First SVS Competition Experience
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First off Congratulations to all the top 10.
As a means of building up any one else that didn't place and sharing I decided to write a snippet of my first SVS competition experience so here tis'. When I decided to try this competition out I really jumped in with excitement and enthusiasm for the task at hand. I came up with a number of concepts and settled on one almost immediately, which would have been a good thing if what I chose to illustrate was something more readable considering the theme, or had illustrated it in a way that conveyed the message better (independence). I really enjoyed working on it and felt on a personal level it was one of my better recent works produced. I was really happy with it. I posted it and had really hoped to land in the top ten and waited with anticipation to find out if I made it! Yippy! It was really exciting. When I clicked the link to find out and saw that I didn't place my initial reaction was disappointment, which could have been a result of eating pizza to late at night. Meaning, feelings and truth / reality aren't always inline with each other. After reading the basic criteria @Lee-White posted in the description, I realized I missed the mark conceptually and always can improve technique. I learned that my next entry will need to be better executed conceptually and technically, knowing if I want to hit my target I will have to focus more on readability and being better inline with the competitions theme etc.
So in the end this competition has served me in a number of ways. Firstly by writing a testimony in service to my forum brethren who lost or will loose in future competitions as a means of building others up. Also to show how a loss can pinpoint suckeeness that can help enable you to refine your work and grow. Adversity can be a great teacher. Taking yourself to seriously is a killjoy and humility comes before exaltation. To summarize, I really loved the process of competing, learning from disappointment, and now celebrating the future. Yeehaw! Thank you SVS
also shout out to @TessW who gives great critique
Edit: forgot to ad other benefits...> experience (time putting in work), more pieces to add to your portfolio, and exposure
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@tyson-ranes Great perspective to have. I can understand the dissapointment, but also can applaud your drive. A few months before I joined SVS I had decided to push towards what I really wanted out of life, and not allow anything to get in my way, and my biggest roadblock is and always has been me. So when I finally had that moment of not allowing even myself to stop me, it was then easy to look at failed expectations as a hurdle to help propell myself forward. In just the last year, I have had probably 20-30 moments of "I should stop doing this, because I am not good enough" but I remembered that I told myself to not stop even when I tell myself to stop. Those moments became the biggest moments of growth I have ever seen in my art, and now I am addicted to finding faults, so that I can challenge myself and grow.
Your art is quite good, so I don't think you are far off from being where you want to be. Just don't let anything stop you from doing what you want to do, and continue with the good attitude.
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Yes, @Tyson-Ranes your art is quite good. Desire and passion can be the fuel that pushes us to limits that most will never reach. Feed those two things and everything else falls into place.
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I agree with the others yours is very good, keep pushing forward
Thanks for sharing -
True, I think that is one of the purposes of the competition, and you've hit the nail on the head. My own experience is that I have come to realize how much more I need to learn and improve before I should be submitting pieces in the competition! Haha! If we are open to it, there is something to be learned from most experiences we have.
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@tyson-ranes You could not have said better what was in my head as well. Thank you for sharing this, and onward we go!
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Thanks for the shout out Tyson. It's awesome that you are steering yourself towards positivity in the face of disappointment. That's a really important lesson to learn as an artist, otherwise we'd all just give up- and many do give up.
Even if you didn't place in the contest, it still inspired a great piece out of you and I hope you are still very proud of it. Not everyone is able to pull off the expression and the dynamic nature of that illustration. It was a memorable piece.
