Ah, this is where my points of "descriptive" versus "prescriptive" come in. These "brutally honest" art communities sound to me like they've already decided furry (or at the very least the art they are critiquing) is bad. Most of this comes from unfair comparison of furry to other genres.
Admittedly, the new artist wouldn't be helped very well. The criticism I'm calling for would be a tool to measure furry with by its own standards. It applies more to works that already meet those standards. For a new artist, at best it would give guidelines along the lines of "this is something that works, and here is why it works."
As far as critiques on technique, the only practical answer may be simply to go offline; criticism among friends, as Green Reaper points out, risks friendships, while criticism from enemies is, well, hardly helpful. Asking the local art teacher or even a local artist for critiques would avoid this problem, and probably be a bit more informed than the average "random Internet guy."
Ah, this is where my points of "descriptive" versus "prescriptive" come in. These "brutally honest" art communities sound to me like they've already decided furry (or at the very least the art they are critiquing) is bad. Most of this comes from unfair comparison of furry to other genres.
Admittedly, the new artist wouldn't be helped very well. The criticism I'm calling for would be a tool to measure furry with by its own standards. It applies more to works that already meet those standards. For a new artist, at best it would give guidelines along the lines of "this is something that works, and here is why it works."
As far as critiques on technique, the only practical answer may be simply to go offline; criticism among friends, as Green Reaper points out, risks friendships, while criticism from enemies is, well, hardly helpful. Asking the local art teacher or even a local artist for critiques would avoid this problem, and probably be a bit more informed than the average "random Internet guy."