Creativity and Skill (Thoughts from 2017)

Something I posted to Facebook in 2017. 5 people seemed to have noticed.

I think about these things a lot..

You can do something that requires great skill, like playing a perfect copy of someone else’s incredibly difficult guitar solo. But that isn’t creative. Still art though.

You could draw a vehicle, robot or furniture, that no one has ever seen before, absolutely original, SO creative, but not actually draw it technically very well.

Same deal for photo-realistic v expressionistic images... my own comic work goes expressionist/ cartoony mostly as It is faster. ("Opportunity Cost" of doing it for me is another thing I think about )

Skill is improved by practice, but there is always someone better. Creativity is just this magic thing some people do better sometimes than others. Lightning in a bottle.

I tend to think a lot of really new things are just combining old things in new ways. A bit of this, a bit of that, and you have something new. Sometimes it then becomes something completely original, other times it doesn’t. There is no difference between the technical work I have done and the art stuff in this regard. But technical work is generally conservative as you are spending others money, for a short time, and want an outcome. It MUST work, but how well and with what features is “flexible” after a certain minimum.

When it comes to the commercial world, people are much more willing to part with money for something they are familiar with, than not. Cover bands are popular, but it isn’t creative. Doing some “art” thing in a style similar to X and Y is less risky.

Maybe Skill is more commercially useful than Creativity.....

... just saying.