Of course, many (if not most) artists want praise, otherwise they wouldn't display anything.
Heck, I appreciate positive comments; I've been getting many for my latest fanfic, and I'm not going to scorn them and say "Mindless praise! Shut up!" to my reviewers. The thing is, while they give me the warm fuzzies, I don't let them get to my head. Some readers' responses
do tell me that I've succeeded in certain areas (evoking sympathy for Darth Malak, for example), but I'm not going to strut around and preen. I've got an honest beta-reader; my paper bleeds red ink when I print my stories out for self-editing. Combined, those are ample reminders for me that I'm no literary genius. (I do admit, though, to taking pride in the fact that most of my reviews are correctly punctuated, spelled, and indicate intelligence. *grins* Ahem, a moment of conceit here.)
In their eyes, it is, at least for the first moment. I'll admit thay myself, I become discouraged when I get too much negative comments but I know that if such is the case, my drawing must REALLY suck.
Someone told me that, if one person remarks that it is bad, your work might simply not please everyone. If several people start giving the same criticism, on the other hand...
If your text/picture/song is simply godawful, there'll be at LEAST one good comment about it. The question is: is this comment from someone who trully likes it or he is just being mercyful?
There's an audience for everything; the hundreds of glowing reviews the fanbrats on FF.net get are proof of that. However, I do notice that a lot people try to be nice and adhere to the school of thought: "If you have nothing nice to say, say nothing at all." (Which would, y'know, result in stagnation.)
