Is it cheating?

I often find myself claiming that I “cheated” when making a piece, asking others if such-and-such is “cheating”, or reading posts on Reddit and so on where people ask “Is this cheating?”

Here is a non-comprehensive list of behaviors that people have described or worried is “cheating” in watercolor:

• Doing tutorials or classes instead of 100% original compositions
• Going off half-cocked doing your own thing without any formal training
• Working in one quick-and-dirty layer instead of multiple, carefully glazed layers
• Working in multiple layers instead of one perfect alla prima layer
• Painting in a loose or abstract style when you don’t know how to do realism
• Painting very literally and realistically from life or references, not putting an artistic spin on it
• Painting directly instead of creating meticulous undersketches
• “Coloring in” a drawing instead of painting directly
• Tracing
• Imprecise freehand drawing instead of using a lightbox, projector, or carbon paper (i.e. tracing)
• Just doing exercises or swatches instead of a scene
• Jumping straight to painting full scenes, without “putting in the work” of doing exercises
• Omitting planning steps such as thumbnails, value sketches, and color wheels
• Painting small
• Only ever doing one style/subject
• Not developing a specific personal style
• Emulating somebody else’s style
• Adopting a technique you’ve seen somebody else do
• Working from a reference instead of “just knowing how to draw”
• “Doodling” from your imagination instead of using references
• Working indoors from photos instead of outdoors from life
• Doing quick and dirty sketches outdoors instead of careful studio paintings
• Using black paint instead of mixing your own blacks with complementary colors
• Highlighting with white paint instead of masking
• Masking instead of negative painting
• Using “convenience” paints commercially mixed from multiple pigments instead of only using single-pigment paints
• Using secondary colors (orange, purple, green) instead of mixing them from primary colors
• Using low-chroma colors (e.g. brown, gray, navy blue) instead of mixing them from bright colors
• Using colors straight from the tube / unmixed
• Mixing on the page
• Mixing on the palette
• Using mixed media instead of pure watercolor
• Avoiding mixed media and only using watercolor
• Leaving in imperfections
• Giving up and starting over when you’ve made a mistake
• Painting something you love, but as a fluke / happy accident
• Photo editing
• Not photo editing

Notice that many of these are contradictory! In many cases, both options have various tradeoffs, but because of work-ethic brainrot, whatever you are not doing feels like the more pure/virtuous way. You can feel bad no matter what you do! 

Anything you do will be wrong in some purist’s eyes: let this be freeing. You can only please yourself.

So what is cheating?

I think it’s cheating if you can clearly answer the question “Who is the victim?” For example, here are some things I do think are shady:

• Passing off another artist’s work as your own without credit. [Victim: the other artist(s)] The line I draw is, if you make work that is a direct copy or literal translation of another artist’s work / photography, publicly give credit & don’t sell it.
• This may be a controversial take but I think it’s wrong to use generative AI, since this is an artwork-stealing machine. [Victim: all other artists who ever posted online]
• Lying for financial gain, including by omissions (example: selling fugitive artwork, teaching classes in order to sell products to students, breaking the rules of a competition in order to win.) [Victim: purchasers, students, other participants]

Cheating yourself

Sometimes the response when you explain that your “cheat” is victimless is, “You are cheating yourself.” I do think there may be something in this but it is highly personal.

Depending on what you are trying to accomplish, there may be actions you can take that are not inherently cheating or wrong, but will not advance your goals. For example, if you are trying to learn how to do technical botanical illustration, painting loose florals of nonspecific flowers won’t help you.

The point of cheating yourself is that it’s a line you draw for yourself – it is not a standard you can apply to anyone else, or that anyone else can apply to you.

Conclusion

If your behavior is victimless, has no consequence on your own artistic goals, and the only reason you’re worried is because some asshole was mean to you or because of what you think other people might think, then congrats! The asshole in real life, or in your mind, was wrong. It’s not cheating.

I’d like to normalize the practice of being transparent about our methods without being self-deprecating or apologetic about not following arbitrary rules. One artist’s cheat is another’s option, preference, or judgment call.

My self-challenge: Instead of saying “I cheated and…”, I will simply describe my methods and reasoning neutrally. I will be proud of choosing the quick and dirty path, making non-traditional choices, or simply picking one of any number of options because:

• It was easy
• It was fun
• It seemed like the best way to get my desired result
• I know how
• It’s an experiment
• I saw someone else do it and I thought it seemed cool
• To learn something
• Plan A didn’t work out
• It’s 80% of the result for 20% of the effort
• This is the way that works for me
• I was inspired
• I wanted to

All are legitimate reasons!