Sensitive Artist

"I'm an artist. That means I'm sensitive or some crap."

— Nelson, If You Could Say It in Words

Apart from the stereotypes that they are weird and poor, artists—those involved in the visual, literary, and performing arts, but also anyone who treats their craft as an art form—are often portrayed as sensitive individuals. "Sensitive" here typically refers to emotional sensitivity, being empathetic, introspective, or highly intuitive and perceptive to the feelings and thoughts of those around you.

Portrayed positively, this lends itself to a kind, gentle, compassionate, and understanding disposition. When people say Artists Are Attractive because they're sensitive, this is usually what they're referring to. However, sensitive can also mean having thin skin, especially to the criticisms and judgments of others, and emotional includes being broody, moody, angsty, and emotionally volatile, fragile, or reactive. In either case, such characters are more likely to be Prone to Tears (Tender Tears in particular) and easily moved by simple gestures and sentimental things than others.

Works using this trope alongside Art Reflects Personality tend to imply that to be a good artist, one must be intuitive and sensitive in order to see past the superficial to find the "greater" or "hidden" truths in life to capture in their work. Some works may take this idea to the realm of the fantastic, depicting artists as The Empath, a Telepath, or as innately sensitive to things beyond typical human awareness, like the paranormal and supernatural.

The "tortured artist" archetype, in which artists exist in a near-perpetual state of emotional and mental anguish that they mine for their work, has some of its roots in this trope. Because artists supposedly just feel more deeply and are more aware of the intricacies of the world on an intuitive level than non-artists, they end up much more susceptible to mental health issues like depression and anxiety. They then Cope by Creating and more often than not rely on drinking and drugs to numb themselves to the world.

Given gender expectations related to expressing certain emotions, this trope tends to be more noticeable when applied to male characters, who will likely be written as being In Touch with His Feminine Side if they are not written as angsty. For these male characters, if they aren't gay, they're likely to be Mistaken for Gay.

This trope can overlap with Eccentric Artist, with the artist's eccentricity manifesting in emotional volatility or hypersensitivity. Also may overlap with Reclusive Artist if the artist keeps a low profile because they find being in the public eye too difficult due to their sensitive nature. The performer in a Technician Versus Performer contrast typically falls under this trope and the angsty Byronic Hero may also be portrayed in this way. See also Art Reflects Personality: as Eccentric Artists lean towards True Art Is Incomprehensible, sensitive artists are often associated with True Art Is Angsty.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Futari wa Pretty Cure Splash★Star: Mai Mishou is a calm, gentle, and kind young girl, in contrast to her friend and Pretty Cure partner, Genki Girl Saki Hyuuga. Her intuitiveness seems to be part of the reason why she was able to know that the two people flying in the distance under the moonlight were her two classmates from hundreds of meters away. She loves art and joins the Art Club in school, where her art becomes so well regarded that she is asked to design the school's monument later on.
• Mars (1996):
  • Kira starts off as an Emotionless Girl, however this is later revealed to be a trauma response to being raped by her step-father when she was younger. As she unpacks that trauma, Kira is shown to actually be very empathetic and intuitive, shown best by her Aura Vision: she unconsciously associates people with colors that indicate their personality. This is what tips her off that something is deeply wrong with Masao, because she can't see colors when she looks at him. She just sees darkness.
  • Sei, Rei's deceased twin brother, was also an artist and was the shy, quiet, and much more emotional counterpart to Rei's outgoing, boisterous, and playful personality. Rei grew up having to defend Sei from bullies and generally remembers him being weaker and fragile because of his gentler and sensitive nature. He even says Kira reminds him of Sei because of this. Subverted, after Sei is revealed to have been The Sociopath putting up a gentle and weak front to manipulate Rei into an All Take and No Give relationship, molding him into a Knight Templar Big Brother on his behalf.
• In the Turning Red spinoff 4★Town 4★Real, Jesse, the 4*Town member who went to art school, is shown to be very empathetic and tries to get Tae Young to open up about his emotional turmoil.

Comics

• Locke & Key: Duncan Locke is an artist with a talent for sketches and metalwork (though he's pretty open that he mainly gets by through teaching art as a subject). He's also the nicest of the Lockes, and is often the available shoulder for the increasingly traumatized family members to cry on; plus, unlike his rough-and-tumble boyfriend, he prefers the quieter things in life. For good measure, flashbacks reveal that he was like this even as a kid, being the only member of the family innocent and empathic enough to find the magical Keys. Duncan's empathy and artistic skills pay off in the finale when he helps Tyler create a Key of his own.
• Suicide Squad: June Moone, a.k.a. The Enchantress when the Evil Sorceress that is possessing her takes control, is a sensitive and kind-hearted freelance artist and graphic designer when not under The Enchantress's influence. This is in contrast to the Enchantress personality, who is much colder, crueler, and often an explicitly evil and corrupting force in June's life.
• Teen Titans: Jericho is a gifted painter and, before he lost his voice, was a prodigious singer. He is also depicted as the most empathetic member of the Titans, managing to earn Raven's trust almost immediately and being the only one who makes an actual effort to figure out the source of her turmoil.

Fan Works

• The Story of Apollo, Daphne and Luca: An Italian Tragedy: Caterina (Giulia's mother) works as an artist (just like her incarnation in the Canon movie) and has a sweet, caring and open-minded personality who only wants the best for the Underdogs.

Film — Live-Action

• Bedazzled (2000): After reading Allison's diary and learning she wants a sensitive guy, Elliot wishes to become the most emotionally sensitive guy on Earth. The Devil, in what becomes a recurring pattern of Be Careful What You Wish For, makes him In Touch with His Feminine Side: he's so empathetic, he unabashedly cries at the thought of dolphins, cries at the beauty of the setting sun, and barely resists when two "bad boys" show up, kick sand in his face, and flirt with Allison in front of him, because He Wants His Beloved To Be Happy and Allison is very receptive to their flirtation. Naturally, he is also able to whip out a hyper-realistic pencil sketch of Allison within seconds and wrote a song dedicated to the dolphin on his guitar.
• If You Could Say It in Words: Discussed by Nelson, a painter with undiagnosed Asperger's, in response to Sadie, the young woman he has a one-night stand with, who is surprised by his low pain tolerance: "I'm an artist. That means I'm sensitive or some crap."
• Moulin Rouge!: Christian is a writer who is characterized as a hopeless romantic and Wide-Eyed Idealist, who believes that so long as there is love, people can find a way even through the most trying of situations. When Satine confuses him for The Duke (who she needs to seduce to secure more funding for the Moulin Rouge) and throws herself at him, he turns her away, instead reciting his poetry to her and charming her in the process. Christian's work is also just as romantic and idealistic as he is, being a thinly veiled telling of his and Satine's budding relationship. After the story told within the film approaches its tragic end, Christian becomes the angsty and brooding version of this trope.

Literature

• The Hunger Games: Peeta is a baker's son, so he is well-trained in pastry creation and decoration, to the point that he is able to leverage this into extremely realistic camoflauge body painting when he and Katniss are sent to the Hunger Games. He is emotionally sensitive, empathetic, and attentive to the needs of others, which makes him a capable charmer when it comes to interviews. This is in contrast to Katniss, who is basically told by Haymitch to let Peeta do the talking for the both of them, and Gale, who, like Katniss, is much more stoic and adept at hunting than talking. In the ensuing Love Triangle between the three, Peeta is the sensitive foil to Gale's more traditional masculinity.
• Old Scores: Anita, a painter, though her emotionality is particularly emphasized in contrast to Simon's stoicism.

Live-Action TV

• Anne with an E: Cole Mackenzie is a quiet artist who is a kindred spirit to Anne, an empathetic friend who allows Anne to kiss him to save her from humiliation in Spin the Bottle and likes the finer things despite his rustic upbringing. He's also sensitive to the comments of his family and the other Avonlea boys, and sometimes blows up at them when they go too far.
• Bones: Angela Montenegro works in the Jeffersonian as a forensic facial reconstructionist, making use of her artistic skills (she was a former street artist) and technological know-how to recreate faces for the team. She is much more sensitive, empathetic, and in tune with herself and her emotions than the rest of her coworkers, who are desensitized to their circumstances (at least outwardly). She is one of the characters who frequently has to take a moment to leave the scene and take a breather when dealing with corpses, murders, and other heavy topics, as she is much more prone to emotionally attaching herself to her work than the others.
• Boy Meets World: Shawn Hunter is the series' Troubled, but Cute, brooding Badbutt. The show frequently focuses on his often well-justified angst and emotional volatility and his long-term Character Development is about coming to terms with his trauma and finding healthy ways to cope. In earlier seasons, he doesn't show any inclination toward the arts. This changes, however, around season 5 when he gets into Shakespearean sonnets as he falls in love with Angela (who is into poetry and writing herself) and he later picks up photography as a hobby. In the Bad Future shown in "Seven the Right Way", he is a writer with publications in Rolling Stones magazine. This is kept in the sequel series Girl Meets World, in which Shawn is also a professional writer and photography hobbyist.
• Cluedo: In series 2, Colonel Mustard tells of how he had blackmailed the artist George Velares for having affairs behind his wife's back, and drove him to suicide, adding "these sensitive artistic types".
• The Crown (2016):
  • Antony is a photographer and filmmaker. He first catches Margaret's attention at a party where he approaches her and the two delight in dissecting the public behaviors and personas of the people at the party. When Margaret asks him to take her portrait, he spends most of the time flirting/seducing her by continuing to do so, this time however pointing out Margaret's flaws and emotional walls regarding romance after her failed engagement to Peter Townsend. Margaret finds his brazenness, insubordination, and perceptiveness about her situation captivating enough to propose marriage, despite initially finding his demeanor "queer".
  • When Winston Churchill gets his formal portrait done, a modernist by Graham Sutherland is hired to do the job. The sessions between the two are more like therapy sessions, with Sutherland slowly peeling back the strongman posturing Churchill puts up, much to Churchill's chagrin. Sutherland eventually stuns the older man into silence when he intuits that the empty pond Churchill, a painting hobbyist himself, keeps painting into his landscapes actually represents his grief after losing a child.
• The Cry of Mann: Jack is the Eccentric Artist of the family, and he also seems to be the most sensitive and emotional among his siblings and most of the other cast as well. He's incredibly reactive to anyone's criticisms, from flipping out at "Palmer" for thinking his paintings are bad to having a Sanity Slippage meltdown after his failed art show. He's also the most receptive and kind to his callers, addressing them all as the same entity—the aforementioned Palmer, who he develops a complicated friendship with—while the other characters are quick to dismiss or snap at their own callers. He even temporarily snaps out of his Sanity Slippage when he realizes Jouglat is dead, nearly breaking down in tears when he talks about how much his brother meant to him, something not even Berry did.
• Dead to Me: Judy Hale is an artist who sells paintings in her ex-fiance's art gallery. She's also very sensitive, emotionally driven, and emotionally volatile, especially in comparison to the other main character of the show, the ill-tempered, sarcastic, crude, but ultimately well-meaning Jen Harding. Judy is sometimes too nice for her own good, doing things like constantly giving second chances to her aforementioned jerkish ex-fiancee, and she has a hard time establishing boundaries. She can also swing wildly in her moods, from ecstatic joy to deep depression.
• Power Rangers: Dino Thunder: Trent is an artist by hobby. He is also the kindest and most sensitive of the teenage male Rangers (when he isn't Brainwashed and Crazy by the white dino gem, that is). By contrast, Connor starts out as a Jerk Jock (later Jerk with a Heart of Gold) and Ethan is an immature prankster and smug computer genius.
• Wizards of Waverly Place introduces Alex's love interest Mason this way. They meet in art class where his artwork and sensitivity catch Alex's eye. His more expressive, thoughtful, and artistic nature serve as contrast to Alex's previous Badbutt boyfriend Dean.

Theatre

• Curtains: Discussed near the end in regards to people involved in show business: "We're a special kind of people known as show people. We live in a world full of dreams. Sometimes we're not too certain what's false and what's real. But we're seldom in doubt about what we feel."
• In Chicago, Al Lipschitz is described as "a real artistic guy, sensitive, a painter." His attempts to get in touch with his inner self led to him having several affairs (including at least one homosexual one), and eventually being murdered by his wife.

Web Video

• Sanders Sides: Roman, Thomas's creative side, is also the most emotional and dramatic next to Patton (the side that literally represents Thomas's feelings). He struggles with criticism and validation of self-worth, especially from Thomas.

Video Games

• Dragalia Lost: Emile's character plays with this trope. He's a member of the Alberian royal family, introduced as a narcissistic jerk with exceptional talents in art and music, who is unfortunately so much less accomplished than his siblings that most people don't even remember he exists. His noxious personality however is shown to be the product of an Inferiority Superiority Complex caused by the fact that Alberia is a Might Makes Right nation, which biases the government and culture towards brute power and strength. Because Emile's skills lie in the more peaceful realm of art and diplomacy, he's constantly overlooked, despite him having the potential to be The Philosopher King and changing Alberia into a better nation in a way his siblings cannot. Thus, Emile's jerkass demeanor is him rejecting those parts of him that he has been taught to see as a weakness. Once he learns to embrace his sensitivity, he becomes a more compassionate person and capable leader, though he's still a bit of a jerk.
• Hwei the Visionary from League of Legends is an extremely skilled artist of magical inks who's greatly in tune with the emotions of himself and those around him, which is great for his craft, but heavily unfortunate for his mental state due to the tragedies that befell his life, namely the destruction of his home temple by his former mentor, the artistic, but significantly less emotionally-minded Jhin. Hwei remains highly empathetic, but he himself is very maudlin and in constant struggle to find moral resolution making sense out of Jhin's "performance".
• Pokémon Scarlet and Violet: The art teacher Hassel, despite looking rather stoic, is actually an empathetic person who loves his job and is prone to crying fits when he's proud of someone. He bursts into tears both when Brassius relates how Hassel helped him out of an artistic slump during one of his classes and when the player character defeats him in a battle.
• In the indie game Under The Bridge, this is played for drama with Oliver. At first he seems just like the classic sensitive and shy artist, but following along his character's story reveals that his 'sensitivity' is the result of severe anxiety and possibly PTSD.

Web Original

• Pirates SMP: Ros is often seen drawing and painting and is an all-round talented artist. She's also one of the nicest and most generous people on the Isles.

Western Animation

• Arthur: Fern is a Shrinking Violet and an amateur writer with a particular interest and skill in the mystery and horror genres. Sometimes she feels sad for days on end for no apparent reason.
• The Casagrandes: Frida is a painter and photographer, who is very Prone to Tears.
• In Dinosaur Train, Derek Deinonychus uses his toe-claw to make wood sculptures, but he's self-conscious about it. He'd never shown them to anyone before he met Buddy and Tiny because he assumed his parents wouldn't care, since they only use their claws for hunting.
• Recess: Mikey is a Gentle Giant who writes poetry, does ballet, sings, and is generally characterized as being In Touch with His Feminine Side in terms of his interests.
• Played for Laughs in The Simpsons episode "Elementary School Musical", when Kurt and Ethan admit to Lisa via Dark Reprise that being an artist is nowhere near as glamorous as they'd hyped it up to be.
  Kurt: (singing) Artists make a living dressing up like falafel.
  Ethan: (singing) Artists shed a tear when they're called something awful.
  Passerby: You ain't no falafel!
  (Ethan sheds a single tear)

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