Comments and critique or giving a favourite to the artwork? Is there really any difference between them? How do they differ? Here are some of my own thoughts about this matter. I hope you criticize and comment if the text wake up some thoughts .

Let’s take the favourites first. For the criticizer, favs are easy and quick way to show the artist that the art piece is liked. You don’t need to think any reasons why you especially like this art work, just one click tells everything. Or does it? To be honest, favs don’t tell nothing much to the artist, without the comment. I admit that I faved too, a lot, without leaving a comment behind. Now I’ve been trying to learn a new way and leave a short comment why I faved the work. Usually my comment is something like “Wonderful colour world, nice composition = fav”. And I think that is enough to tell why I loved the work. The good side of favs to the artist is that one doesn’t have to pay attention to answering long comments. If you have time you can go and say “Ty for the fav”, which doesn’t take much time either.

My humble opinion is that favs are good, but they could use some upgrading. What comes to my mind would be an easy two clicks faving. Click one: fav. Click two: pick up the biggest reason for faving from these examples given (composition, colours, theme, etc. etc.). And the artist could see some sort of index of given favs and reasons. It would give more to the artist and would not be too much work for either criticizer or artist.

So what about the comments and critique? To the criticizer giving advanced c&c takes time and effort. But both criticizer and artist can learn from it a lot and in the best cases a comment is a start for an open conversation about art. To the artist longer comments and critique also takes time to read, but also it’s a way to see the own artwork by someone else eyes. Usually this gives the artist something to think and in the best cases develops the artists skills.

But giving critique is always a bit scary (for me at least), because you never know what kind of person the artist is. One might offend the artist, no matter how advanced the given c&c would be. Still I see that the risk of offending someone is pretty small compared to the profit of learning progress what starts by answering one’s own question: exactly why I love this piece?