This comic isn't directed at anyone or anything in particular. It's more a set of observations I've made over the many years when it comes to people and how they view art, and the process of learning how to draw. (An alternative version of this comic would have been someone learning how to throw a ball and giving up after one attempt, saying it way too hard).

Art is a skill like any other, requires a lot of attempts to be any good at it. Yet, when it comes to art people have a lot of unreasonable expectations towards it, expectations you don't expect with other skill sets: Copying is bad. Every attempt should be an attempt at originality. Every attempt should be a masterpiece, greater than the piece before. It is an impossible skill to learn. It is something that should not be criticized at all.

Yet when it comes to other skills, you are instructed to copy the actions of other people. You will be criticized and corrected with each attempt. None of the attempts will have any sort of originality attempted until the basic skill sets have been mastered through many attempts. Some attempts will turn out worse than the try before.

One of the biggest problems with art (as I see it anyways) is there's really no "safe" way to learn the basics of art, because any attempt at copying existing art is viewed as plagiarizing, stealing, unethical, lazy, and a whole wide spectrum of negative connotations when it's a necessary step in the learning process. Sure people can say "draw things from real life" but some people want to draw characters, not bowls of fruit.

With any other skill you possess, if you see someone else with a higher skill level preform something that blows your mind; your first instinct would be to try and do it yourself. This is acceptable with practically any other skill except for art. When it comes to art there are landmines everywhere, step on them and be called a hack, a fraud, a thief.

Ultimately art is a form of communication, and I'm a person who'd rather promote that communication as opposed to going "No it's mine! Hands off!". Hard to imagine going up to children learning how to speak "How dare you steal my words!" yet this is something done to people learning how to draw.

Though as for the last part of being gifted art, I do appreciate the effort people put into such things; but at the same time a rock is a rock, and a cake is a cake. (And I know other people have experienced the same thing).