I feel like most people’s first dip into commenting art, including me, was through some sort of fandom related art. It is typically the first reason why young kids get invested in the art world in the first place and have dreams of becoming animators or painters or mangakas. The books that you read and the games that you play and the shows that you watch I’d say give the biggest impact on people in terms of consumable art.

It makes sense then that most online spaces are filled with this fandom related work. It’s filled with niches for everyone and no matter what you create, it has this common ground on which you can reference it by making a comment on someone else’s work.

Comments in the fandomsphere have their own set of unique comment foundations, but it typically follows these sorts of thoughts:

• You wrote this character so well! They’re very believable and close to how they act in canon!
• I like how you took XYZ show’s use of lilies and added it to your work! It’s so symbolic!
• The relationship dynamics with AB and CD are so believable! I never thought of their relationship this way!

And you may be thinking, where are the comments about people's art style? Their skill at doing great lines? The great word usage and pacing they have?

I’d put that more in line of general art comments that can span across different spaces and also focuses on the artist’s craft and experience:

• Your linework is amazing!
• I like how you described your worldbuilding, it feels natural.
• Your comics are framed so well, everything flows nicely!

I want to emphasize that neither one of these comments are better than the other. A fandom-specific comment is not in any way valued more because of its specificity to the original media. I’d even stress that any sort of comment is welcome as it's an observation of the work itself. Any artist would be happy to hear comments on their skill or their faithfulness or expansion of the original media. I’d like to add an even bigger emphasis that repeat comments are even better.

If your favorite artist constantly draws the same pairing in various situations and you find yourself wondering if it’d be redundant to repeat your comment, here’s my answer: it is never redundant to express what you thought about someone else’s work. It is basically like a multiplier bonus! The more you express your thoughts, the more the artist finds out what people enjoy about your work.

Now, I want to talk about the main reason why I made this in the first place. I had several conversations with my fiancé about works that don’t fit the fandom category and we both agreed that having the basis of a canon to look back on makes it easier to compare and contrast fanworks more in depth.

What about zines? What about TTRPG’s? What about original works? What about conceptual works? How about original paintings and textile works and poems and works that you probably feel as if they are too conceptual to even begin talking about?

I feel that the fear of commenting on more conceptual or original works is pretty fair. There is a sort of stress that you don’t have the right accreditations or the right amount of background knowledge or in-depth know-how to talk about someone else’s personal work. There is also a constant worry that you may misinterpret a work or have the wrong reaction to it.

As always, context is key and feel free to take my words with a grain of salt, but as I and a fellow artist-friend Danny have discussed, we often put our original artwork for it to explicitly be interpreted. I personally find satisfaction when my work reminds you of another work, or that it gives you a certain feeling, or that you had some sort of reaction or connection to it. To me, putting my artwork out there is releasing it to the pond to have it be interpreted by a whole host of people, and the emerging ideas that come from it are what is exciting.

I think the best comments that I could hear would be any variation of “You might’ve not meant this, but your work made me think/feel/create this”. To me, it shows that you made the pretty scary leap to make assumptions on a work. Assumptions are fun! They’re what make work reach people, and what gives us different perspectives.

Don’t get me wrong, I also love comments about my personal craftsmanship and technical skills. In fact, they’re well-welcomed. But I do feel like the unease of making a comment that directly addresses the artist and their active choices should be brought up! We all have the tools to talk about art. I promise that the mainstream art world that claims that art requires another form of thinking that needs years of skill and mastery to achieve a lexicon broad enough to speak about artwork is a lie. And I can say this because I went to a supposedly prestigious art university!

I asked my artist-friend Danny for some of his thoughts on comments on artwork, especially when it deals with original and personal work and how to navigate the hesitation one might have about making comments on them:

“i feel like there is a definite trepidation with commenting on someone’s personal work in a way that might “overwrite” what they intended with it, and while i don’t relate to that fear, i know there are creators who prefer not to have someone talk like they know them about something they created HOWEVER i think there are easy workarounds to that if you aren’t sure how the creator will react!

for me personally, if i’m sharing a piece of art, it’s because i want to hear what others say about it and i want to hear their interpretations. no matter how personal it feels, i would love for someone to try to figure out why i made the decisions i made in creating it and how those relate to the themes/message i’m conveying. i know that’s not true of EVERYONE sharing their art but i can safely say it’s true of most of the people i’ve met who do personal work, especially more experimental work”

I also asked Danny what sort of comments she prefers on her work:

“[...] i find that anyone taking the time to comment on something i made, even if their comment is that they thought it was neat/cool/nice/etc, makes me excited because it indicates that they cared enough about how it made them feel to let me know that they had that feeling!

and it frankly doesn’t even have to be that detailed. just saying “i liked how the colors were so bright and neon, it made me feel like i couldn’t look away” on a collage or smth”

To wrap this all up, I’m plugging in Danny’s post on art being a conversation and I wish you all a great time looking at art and commenting on it!