A Tidbit About Art

I think that if you have graduated from a reputable art college you no longer need to fear doing technically correct art but you can let go and experiment, to keep reproducing same old pretty illustrations seems redundant unless of course that is what comes from you naturally...we as artists all have to find our style, the one that comes to you naturally. I have done realism, surrealism and abstract art and feel most at home with a funky combination of all three with a little humour thrown in. I do not feel compelled any longer to prove anything to anyone as an artist. Graduating from OCAD helped with that too...there are however artists who did not go to college but are naturally brilliant, but not that many. There are more immature artists among those that did not study art and although their work seems simplified it does not hit you as professional. For example a professional artist simplifying a woman's face is in a totally different league from an amateur, even if both add long eyelashes. The difference is in the placement of lines...a professional artist with experience will place those lines exactly where they should be to say the most and at the right angle...whereas the amateur will have them roaming all over the face because they don't understand the underlying structure of a face.
I strongly recommend studying anatomy and doing a lot of life drawing before attempting a face...