Criticism

I do not handle criticism well. I'm the kind of person who after being gently told that perhaps yellow is not my colour, will dramatically don a black bag for the rest of the week yelling "fine, I shall just forgo clothes completely then" and rustle off in a mood.

This attitude was not very helpful when I was at art college. I tended toward (and still do) a rather low self-esteem, so it was nothing to do with thinking my work was perfect - criticism, regardless of how constructive, confirmed in my mind that I was indeed quite crap.

At art college, I was perfectly happy to be left alone to sit in a corner and draw cartoons. Unfortunately, no formal educational institution I ever attended were great advocates of cartoons being actual art, and I was not left alone to draw cartoons.
I remember it once being suggested that I try adding more colour to my work, and perhaps make my work a little larger at the same time. My response to this perfectly reasonable suggestion was to produce this travesty:

This has to be the ugliest thing I have ever produced (and I've eaten some pretty rotten curries). This monstrosity is 2ft high, painted on an uneven bit of plywood and flaunted a deliberate misuse of colour. My intention was to dispel my tutor's belief that colour is beautiful by making something so damn hideous it would make you break into a cold sweat as you fought against the need flee. And I drew it BIG. I guess the figure frantically shaking their head represented my reluctance to move away from my drab, tiny drawings.

I probably thought I was being really clever. Turns out I was a bit of a tit as a teenager. Still, my tutor never asked me to be more colourful or large and I was finally left alone to draw cartoons.

Note I am a little disturbed that I've given the impression that I all can draw is cartoons. Or worse, that the above drawing represented that I spent my time at art college pissing off tutors. To prove otherwise, I've added a couple of drawings I did at the roughly the same time as the poop one above. This might be taken as me being a bit showy or needy. I never said I wasn't still a tit.