I don't believe talent doesn't exis or matters very little

[Aaron Death]

Anyway, the idea that talent doesn't exist, or matters very little seems to be very popular in this forum. But I for one simply don't believe it.

I always think this way. Anyone can become a good artist if they work hard. But you can only become a great artist if you are really talented. Here, I am thinking of being great in the sense of great artists in history.

Seriously, Turner was said to be the next great artist in 16 or 17. Michelangelo carved David at a very young age. And our contemporary Linda Bergkist simply created those great amazing art from 23 or so. They don't necessarily work a lot harder(they work hard i know, but others do too) than some people on this forum.

And talent is not something which makes you learn faster. There are things which can be achieved only by talent. Just look at a painting of storm by turner, how can you learn to paint storms or mists like Turner? It isn't like anatomy where you can practice on it. Painting storms takes a real intense soul.

I have a feeling that I kinda over worship those masters. But oops, just look at their works.

And you don't have to tell me talent alone doesn't make an artist. I know that.

So how do you guys think?

[Grendel Grack]

I have a feeling that I kinda over worship those masters.

I'd certainly say you do.

[Eric Young]

Turners paintings are so deep because that was the style of the time period. He was an expressionist, so all his paintings have strong moods that make you feel. I don't think it matters so much about how he painted, he wanted people to feel them, and that takes something more then which colors to use and how to mix the oils. That could be called his "talent"
Look at Durer, he was like the founder of illustrators but he didn't even start as an artist. His father was a gold smith and made him learn that trade when he was young. So when he became an adult he turned to art. Then he left Germany and learned oil painting in Italy (i think). He was an amazing painter, it goes to show you that you don't need to be born with a talent to be amazing.
But I do personally believe in something like talent. But it's not like you can be born able to draw it's more you're born with an ability to see differently then others. Some people pick up on how they see things and then are able to translate it to paper. Add this with a child's imagination and you have what seems to be a child who was born with "Talent" to be an artist.
But someone can be taught to see this way and then be able to draw those things down.

[riceface]

of course talent matters.. thats a no brainer

[Elwell]

;2199960']
Look at Durer, he was like the founder of illustrators but he didn't even start as an artist. His father was a gold smith and made him learn that trade when he was young. So when he became an adult he turned to art. Then he left Germany and learned oil painting in Italy (i think). He was an amazing painter, it goes to show you that you don't need to be born with a talent to be amazing.

Baaaaaaaad example.
Durer's Self Portrait At The Age Of Thirteen:
636445
Apprenticing as a goldsmith was actually a pretty common method of training for painters in the Renaissance. A goldmith's profession required all sorts of artistic skills, not just, or even mostly, jewelrymaking.

[ryan mcshane]

i agree with talent, it's a natural born thing, it's not about "practice make perfect" i know it does, but you will exceed with talent. If Van Gogh didn't have talent, he wouldn't be who is today. Talent can be seen as "patience" Seurat, in this case is very talented.
ryan

[Raoul Duke]

Talent comes from drawing on your desk in school. The big "Fuck you" you wished to express to the world. It's the cave drawing that says mastodon tastes good. The important thing is getting people to believe it. It is very hard to execute your point when one in five has that talent within them.

We are all talented here and talent is nothing anybody can suggest. We can only assist in executing your talent.

A talented ego-maniac doesn't mean shit. They can't learn. If you can't learn then you can't rely on talent.

If you have talent DEVELOP IT. Convince the world of your talent, without explanation.

[Hyver]

trying to define abstract terms such as talent or art can be interesting, but in most cases, it's seldom more than a lot of back and forth throwing of words without ever reaching some sort of conclusion or consensus.

believer or not, imho it's the work that counts, not the artist nor the amount of talent/skill/luck/voodoo applied to it...

that said, you do seem to have a talent for posting in the art discussion. are you sure that's where you want to put your efforts in?

[Baron Impossible]

Certainly talent is important, and variable dependant on the person. Saying it isn't is like suggesting everyone can be equal in sports if only they train hard enough. People accept that the latter isn't true because it's easy to imagine skeletal and muscular structure varying between people, but fail to realise that artistic talent is no different. It isn't some spiritual woo-woo, bestowed by fairies upon our unborn souls, it's a direct result of the structure of the body, brain and nervous system. And seeing everyone is different, everyone will have a different degree of talent.

However, I have to say I don't agree about Turner's storms being a particularly good example for the expression of talent, or much else for that matter. If I were asked to give an example I'd point to someone like David Curtis, who has a mastery of light that IMO could never be consciously learned - http://www.djcurtis.co.uk/DAVIDC~1/david_curtisx.html (http://www.djcurtis.co.uk/DAVIDC%7E1/david_curtisx.html)

[the_jos]

I'm having a mixed opinion about this.

I think the mind is very flexible, far more flexible as people assume.
This means a lot can be learned through education and practice.
Please do not forget that a lot of the great masters had an apprenticeship, which means a lot of education and even more practice, not so much on what they became famous for but in creativity in general.

But why doesn't every apprentice become a master?
I think that's got to do with what I'd like to call heart, love, fascination.
When you really love (to do) something you will sacrifice a lot for it.
Being the best in something does require a lot of effort, though it doesn't always seem that way.
For example, the person who goes to school and really loves math will probably takes additional assignments home to make them, not because he has to but because he thinks it's fun to do. But the time he or she spends on that fun is also practice.

In my very early teens I knew a lot about the birds living around in my country. Far more than people at my age. It was fun for me, I was constantly watching out for them whereever I went, reading books on them from the library, went into the countryside to observe them. At some point someone said in a magazine: "can anyone under 50 remember seeing a Black Grouse alive" because of something a PM said. And I was like... Yes, I did see a couple of them a while ago, not that far away from where I live. We passed them at about 80km/hour since we were by car. Was I lucky or just observing better than others? I think the latter to be honest.

It's this love or fascination for things I would call talent.
Look at the sky. Why can some people look at the sky for hours seeing different shapes and colors emerge while others look up and wonder what's there to see. Why do some people spend hours and hours looking at chemical equations to improve some kind of obscure plastic?
Up to a certain point fascination can be developed for sure.
But the 'love' part, the obsessive? Maybe that's what seperates the masters from the good artists....

[Dilated]

The only talent you need in life is determination and passion.

Theres only a few things in life that truly need talent, like car racing, though its all still subjective.

[~Faust~]

Hmm I don't know what talent is supposed to be so I don't believe in it. I believe that some people can draw very good, because I can see them drawing very good.

That said, I think there's something like sensitivity that's really important. Caring about the subtle differences in angles, tone, weight and balance really does differ a lot. All the techniques, all the accumulated theory means nothing if one is not willing to watch closely and find pleasure in observing subtleties.

Other that that there's the firmness of the hand with making straight and voluntary marks as well as the firmness of the mind making decisions and sticking to them without fiddling around too much. I believe in that, too, There's also a lot of difference to be seen on that level.

And there's people that are just plain lazy and shove the blame for that to others. Calling them talented. Did you know that the idea of talent and genius has been introduced in the 19th century as a part of a romantic mindset? People like DaVinci and Rembrandt didn't care about that concept at all, all they cared for was their work. And so should you.-

[algenpfleger]

Pff. Why would you even think about this? Looking for an excuse to be lazy?

[FranciscoShreds]

Honestly, It's very easy to attribute much of what the old masters did to talent. And yeah, maybe people do have this amazing gift to perceive the world in a different light than everyone else, but then again, everyone has their own lens to look through, and what you see isn't exactly what I see. If the old masters had talent in abundance, then why is it not as prominent today? Personally I see talent as being worthless if not nurtured. And if you think of any of the old masters most of them weren't given much more choice than to do so. Even someone like Vermeer, who had an amazing grasp of light and who was not born to the most well off family, was able to do an apprenticeship and to hone his talent. Even with this, Vermeer, because of financial reasons and the time, was not able to produce as many works as some of the other masters, having only 40 or so paintings credited to his name. So maybe Michelangelo might have seen the david when he looked at a block of marble, or any block of stone, but would we even be talking about him now if he had never learned to properly work with marble, to properly understand how it breaks and the type of work needed to create things in that media.

I suppose that it's easy to write off the hard work that Bouguereau, Sargent, Michelangelo and every other master put into their work as talent, but it's this type of mindset that usually dissuades people from even attempting to reach that type of level. It's easier in this day and age to just write things off as talent and be content with sitting back and getting distracted with the latest youtube video craze, believing that it would be futile to even pursue the idea of being that great. I suppose it just takes an individuals passion to be the motivator that replaces the assistance that people showed to people with even the slightest bit of 'talent' when they put pencil to paper.

If you have to be your own motivator, with communities like CA around that have an over abundance of motivating material and people, there's no reason not to strive for those types of heights.

[Grief]

a thread about age and artists:
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=98794

threads about talent:
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=148561
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=123502
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=126138
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=120998

[Baron Impossible]

If the old masters had talent in abundance, then why is it not as prominent today?

It is. Don't make the mistake of believing just because society tags a bunch of long-dead artists with the label of "master" that this automatically makes them superior to the artists of today. Too many people look to other people to give them their opionion on art rather than using their own eyes and expressing their own opinion. I have no problems in saying, for example, that I view Constable as a master in the same way as I view Van Gogh as a talentless amateur.

[jhofferle]

Some people are built to be naturally good at sports. I think everyone accepts that because it's very simple to see that a 6'5" guy is going to have an easier time being a pro football player than a 5'6" guy. It's more difficult for people to believe that some people just naturally "think" better than others.

It's not unrealistic to believe that minds can be wired to be naturally good at certain things just like bodies are built to be naturally good at certain things. Some people just learn calculus very quickly, while others struggle. Some people can pick up several foreign languages, while others have a difficult time learning one.

This doesn't mean that a natural artist can become a great without hard work and it doesn't mean that you can't become great without natural talent.

[sketchfreak]

just another idea....

There is no "Artistic Talent" or "Engineering Talent" or "Mathematics Talent" or anything like that!

Talented = Genius ... Genius can use it's brainpower to master any skills!

Talent is about Brain power, Some peoples have stronger and more intelligent brains, They experience higher states of consciousness ... they have strong visual/auditory memories and learn spatial things at speed of light...

...and 9 out of 10 suffer from mental illness, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, anti-social behaviors, drug habit, and other types of madness!

There are lots of genius minds out there, even more intelligence than 1879's Einstein brain...

So, Talent exists and if you are talented/genius ... You can use your super-intelligence to learn things (Art? music? math?...) much faster and better than others!

Ohhh...and doesn't mean as only talented/genius can learn to draw amazing stuff...

[Yng]

As the human brain develops during childhood, it cuts connections it uses rarely, in favor of the connections that are stimulated frequently. Connections are cut around the age of three, and then again in the early teens. This leads to some people having brains better developed for logical thinking than others, and can lead to having an easier time learning specific things, like drawing for instance (which involves a great deal of logical thinking).
I guess this is what you'd call "talent". No one is born with it, but some do have brains wired more conveniently as a result of how they've lived.

However, if your brain happens to not be wired most conveniently for drawing, it doesn't mean you can't become an awesome artist. A strong willpower and hard work gets you a long way.

[dose]

- If you have the rare combination of genetic disposition, perseverance, and cleverness you can be Michael Jordan. With the last two, anybody without serious physical handicaps could make the NBA.

- Lots of people use their perceived lack of talent to rationalize lack of work. Hence the need for the idea "There is no talent, only hard work".

- When I taught a lot of juggling, the #1 reason people gave for why they thought they couldn't juggle was "lack of coordination". Actually, it was the idea of being uncoordinated that they used as an excuse to not experience the initial failures that are inevitable to learning to juggle. They'd try for 30 seconds and say "See, I'm uncoordinated!" and give up.

- If you're worried about how famous you'll be, you might be more into fame than into art.

- Fame happens for all kinds of reasons. I don't think Turner is famous purely for his talent.

[serhc]

it's clear enough that humans differ in terms of plastic intelligence (i'm making up words here, i don't know the actual term), and i believe that applies not only to understanding scientific concepts, but also artistic ones. after all, it's just understanding some abstract concepts, and then applying them. the creativity required in making great art seems similar to the brilliance needed to advance science. some people are better at it, and some are worse. that we have differing amounts of intelligence, and so - talent, is undeniable.

it's not that anyone can achieve anything without their nose at the grindstone, but not everyone can, even if they do work very, very hard.

[Farvus]

The only question is would you continue drawing if you realised that you're not talented? Would that discourage you?

If you're really so much into how much it matters then you're more likely to give up than the person who doesn't care.

[Swampdigger]

I think that the reason a lot of people say talent doesn't matter on the this site is because there are a large number of people wanting to know "if they are talented." It's pointless to wonder about it, because it's something that can't really be measured. So we tell those kids, to just draw and work hard, because whether or not they are talented that's what will develop their artistic skills.

I agree with something Richard Schmid said in his book Alla Prima about talent.

"Don't bother about whether or not you have it. Just assume that you do, and then forget about it. Talent is a word we use after someone has become accomplished."

It really is pointless to try to label someone as talented or not, some people it'll take years of grinding before something clicks and they start to really understand art. Others it won't take that long.

And honestly, I know it can be an issue when you're trying to figure out what you're going to do with your life. "Am I talented enough to make a living off of this?" But seriously, if you enjoy art and that's what you want to do, then do it. If you don't like art, but everyone says, "you're so talented", you probably should not do art. I would say a desire to do it will matter more than talent in the long run.

Now I'll actually answer your question. Yes I believe talent exists. No, I don't think talent should decide if you pursue art or not.

[~Faust~]

Some people are built to be naturally good at sports. I think everyone accepts that because it's very simple to see that a 6'5" guy is going to have an easier time being a pro football player than a 5'6" guy.

I vote for introducing Sumo-wrestling and speed-chess into any public schools' curriculum.

[SMILEFACE]

I Think Birds Fly Because They Were Ment In Most Cases Ta Do So I Think People Fly Because We Want Too

[the_jos]

Just got home from a visit to the dentist with an additional idea. I get ideas in the strangest places
What I wonder about is this: did the 'old masters' and more recent masters have a lot of inspiring people around them.

For example, several of them worked with goldsmiths. Where those the kind that would say: "Shut up and make this" or more the ones who would say: "Hey, this is amazing. When I do this the gold will reflect light here and when I move it a little light will reflect there!!! Cool effects, huh..."

And it doesn't have to be art. Imagine an artist who met Freud and Freud starts telling about the things he discovered (whether true or not). And the artist was like: "Wow, never though about this like that. How does my brain work?".

Now I do wonder how much having inspiring people around you makes a difference..... :P

[vampire cervix]

no, you can work hard and become a very good painter/illustrator/sculptor/whatever, those are jobs. being an artist is more than a job.

[DavePalumbo]

The reason many people here dismiss "talent" as a concept is because they're tired of hearing other people dismiss their ability (though perhaps they don't mean to) by saying they're talented.

We all know that whatever gifts you may be born with need lots of refining and practice to get the most from them. Those who have a great aptitude for music or art or any other creative endeavor still need to work very hard to become great at it. Maybe part of the talent is not minding the work. In any case, when people say "you're so talented", alot of people hear "you're really good at that, but it's just because you were born to it." and that gets under their skin. They want people to acknowledge that hard work and dedication are essential to what they've achieved.

Personally I think "talent" exists but only takes a person so far. What that talent means is probably different in different people, from a naturally keen ability to observe and retain visual information to a sharp mind which quickly absorbs and builds on the information that it receives. But these abilities need focus to really be utilized, and motivation to really develop. For some people, just that drive may be their talent.

Everyone here probably knows somebody who drawing comes very easy to. So easy that they got good but never really got beyond the certain point where it started getting hard. Typically they end up doing something else with their lives. This is a good example of talent without effort or diligence. It does exist, in my opinion, but it's far from the key component to being a great artist.

[Nibras]

I don't believe in talent.
The people who art seems to come easy to are the ones who grew up around it, seeing your parents draw every day and looking at paintings every day will mean that you have an eye for drawing and painting. Simple as that, if somebody made you watch football every day for 13 years when you come to play it you will seem naturally better than other people. It's the exposure to the thing that you are "talented" at.
I don't know if you guys have noticed but if you study something with your eyes alot, not even drawing it after a while when you come to draw it you find it much easier.
All those freakin great artist started out bad, they started at 12 or whatever so by the time they reached a certain age they were counted as talented.

Everything can be achieved with hard work, passion and determination and talent is just a lame ass excuse lazy people made so that they didn't have to work hard to achieve things.

peace

[RyerOrdStar]

I don't believe in talent.
The people who art seems to come easy to are the ones who grew up around it, seeing your parents draw every day and looking at paintings every day will mean that you have an eye for drawing and painting. Simple as that, if somebody made you watch football every day for 13 years when you come to play it you will seem naturally better than other people. It's the exposure to the thing that you are "talented" at.
I don't know if you guys have noticed but if you study something with your eyes alot, not even drawing it after a while when you come to draw it you find it much easier.
All those freakin great artist started out bad, they started at 12 or whatever so by the time they reached a certain age they were counted as talented.

Everything can be achieved with hard work, passion and determination and talent is just a lame ass excuse lazy people made so that they didn't have to work hard to achieve things.

peace

That might be true for some people, but there are plenty of kids who never grew up around art who have a talent for it. And plenty of kids whose parents are both artists and they grow up to be..accountants. Or somesuch. That's a very simplistic way of looking at it.

[Cthogua]

I'll agree with Dave, and go one further. Not only is it irritating to have someone dismiss your hard work, struggle to develop, anguish at not developing, and joy when you do as some kind of magical gift, but it's also tremendously disheartening to hear people say "I could never do X, I just wasn't born with the talent" Often times it isn't even something that's at all difficult, but just requires a little bit of knowledge they don't have and SOME work. People are ENORMOUSLY disempowered nowadays for a whole host of reasons. Protestant ideas about predestination contribute to a belief of things just being the way they are because god made it that way. Consumer culture wants you to buy the things that they provide rather than even consider that you could create your own. In Archeology, Material culture is considered to be an expression of the people who created it. Nowadays our material culture is simply another way for someone to make more money. So our material culture's become an expression of what is most marketable to the demographic with the largest amount of expendable money, and no longer an expression of the beliefs and ideas of the people who possess it.

One thing that also bothers me is 1:1 comparisons of modern abilities to "classical" abilities. The world is so different even between generations that it's difficult for one to relate to the other. Now take that difference and add 10 or 20 generations. We live in a world inconceivable as anything other than wild fantasy to the people of the Renaissance, and like wise their world is to us only a figment of our imaginations fueled by the scraps of that age that have survived the ravages of time. I think that physiologically we are the same as those people, but 99% of your experience of the world is a frame constructed from ideas you've been given by your culture, society, religion and available technology. I'm not saying I disbelieve in the "nature" aspect of the nature vs nurture argument (which is really what the talent argument boils down to) just that people are MOSTLY an expression/product of their environments. Environment includes the people around them, the availability of ideas, the material opportunities available to them. How many instances of aggrandized child "geniuses" have you heard of that went on to carry their "genius" into adulthood? It doesn't seem like that many, in fact it seems like receiving too much praise for their abilities at a young age often damages their ability to integrate into society, as they become narcissisticly obsessed with the idea of being "special." As their personalities developed they integrated that idea into their identities, and then upon reaching adulthood when often their "abilities" simply aren't that special or because of their belief in the innateness of their abilities never pursued furthering them, they become profoundly unhappy, broken people. Anyway, that's my take on it. I could probably blah blah blah until my keyboard disintegrated on this topic because I think there's just too much involved in a person, culture, experiences, and yes even physiology to point to any one thing and be like, SEE! THAT'S WHY HE'S SO GOOD AT THAT! We need to get rid of this 19th century idea that there are simple, specific, linear causes for something as complex as a persons personality and potential, and recognize that a "person" is an emergent phenomena, comprised of a nearly infinitely dense web of experiences, memories, thoughts, and ideas.

[Noah Bradley]

Are the odds very good that we have it in us to be the next Sargent/Michelangelo/Turner/etc.?

Nope.

Is it going to stop me/us from trying?

Nope.

[jvgig]

I think that natural talent is a very important factor in nearly every aspect of life. Sports are the easy example. Someone with a certain build and muscle mass ratio are going to be more able to compete at the TOP level than others. This does not mean that others cannot be very good, but those few elite athletes need more than the same hard training the next 100 guys have. Lets take academia as another example. Top students and researchers have different access/connections/etc in their brains than do non academic people. This does not mean that students without the top brain structure cannot excel, this is just the difference between the top student who sleeps through all of his classes and never studies yet maintains a 4.0, and the student who is drilling the teacher with questions, attending extra help sessions, and still studying for several hours per night to achieve similar grades.

Now in art the defining line of talent is very difficult to realize. After all, an artist is often defined as "talented" or "master" years after his death when people still flock to see the paintings. Being a talented artist does not mean that you can draw an accurate figure or create interesting compositions, but that you can evoke a sense of wonder in viewers forever. A talented artist's work has to be timeless. Just like a genius of the likes of Aristotle, Einstein, or Da Vinci, the artist has to create works that maintain their place in history forever.

[the_jos]

I think that natural talent is a very important factor in nearly every aspect of life. Sports are the easy example. Someone with a certain build and muscle mass ratio are going to be more able to compete at the TOP level than others. This does not mean that others cannot be very good, but those few elite athletes need more than the same hard training the next 100 guys have. Lets take academia as another example. Top students and researchers have different access/connections/etc in their brains than do non academic people. This does not mean that students without the top brain structure cannot excel, this is just the difference between the top student who sleeps through all of his classes and never studies yet maintains a 4.0, and the student who is drilling the teacher with questions, attending extra help sessions, and still studying for several hours per night to achieve similar grades.

This kind of argument is flawed.
Let's say we have this very talented NBA player. He's large, he's got the right build for it and he's at the TOP. No-one can beat him, he's the best there is. No doubt about it. He's got this huge genetic advantage. He only has one problem. He will be running the marathon next week and how hard he will ever try he will never, ever, ever win it. He doesn't have the build for it.

Next we have this geeky student. He's all into math. He doesn't have to learn, he's smarter than his professors.
And he's also got a problem. His next exam is French and he sucks at it.
His brain isn't connected for language, it's connected for math.

People have talents for different things.
Lucky for us art isn't about a single thing, just like you can't say that all sports are basketball or all you can learn at the university is math.

Now there is one kind of exception. When you are like Steven Hawking you might have a hard time in sports and art. And in expressing your thoughts in general. He can't help that most others human beings are just too stupid so they can´t understand what he means to say. Well, most human beings probably ain´t too stupid, they are just not interested in what he´s got to tell.


Now let's make the step to history.
You know, there was this guy with a bakery here around 1800. And he helped countless people staying alive and doing their job. He enabled the city to grow, just by making bread. But we forgot about him and all the anonymous people who build this city. We only remember the people who are different or did exceptional things.

And what makes them different and do exceptional things?
Guts. They just did it. And they had the luck that they could keep doing that and were not shot, stabbed, stoned or burned at the stake for it. Or just declared madman. Their environment enabled them to become the people they are to us.
Besides this, who in 19th century China, Japan or Indonesia cared about our historic heroes. They have their own, people we don't know or hardly know.
Who of them cares nowadays? Those great people are part of our history, not their...

[jvgig]

"A good painter has two main objects to paint, man and the intention of his soul. The former is easy, the latter hard as he has to represent it by the attitude and movement of the limbs." -da vinci

[Noah Bradley]

Here's a quote I just read from Art & Fear:

"Talent is a snare and a delusion. In the end, the practical questions about talent come down to these: Who cares? Who would know? and What difference would it make? And the practical answers are: Nobody, Nobody, and None."

[Mitze]

My friend is talented i am not. When we where young we browsed through a Boris Vallejo book in a shop, and both tried to draw like him.

We flicked through that book at the same speed but he learned and remembered. Mine was shite his was great. I realized that he had talent.

Anyway if it is any consolation, he works on a building site now. I think it came too easy for him, so he thought it was worthless.

[the_jos]

We flicked through that book at the same speed but he learned and remembered. Mine was shite his was great. I realized that he had talent.

When I was young I had a good friend who was very good at drawing.
Later he went to get a graphical education and such and he's a designer now, but that's not what I want to talk about.

I know he was far better at drawing than I was at that age.
But then, he cared about 10 times more about his drawings as I did.
Just seeing him handle his pencil, thinking lines over before actually drawing, drawing slowly so he would not make mistakes. That's not talent, that's caring about something.
And I have little doubt that he was encouraged to keep caring about it, mainly by people telling him that he should keep up the good work.
When you hear that all around you, whether true or not, you will try harder.

Till the age of let's say 16 I've always been surrounded by people who were better at drawing than me. One of the primary reasons is that I didn't give a damn about my drawings. Noone else cared for them, why should I?
And after that? I just stopped drawing. Why continue with something you don't care about.

Does that mean I have no talent for drawing? And my friend does have talent?
I think most people and even children can do what he did at that age.
But most just don't care. Playing soccer on the street is far more fun than sitting in a room drawing. Why? Because parents encourage their children to play outside with other children. They present drawing as something dull, something you should do when it's raining outside. But the actual fun is playing with other kids, at least according to the parents.
So children will go outside and play with other kids. And many find that fun.
But what would have happened if all that time and energy was put into something else. Sculpturing, painting, drawing, making plastic models?
Oh no, parents don't support such a thing very often, it's bad for social skills.

And we keep wondering why so many great artists are social inepts....


This image was done by a famous artist at roughly age 6.
I wonder who influenced and encouraged him at that age....
You don't just paint such a painting from out of nowhere.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/76/Landscape_Near_Figueras.jpg

[erinel]

I agree completely with Elwell. I think it's so frustrating to be told over and over again how "talented" I am. Like he said, it's as if they think I was born like this, and can just magically draw. It's not that! It's the hours and hours I've practiced!
And when people say "I could never do that", I just want to yell "yes you could! just practice!"
People expect instant gratification these days, so when they try something like drawing and are bad, they decide they aren't talented and give up.

[sleepiehead]

Hmm...you bring up a valid point. However, I always thought that talent was something that was learned, and that such people you speak of were/are born gifted.

I like to tell myself that someone who practices and becomes talented can eventually get to the level of someone who's born gifted; it makes me feel better.

[My57]

i dont think its unfair comparing people today to the people of yesterday. I really dont think their is a thing called talent. None. It all depends on how you grew up. the people of the renaissance such Durer grew with art around them and where expected to be able to draw/paint in order to make a living. Now a days kids play video games most of the time and get fat.

[German-s]

I think this is from the intro to art and fear but it is applicable here:

"Geniuses get made once-a-century or so, yet good art gets made all the time, so to equate the making of art with the workings of genius removes this intimately human activity to a strangely unreachable and unknowable place. For all practical purposes making art can be examined in great detail without ever getting entangled in the very remote problems of genius."

[Gokce]

“Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.”

This quote by W.A. Mozart made me ponder, because he is one of the greatest archetypes of talent and genius in history, and made me rethink the meanings of will, determination. Ultimately I come to the conclusion that, while talent does exist, it matters little; as many achieved artists have noted that it was their determination, and not their talent that played a crucial role in their success.

And now I go back to work...

[Welkin]

Here we're talking about talent... but talent in doing what? In mastering a painting technique?

For me the definition of ARTIST is a person who can interpret the world around him and the time he's living, no less. Some are even ahead of their time. An artist is not necessarily someone who can draw a banana and a dragon and a landscape perfectly, but is a person who was an extraordinary sensibility towards life and all that surrounds him, and is able to interpret what all these things are saying to him. He is an instrument of something so much bigger than him. His talent resides in interpreting his environment, in whatever shape that comes.

No need to say that artists like these can be counted with the fingers of one hand...

[Elisabet Y.A.]

Talent < Passion

If you have talent but don't nurture it, where will you be? Nowhere. If you have a passion for drawing, where will you be? One of the best.

Leonardo da Vinci drew every day for most of his life. Hence he is a master.

All of the people you have mentioned worked all or most of their lives perfecting their craft. They didn't bullshit all day about having "a gift", they spent years on getting where they were.

"Talent" or being "gifted" really just means that you can do something extraordinary without much practice. Drawing ALWAYS takes practice, no matter how "gifted" you are.