Blue Period - The Dichotomy between Talent and Hard Work

[Music] what is talent what does it truly mean to call somebody talented the official definition of talent is a person with a natural aptitude or skill many consider this in ways of having a gift an obtainable skill that not everybody can develop or require but is a natural ability that some are born with however to many talent is a word filled with an underlying implication of underestimating the hard work that was required to achieve such high skill similarly to the main character of sabasa yamaguchi's blue period people complement creatives by attributing their hard work to just talent alone and never once mentioning the time or effort that was needed to reach the success of where they are in all fairness to most people who unknowingly do this it's not often said with malice nor 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 bring a variety of misconceptions and in blue periods case towards artists in particular it's with this common misconception an artistic paradox of talent versus hard work where sabasa yamaguchi takes the opportunity to showcase the sacrifices and hardships artists have to overcome whilst simultaneously having their hard work simplified or neglected to just being talented and nothing summarizes this more than yamaguchi's own words i wanted to create a manga about working hard blue period successfully showcases just one example of a misconstrued view of art within its first page alone a visceral example of ignorance and the page contains phrases artists will be all too familiar with what's so good about picasso's paintings and they look like something i could paint these phrases are so often said by people who have never picked up a paintbrush in their life or have never attempted to draw themselves the yatara is an insensible pathos that insults our work rather than critiquing or giving constructive criticism especially given his own lack of artistic experience and yet interestingly when he comes across a painting he does like that is when he sees the value in an artist's skill but notice even when he does take the time to complement morty senpai's work that magical t word crops up again and no not not that t word that you're probably thinking of talent i'm i'm i'm talking about talent yata says tomorrow senpai i'm jealous of your talent and quite rightfully she replies back thanks for the compliment but i actually put in the work to study art and art making methods haphazardly calling this my talent is like saying i didn't do anything to achieve this some may think this harsh of her to say as yasra hadn't meant his comment with any negative connotations however for artists this quote-unquote compliment is repeated again and again throughout an artist's life and many creatives know what being jealous of your talent normally means i'm jealous of something that comes so naturally to you something that comes so easily to you and it's often said without regarding the ruling weeks months years potentially even decades that so many artists exert themselves through what yata isn't aware of towards the beginning of the manga is that people develop artistic skills at different paces some may take their entire lives to get to a high skill whilst year upon year a young prodigy is found the creative arts doesn't subject itself to being a parallel learning curve even prodigies have to learn from the very basics and build their skills up but it's the time of artistic growth that differs from person to person to summarize such effort to just being talented is well partial and demeaning to the time creative spend which is why similar to the case of mori senpai some people don't believe themselves to be talented as it was their drive and passion that got them where they are not an incredibly lucky natural gift and to prove this is such a common issue many creatives face let me show you an example of morty senpai's words in blue period compared to an interview recorded with established actor will smith i'm not talented i just spend more time thinking about art than other people i've never really viewed myself as particularly talented i view myself as you know slightly above average in talent and where i excel is ridiculous sickening work ethic and it's no surprise that artists are continuously taking part in hashtags related to the time needed to develop their skills when so often your average person believes an artist blinks and their work is created hashtags like before and after sketch versus final decade of art art glow-up are continuous in the art community and those hashtags not only serve as a nice reminder for the artists to see their progression but are there as a reminder to non-artistic audiences that yes it did in fact take a lot of practice effort and training not to mention overcoming self-doubt art block and a myriad of esoteric challenges to succeed the notion of talent itself is a biased entity to believe some are born with gifts and as a disclaimer i'm not saying people who believe in the notion of talent are wrong or that talent isn't a thing conversely what i love about sabasa yamaguchi's story is that she depicts the ideology of talent from the perspective of a genius delinquent who does start this story valuing art as an arbitrary gift and it's through his development as a person as a student who quickly and first-handedly starts to experience the challenges of being an artist himself that he learns and feels what being an artist truly is it's not all god's gift but the constant choice of improvement and challenging oneself because as perfectly explained by lynn helding publisher of the academic paper innate talent myth or reality in the end the worth of talent as a construct is revealed as a virtually useless when in the absence of the training necessary to reveal it and the effort necessary to sustain it talent if it exists at all vanishes contrary to yattara's depiction of artistic talent he equates his own intelligence and good grades not from being a genius but a hard worker fundamentally showcasing a hypocritical thought process as the word genius can have similar negative connotations as talent the key difference between both words is the placement of their usage talent is normally associated with the arts whilst genius is more profoundly used within the fields of stem subjects so why can he comprehend the validity of hard work towards stem subjects but not creative subjects his dismissal of being called a genius is not so different to maury senpai dismissing being labeled talented because neither want their hard efforts to be disregarded as a natural gift the cause for yatra's sanctimony is his own lack of experience within an artistic field initially yatra doesn't have any first-hand knowledge of drawing or painting and with his comment elective art is the type of class where you'll get a decent grade even if you're bad at it we're able to distinguish why he believes art to be lazy and for slackers because he's not used to experiencing a class that has no clear cut right or wrong answers unlike many other stem classes that he excels at the arts is just as much about expression as it is theory there are elements in the arts that can't be taught but only experienced through the openness and willingness to view the world beyond what it seems something yata experiences for the first time when he compares shibuya early in the morning to a magical blue world a concept that only he sees but is soon willing to share through his art and it's these realizations that sparks an interest in art for yatta diving into a subject of the unknown something he is unfamiliar with a class that isn't ticks and crosses on an exam sheet but with senses leading the way and logic following 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 character yatara lives within a poorer household the possibility of attending private school unimagined due to his mother's constant reminder surrounding their financial position thus leading yatra to grow up with a very studious work ethic he goes about school with the process of a child harrowed by the idealisms of adulthood thinking about what subjects will lead to higher job security or have higher employability rates his family's financial position is majorly influential to the ways he approaches the arts believing fine art will not land you a job as opposed to the stem subjects he studies for as a result of his upbringing yata didn't stop to think about choosing options that are fun to him but will benefit him financially later on which is why he cowers at the prospect of enjoying art he bows the war between disappointing his mother versus chasing a newfound passion that he's never experienced before and this is a very common issue many artists face there is this further stigma that the arts are a waste of time and jobs surrounding the arts are lesser of an accomplishment as opposed to training to be a doctor or lawyer etc but with his determination set in stone after feeling a strong riskful desire to pursue art does yatra bump into another misconception surrounding the arts which is that it is incredibly hard and competitive to be accepted into art universities not to mention incredibly expensive and yatara's shock at this knowledge again circles back to this preconceived notion that art is easy when in reality the statistics showing low acceptance rates for art schools prove otherwise however not all is doom and gloom even with these challenges in closing around yatra's every corner 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 defying the principles he'd built around himself in fact sabasa yamaguchi herself graduated from tua her own experiences being beneficial for creating a more authentic story but also shirahara kamame who i covered in my wichita atelier video also graduated from the design department of tua the success of those two lovely manga creators are testaments of how art school can lead you to a triumphant creative career path [Music] even with that aside there's evidence to suggest japan as a country shares its own dereliction towards the arts as a whole of which no doubt is even more influential to people's interpretations of that field in 2015 many humanities and even social science faculties in japan were closed to serve areas that better meet society's needs and to correlate further evidence of the japanese government's negligence towards the arts when asked during an interview what challenges do you foresee in taking japan's liberal arts learning to the next level kanayama tsutomu a professor out at tsumeikon university aka popular arts college in japan proceeded to answer with a harsh reality the first step is to change the way that society in general views the liberal arts i hope to bid farewell to the idea that the liberal arts are a form of general education to provide to new students before they move on to higher fields of study like law economics business management or literature such a short-sighted view on the arts is just one of the reasons people like yatara in blue period have this subverted perception that the arts should stay as a hobby and only those who have a talent for the arts should potentially look to advancing those skills towards a career not to mention once again proving people see the arts as lazier and lesser than stem subjects and yet as touched upon earlier in the video r requires so much more knowledge and revision that some people believe it to have learning techniques applying them and trying to adapt them into your own style can take a lot of time and practice and that's just for one technique these techniques then have to be applied to all sorts of mediums whether that's watercolor gouache pencil chalk clay modelling or even just taking a digital approach an artist could have trained and expertised using watercolor but if they wish to try oil painting might have to re-adapt a whole new set of skills because each medium whether it's learning the differences in how the paint dries how the paint mixes or even how to hold their new piece of equipment are all skills that are hard to master as blue period touches on even one technique can have multiple rules or types and you can see this just by picking up a random selection of manga let's take different examples of shading techniques for instance hashing and or cross hatching is a very popular way of showcasing contrast the closer the hatching is the darker the area of the image will be the further apart the hatching the lighter it can also be made more complex depending on the multi directions of hatching an artist might add to as this could help roughen up a style not too far apart from cross hatching is using parallel lines to convey shadows and the direction a material might be shaped shirahara komame uses this technique constantly in her work and is one of the reasons why it's so recognizable another popular example is the appliance of screen tones there's a massive variety of screen tone patterns but a popular choice is a dotted pattern screen which is homogeneous to pointillism pointillism is a technique similar to hatching the closer the dots are the darker that area will become and vice versa if we compare this to how block coloured screen tones are applied in aposims a manga that seldom utilizes shading techniques to detract contrast and detailing we get a completely different visual experience i could go on for days showcasing the variety of shading methods from all different manga stories and shading is just one 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 into their own style some even adapt and improve over the course of drawing their series as a creative myself seeing all that hard work put onto paper to see all that time they spent trying to perfect their skill is and always will be a delight for me ultimately this is why blue period is such an important story with a crucial message for us readers we constantly see the final product volumes of well-crafted pages we can read in a few hours blue period is the prelude of many artists journeys the efforts that were needed to reach that final product the hardships the care the challenges it shows us a young boy who finally discovers his own calling something he ultimately wants to dedicate himself towards and to revitalize a sense of passion within we see him learn from his past misconceptions and even experience them himself learning the unceasing pain of progression and the determination to evolve because it's as subasa yamaguchi describes herself it's easy to think that art is a world where only talent can be used so a big thank you to those who have watched to the end this was a pretty personal video for me given my background and the subject area there's a lot of discussion within the topic so if you have anything to share either comment down below or interact with me on twitter because i'm always on there

Channel: lines in motion

Views: 835,417

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Id: afGn-JPmimE

Length: 16min 43sec (1003 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 30 2021