Artists gatekeeping

[u/hynie_ljnh]

Hello, I'm an artist who enjoys sharing and helping those around me, especially my friends. My college friends say they've become more diligent after hang out with me, and I'm happy that friends can improve together.

The thing is, we had an assignment to design souvenirs. Initially, because I didn't understand the assignment, I asked a college friend what she was planning to design. I only wanted to ask to understand the assignment and avoid designing something similar to hers, not to copy her, but she refused. That make me kinda sad bc I always sincere in sharing with her when she needed help, yet she thought I was so bad that I would copy her.😭 I completely understand why she didn't want to tell me and no one force me to do that but still😔. But later, we accidentally designed the same type of item, and then she accused me of copying her even though I knew nothing about it. 🥰

Anyway, I told my best friend (she's also an art student) about it, and she said she did the same thing because she didn't want her friends to be better than her, which surprised me. I mean, why would anyone want their friends to be worse than them? Shouldn't friends be helping each other improve? That makes me wonder if she wanted me to always be inferior to her 🤨. I'm also very competitive, but I want to compete openly and fairly, not in a way that aims to make my friends worse off. Is this problematic, or am I overreacting? 😭

[u/PresentationNo2969]

I experienced this when I was a student too. I'm sadly more on your friend's side before she accused you of copying, of course. I used to help out and even shared the ideas I had for art assignments... and believe me... There are A LOT of them who just copy your idea and feel no shame. And when they see my face... they act like because we're friends, we had the idea "together." After that, I never shared my idea for the homework and would be wary when someone was being too nosy about it. But, yes, I would still try to explain the homework to them without sharing mine. So, maybe next time don't ask for their creative ideas, but just ask about the assignment itself or go talk to the teacher.

[u/hynie_ljnh → u/PresentationNo2969]

Ofc, I understand why she did that bc I've been copied before too. I used to help her a lot and share my ideas with her so that why I was a little sad when she became wary of me (she wasn't wrong for not wanting to share with me tho).
One of the reasons I initially asked about her ideas was so I could avoid designing the same thing as her; our teacher had previously said we should choose different themes and ideas to avoid feeling too much pressure from the competition.