Strategies for Giving Art Feedback
Illoguild Question #6
Each month members of the IlloGuild answer a question together, and this month it is: How do you review an illustration?
Check out the IlloGuild Substack page on Monday to read everyone’s responses. Did you know that
runs that page? She’s in the homestretch of illustrating her second book, and you can see some sneak peaks of the new book on here on her Instagram.Strategy A:
3 positives & change 1 thing
When we started our Illoguild meetings, we stuck to this rule: give 3 positive comments and then suggest a single improvement. As someone new to art critiques, I found this rule to be very helpful. What are some positives you can comment on?
How the art makes you feel
Character expressions or poses
Composition
Color
Storytelling
Shapes
Concept
After you pick three pieces of positive feedback, you can offer up a “change one thing.” You can use the same list above to think about a constructive piece of advice.
I’ve learned a lot about giving gentle feedback from the talented Rose Lihou. A couple sentences that I’ve picked up are…
I wonder how it would look if…
It would be even more ___ if you …
Strategy B:
Be kind, be specific, be helpful
Another way to think about giving feedback comes from my teaching background. “Be kind, be specific, be helpful.” This phrase comes from the Expeditionary Learning Curriculum to guide students in giving feedback to their classmates on writing projects. I believe it applies to art critiques as well.
By fusing Strategies A + B, we get a nice formula for giving feedback to fellow artists:
3 positives and change 1 thing + be kind, be specific, be helpful
Want to practice giving feedback on art?
Here’s a piece of art from Emma Wiklund, a Swedish children’s illustrator who is currently working on two books— go Emma! She posted this art in the Subscriber Chat yesterday (find out how to join the chat here).
Should we give her some feedback?
Remember the advice above! Then write your thoughts in the comments. I’ll write mine there too :)
A big thanks to Emma for sharing her work!
See you next week for a children’s illustration post,
Katie
I love the warm colors and festive cheer this piece brings, Emma! Those extra little touches like the mice in the corner with the apples activate the whole page and are very sweet. The expressions on the characters communicate how they're feeling, so you've nailed that too. One thing I would change is that I had to blow up the image to see all of the details like what the labels said. Perhaps making the jars larger and adding more of a splash to Dasher would help it read clearer when on a phone. Thanks for volunteering first!
I really like your brushwork here, and how you can see the strokes. It creates a nice texture! I also like how you’ve added funny details such as the deer polish and hoof oil. And the exaggerated movement of the elf helps to tell the story of him sneezing- it makes me laugh. My change one things is: I wonder if the characters would pop more if the wood panels were a lighter or less saturated red. Overall such a cute and festive scene, nice work Emma!