non-art audiences that yes, it did indeed require a lot of practice. effort and training, not to mention overcoming the artistic block of doubt and myriad esoteric challenges to succeed, the notion of talent itself is a skewed entity to believe that some are born gifted and, as a disclaimer, not I say that people who believe in the notion of talent are wrong or that talent is not a thing, on the contrary, what I love about sabasa yamaguchi's story is that it describes the ideology of talent from the perspective of a delinquent genius that he begins this story by valuing art as a free gift and it is through his development as a person as a student that he quickly and first-hand begins to experience the challenges of being an artist himself learning and feeling what it is to be an artist.

It really isn't all a gift from God, but the constant choice to improve and challenge yourself because, as Lynn Holding, editor of the academic article, perfectly explained emic, innate talent, myth or reality, in the end, the value of talent as construction is revealed as virtually useless. when, in the absence of the training necessary to reveal it and the effort necessary to maintain it, talent, if it exists at all, vanishes, contrary to Yattara's description of artistic t. alent equates his own intelligence and good grades not for being a genius but for being a hard worker fundamentally showing a hypocritical thought process since the word genius can have similar negative connotations as talent the key difference between both words is the placement of his use talent is normally associated with the arts while genius is used more deeply in the fields of major themes, so why can you understand the validity of hard work towards major themes but not creative ones?

His rejection of being called a genius is not that different from Maury Senpai. talented because neither wants their hard efforts to be dismissed as a natural gift the cause of yatra's self-righteousness is his own lack of experience within an artistic field initially yatra does not have any first-hand knowledge of drawing or painting and with his comment elective art is the kind of class you'll get a decent grade in even if you're bad we can tell why he thinks art is lazy and for slackers because he's not used to experiencing a class that has no clear right answers or incorrect unlike many other stem classes in which he excels in the arts it is as much about expression as it is theory there are elements in the arts that cannot be taught but are only experienced through openness and willingness to seeing the world beyond what it seems is something yata first experiences when he compares shibuya early in the morning to a magical blue world, a c A concept that only he sees but is soon willing to share through his art and it is these realizations that spark interest in art for Yatta to immerse himself in an unknown subject something unfamiliar with a non-tic class and crosses on a test sheet but with the senses guiding the way and the logic that followed afterwards, however, even with his renewed sense of drive, the other mindset that yatra had towards the artistic field added another layer of complexity to his yatara persona.

Living within a poorer household, the prospect of attending a private school is unimaginable due to her mother's constant reminder of her financial position, leading Yatra to grow up with a very studious work ethic. he goes to school with the process of a child tormented by the idealisms of adulthood. Thinking about which issues will lead to greater job security or higher employability rates. His family's financial position greatly influences the way he approaches the arts. Yata's upbringing didn't stop to think about choosing options that would be fun for him but would benefit him financially later, so he cringes at the prospect of enjoying art.

He is facing the war between disappointing his mother and pursuing a new passion that he has never experienced before and this is a very common problem many artists face, there is this added stigma that the arts are a wa The passage of time and jobs related to the arts are a minor achievement compared to training to be a doctor or lawyer etc., but with his determination set in stone after feeling a strong desire to take risks in art, Yatra hits another misconception around art. the arts which is that it is incredibly difficult and competitive to get accepted into art colleges not to mention incredibly expensive and Yatara's shock at this knowledge reverts to this preconceived notion that art is easy when in reality the stats showing low Acceptance rates in art schools prove otherwise.

It's not all doom and gloom though, even with these challenges of closing every corner of yatra, his decision is final in wanting to apply to tokyo university of the arts and I love that he took that risk, even if it meant challenging the principles that had built. around him, in fact, sabasa yamaguchi herself graduated from tua and his own experiences were beneficial in creating a more authentic story. ut also shirahara kamame who i covered in my wichita atelier video also graduated from tua design department the success of those two lovely manga creators are testimonials how art school can lead you to a successful creative career even with that aside there is evidence of I suggest that Japan as a country shares its own neglect of the arts as a whole, which is undoubtedly even more influential in people's interpretations of the field.

In 2015, many humanities and even social science colleges in Japan closed down to attend areas that better serve the needs of society. and to correlate further evidence of the Japanese government's neglect of the arts when asked during an interview what challenges he foresees in taking Japan's liberal arts learning to the next level kanayama tsutomu, a professor at tsumeikon university, also known as the school of popular arts in japan, he proceeded to respond with a harsh reality the first step is to change the way society in general views the liber al arts i hope to say goodbye to the idea that the liberal arts are a form of general education to provide new students before they advance to higher fields of study like law, economics, business administration, or literature, such a myopic view of the arts is just one reason why people like Yatara in the blue period have this subverted perception that the arts should remain a hobby and only those who have a talent for the arts should potentially looking to advance those skills towards a career not to mention once again proving people view the arts as lazier and less important than major subjects and yet as mentioned earlier in the video requires much more insight and review than some people believe that it is necessary to learn techniques to apply them and try to adapt them to their own style. lots of time and practice, and that's just for one technique, these techniques should be applied to all types of media, be it watercolor, gouache, pencil, chalk, clay, modeling. or even just taking a digital approach, an artist might have trained and experienced using watercolor, but if you want to try oil painting, you may have to retrain a whole new set of skills because every medium, whether learning the differences in how paint dries, how paint mixes or even how to hold your new equipment are skills that are hard to master as blue period touches even one technique can have multiple rules or types and you can see this by simply choosing a random selection of manga let's go Take different examples of shading techniques, for example hashing or crosshatching is a very popular way of showing contrast.

The closer the hatch is, the darker the image area will be. about the multiple directions of shading an artist could add, as this could help improve a style not far removed from crosshatching: the use of parallel lines to convey shadows, and the direction in which a shirahara material can be shaped. Komame uses this technique constantly in her work and it is one of the reasons why it is so recognizable. Another popular example is the application of tones ofscreen there are a variety of screen tone patterns but a popular choice is a screen stipple pattern which is homogeneous to pointillism pointillism is a technique similar to hatching, the closer the dots are, the darker that area becomes and vice versa if we compare this to how block color screen tones are applied in aposims, a manga that rarely uses shading techniques to detract. contrast and details we get a completely different visual experience.

I could go on for days showing the variety of shading methods from all the different manga stories and shading is just a technique, a technique that can take years to perfect and learn, it's one of the strongest reasons I love reading manga. , each artist grows in his own style, some even adapt and improve in the course of drawing. their series as a creative myself seeing all that hard work put to paper to see all the time they spent trying to hone their skill is and always will be a treat for me ultimately that is why the blue period is such a story important with a crucial message to us readers we constantly see the end product volumes of well designed pages that we can read in a few hours the blue period is the prelude to many artist journeys the efforts it took to arrive at that final product the difficulties Caring for the Challenges shows us a boy who finally discovers his own calling, something he wants to finally devote himself to and reinvigorate a sense of passion within him.

We watch him learn from his past misconceptions and even experience them himself learning the relentless pain of progression and the determination to evolve because that's how subasa yamaguchi describes herself, it's easy to think that art is a world where only you can use the talent so thank you very much to those who watched it till the end this was quite a personal video for me given my experience and the topic there is a lot of discussion within the topic so if you have anything to share please comment below or interact with me on Twitter because I'm always there