Is life experience essential for becoming a 'good' artist?
Short answer, yes
>>2316405
pretty much this
But isnt drawing itself a life experience?
>>2315215
Not really, considering how many good 20 something year old artists there are who spent all their youth studying.
>>2316465
And studying isn't a part of life experience..?
>>2315215
If you create stories it is. But most artists don't create stories.
>>2316471
No, because in that case literally everyone has "life experience" and the term loses its meaning.
>>2315215
For encoding any emotional value into your work, yes. I mean you can grind technical skill all day, but how to you convey the true pain of losing a limb without losing one? You can only project.
'Good'? No. Great? Yes.
But I guess it depends on your definition of 'life experience'. If you include things like 'walking on a beach' as a life experience, then yes, because going out and doing things gives you ample material to observe and study. Going to movies, stepping out of your comfort zone, travelling, all those things are fairly minor life experiences, but doing them often can really beef up your repertoire.
If you only include things like 'two chicks at once', meh. I don't see why it wouldn't help, as the more you experience a variety of situations, the more ideas you're exposed to (which is good). But I don't think having a colorful social/job/extra-cirricular/etc life is necessary for great art. Considering you have to sacrifice something (time spent drawing, sleep, etc) to have those wild experiences, it usually ends up being something that'll be detrimental to your art.
But that's getting to vague 'no one has the answer' territory. Do whatever shit you do, and do it the best you can. Mastery of art means you've learned a lot about yourself too. That only comes from experience. So. you know. Basically yes.
>Is life experience essential for becoming a 'good' artist?
It's really not. That's just an excuse artists tell themselves because they know that staying indoors alone drawing all the time is what really makes a good artist, but it's a miserable, lonely way to live and isn't healthy in the long run. So they lie to themselves and pretend that having a social life is required to be a good artist.
Maybe having "life experience" will keep you from getting depressed and killing yourself when you hit 30 and realize that you wasted your 20s alone in a dark room so you could work brutal hours making shitty videogames, and in that sense it makes you a better artist. But it won't make your drawings better.
