The Author and The Illustrator

[Erozetta]

Quite. (I mean, I really could have gone on - command of narrative tenses, distinguish homophones, etc - but I figured I'd made the point.)

An ex of mine has a degree in English and an MA in poetry. She writes pretty well as you might imagine, yet has never been able to make a living from writing. However, she also has pictures in the National Portrait Gallery despite having had no artistic training since she was 14. Just saying.

Did you ever consider that she can't make a living from writing because writers are a dime a dozen for a market that barely exists? Art is harder.

You can be self taught in either art or writing. Many artists I know are self taught because learning art was discouraged as being a waste of time, so they got books and watched anime and went to museums to learn things on their own, which is also significantly more difficult than doing it with guided instruction.

I don't mean to deprecate the skill necessary to create visual art, by the way. But if writing was easy and effortless, people wouldn't be turning to AI to do it for them. The fact that so many people are happy enough with crappy GenAI writings goes to show how difficult good writing actually is.

AI imagery is more prevalent than AI writing, as evidenced by how many writers here use AI imagery to promote their writing. The majority of artists I know won't touch AI writing. The authors I know seem to have no issue freely using AI imagery to boost the appeal of their writing. If art is so much easier to learn than writing, why aren't these accomplished writers learning it instead of generating it from an algorithm of stolen artwork? They learned to write. Art should be either easier or the same learning curve, right?

 

[THBGato]

How much of the study in your fifteen years was actually necessary for learning to write? How much was reiterating things you already knew?

Um.... all of it? And more - all of the reading I did in my free time informed my skill as a writer. Studying History informed it - understanding context. Studying other languages informed it as it led to a better grasp of grammar.

Plus, reiterating things you already knew is called practising. Are you telling me artists and illustrators don't reiterate things they already know?

I'm not saying writing requires no skill. I'm saying the skill required takes less time and effort to learn at a basic level. Hell, even cooking requires more effort to learn than writing does.

As a former chef, I whole-heartedly disagree!

Also we're not interested in a "basic level" are we? Are we talking about artists and illustrators (or chefs) with a basic level? No, of course not.

 

[Nightaelf]

I disagree with the notion that writing loses anything if it doesn't have an illustration

The question, as I understood it, is about collaboration, a writer and an illustrator working together, and which role involves more creativity or effort.

I didn’t mean that writing without art is somehow lacking. Writing stands fully on its own. What I said was that when both crafts meet, something new is created between them. Writing invents the world, its logic, and its emotions. Illustration gives that world form, movement, and texture. It is not that one needs the other, but that together they expand what either could do alone.

 

[Nightaelf]

What about minds like mine that don't work so much as careen from idea to shiny idea?

A kind of Magic Wand(a)

 

[Erozetta]

Um.... all of it? And more - all of the reading I did in my free time informed my skill as a writer. Studying History informed it - understanding context. Studying other languages informed it as it led to a better grasp of grammar.

Plus, reiterating things you already knew is called practising. Are you telling me artists and illustrators don't reiterate things they already know?

As a former chef, I whole-heartedly disagree!

Also we're not interested in a "basic level" are we? Are we talking about artists and illustrators (or chefs) with a basic level? No, of course not.

I think we're coming at this from two different angles. I *am* talking about basic levels of learning. No one ever said how skilled either participant had to be, my thoughts were "who has to put more effort into initially learning and then honing the skills required?" (Which is going to be colored by my own life experiences regarding access to each option.)

The entire reason I think writing is easier to learn (note the wording: to learn, not to master) than illustration is because the elements of writing are steeped in simply existing, as you pointed out. That's not actively putting in the effort to try to learn a skill.

Illustration requires active learning as well as intent to actively learn. So does cooking and music.

My opinion that illustration requires more effort/skill/work to learn than writing is partially based on the fact that I personally know more illustrators who learned to become writers than writers who learned to become illustrators. If the opposite were just as easy, more writers would put in the effort to learn to do their own promo images and book covers.

Reiterating is being told/taught the same thing again and again with little to no change in lessons. Reiterating is not practicing, if anything, it's preventing skill improvement by blocking the retention of new information by forcing the old information to stay at the surface. Reiterating is a waste of time that could be spent learning new aspects, or practicing. <-- annoying as fuck.

Practicing is actively putting your skills into play, which would be writing. <-- not annoying as fuck.

To me, writing is just an extension of speaking and those other things are the artistic equivalent of getting the specialty training to be a surgeon rather than a doctor (more accessible to youth of today through YouTube than it was when I was a kid, and I applaud that. Those "How to draw" books were only good for doodling.) you had to seek it out and want to put the effort in to learn them. Writing is essentially forced onto everyone from an early age. (Which is a good thing, and I wish those other things were treated the same way, then I would probably think differently about the effort involved in learning each.)

I'm sorry that you seem to have taken offense to my stance.