So artists...
Let's talk art school, but not "which," but "WHY"?
We all know that you do not necessarily have to go to art school at all to be a good artist, heck, I don't mean just more abstract stuff or freeform, but they seriously know what they're doing right down to the core fundamentals. So learning all those "icky" things I've heard people talk about which can include "perspective," "backgrounds besides nature," "backgrounds, PERIOD," "anatomy," or if you're just so murry purry "icky humans" can be learnt on your own with diligent study of the world around you, and there's a lot of insanely good books that can guide you, too (although there are way more shitty ones.)
Can I get an admission here? I know most of you from animation fandoms of all sorts, and want to go or WENT TO art school to learn animation, or the very similar illustration. Of these people, how many of you feel that you would not get accepted in any studio if you did not have some fancy college name attached to your portfolio?
Now, I'm not saying it doesn't help, and I'm not saying here it does help, I don't have much evidence either way besides the fact some of the big name colleges are "recruiter schools" which can make it EASIER for people to get jobs. But if you just removed that factor (and probably the animation one, animation is really just not something easily done on your own even if you're a professional so it's not really fair and isn't as related to the point I am lazily getting to), would you feel like you have to go to art school to learn?
I guess I should also say to "remove the 'I suck'" factor all artists have, but I shouldn't call the kettle black.
While I'm guessing a lot of it has to do with one's learning style, I know that I would probably not do too well learning a lot of aspects of art without someone LIVE there looking at my art and tearing it apart. While online you can get redlines, but those only do so much, and I often wonder if I really learned anything from it. I've been describing learning the more technical aspects of art like perspective, proportions, anatomy, etc as easy for me as trying to learn Algebra just from using the book. Which I was forced to do for a short time, and it was horrible. I think with math I made the quickest progress when I had a tutor to "bring me up to speed" with the rest of the class after a long absence who continued to help me with my homework till the end of the school year. Obviously, it's rare for most people to get that, that's practically like a mentor, but I believe the point remains the same, at least in reference to myself: I do better with an actual human being teaching me something and who is willing to explain all the "whys" because I am one of those annoying people who ask why you have to do a certain thing to say, run a machine which I've found drives people nuts.
Getting back to the point, I'm guessing that's my learning style at work here. But coming back to art, I would have to guess having a human being that can look at your art and tell you what you did wrong is better, because in art, there are so many different, wild, creative ways you can do something wrong compared to (most) maths! Okay, with advanced maths you do often have to go back and un-tangle a huge mess to find a tiny mistake which threw the whole thing off that was frustrating, but again, with most maths, you CAN find a place where you went wrong yourself if you're good enough. I see art as...well, art is at the mercy of your pencil, which is guided by your wild human brain, which perceives the world in its own way that may not make some things as obvious as they are to some people, so I just can imagine since again, with all that taken into account, there have got to be dozens of ways to go wrong with something, but for the artist themselves it is usually not as easy as going back and seeing if you dropped a "2." Hell, most artists have trouble seeing it at all until the piece is FINISHED, god knows that happens with me. So, I figure, to counter the human element that produces almost limitless variables, wouldn't it be best to have another human?
(On online crits: I find most non-forum based, heavily moderated crit formats online rather flawed; mostly say, dA crits: Most of the crits I see are on finished pieces. ...THAT'S USUALLY WHEN I DON'T WANT A CRIT. By the time I upload something 99% of the time I do not want to touch the thing again! People who ask for crits on WIPs on dA are rare, I guess because it's a "gallery" [if you can honestly call it that with a straight face] people are always queasy about "flooding people's inboxes" with WIPs and sketchy pictures. Which is a shame, but oh well. I think, honestly, that's often the only reason forum-based crit can often be better: PEOPLE LEARN TO BRING IN WIPS. That, and if it's a good forum, they keep the people who just make asses of themselves and don't know how to give concrit a nice hit with a ban hammer. Yeah, I know art teachers can often act like asses, but seriously, I'd rather have an art teacher I can see in the flesh tear into my art rather than some anonymous name on the Internet who is often using offensive terms that I have the class NOT to repeat here. And yes, there are bad art teachers, but there are bad ANYTHING teachers. Sadly can't do much about that.)
Again, I guess a lot of it would have to do with your learning style, but I gotta imagine for most artists, at least when it comes to art, their learning style is visual. JUST SORT OF MAKES SENSE, HMM? Text crits are often very much lost on me, honestly, probably for the same reason that while one of my biggest strengths is my verbal abilities, I am absolute rubbish at describing things, especially more fiddly details. And also why my mind may often run off and create its own mental image or idea of what a character in a book sounds like even if it's not anything like the book describes. Whatever. And having not just a book to show you what's "right" and the most common image of what's "wrong" (which 99% of the time is SO AMAZINGLY OBVIOUSLY WRONG) that most likely does not look like whatever thing that is "off" and bugging you BUT YOU DON'T KNOW WHY is often not enough.
While I love online artists communities, I seriously cannot see one come as close to mastering the fundamentals as a human can (no artist is ever done learning) just by online support. I just don't. And while meeting artists that do stuff you like online is fun, it isn't anywhere near as awesome as being able to sit around and draw together and poke at each other's sketchbooks and bounce ideas off each other LIVE. Jus' sayin.
Also take into account that you can only get so far learning anatomy from 2D pictures and while there's life drawing there's a LOT of anatomy that is just as important that IS covered up...and no I don't mean important like THAT get yer mind out of the gutter! It is very hard to learn how the muscle structure works and moves and such when people have clothes on. Sorry, it's true. Frick, I get embarrassed when I start drawing a char in public because while I obviously don't fill in details it's still obvious that I start off the pic with the char having NO CLOTHES and sometimes I wonder what non-artists think if they see that. Luckily no one has inquired. But, for those stubborn about not going to a proper art school, a lot of places offer figure drawing sessions.
Again, I know this is mostly for going to an art school, but this is really me saying WHY I'd want to go. I think to sum up my tl;dr I'd just have to say: I WANT SOMEONE TO TEACH ME AND TELL ME WHAT I'M DOING WRONG IT'S HARD ON MY OWN AND THE INTERNET IS NOT AS RELIABLE FOR ARTISTIC HELP AS SOME PEOPLE ARE TRYING TO PUSH IT TO BE. (Seriously, I think some people reading this will probably just LAUGH at the idea that some people think they could learn solely through help from people online, but some people believe it! Or at least they give off the impression of believing so VERY HEAVILY.)
I better end this before I write another rambling five paragraphs. I THINK I got my point down...I think...
We all know that you do not necessarily have to go to art school at all to be a good artist, heck, I don't mean just more abstract stuff or freeform, but they seriously know what they're doing right down to the core fundamentals. So learning all those "icky" things I've heard people talk about which can include "perspective," "backgrounds besides nature," "backgrounds, PERIOD," "anatomy," or if you're just so murry purry "icky humans" can be learnt on your own with diligent study of the world around you, and there's a lot of insanely good books that can guide you, too (although there are way more shitty ones.)
Can I get an admission here? I know most of you from animation fandoms of all sorts, and want to go or WENT TO art school to learn animation, or the very similar illustration. Of these people, how many of you feel that you would not get accepted in any studio if you did not have some fancy college name attached to your portfolio?
Now, I'm not saying it doesn't help, and I'm not saying here it does help, I don't have much evidence either way besides the fact some of the big name colleges are "recruiter schools" which can make it EASIER for people to get jobs. But if you just removed that factor (and probably the animation one, animation is really just not something easily done on your own even if you're a professional so it's not really fair and isn't as related to the point I am lazily getting to), would you feel like you have to go to art school to learn?
I guess I should also say to "remove the 'I suck'" factor all artists have, but I shouldn't call the kettle black.
While I'm guessing a lot of it has to do with one's learning style, I know that I would probably not do too well learning a lot of aspects of art without someone LIVE there looking at my art and tearing it apart. While online you can get redlines, but those only do so much, and I often wonder if I really learned anything from it. I've been describing learning the more technical aspects of art like perspective, proportions, anatomy, etc as easy for me as trying to learn Algebra just from using the book. Which I was forced to do for a short time, and it was horrible. I think with math I made the quickest progress when I had a tutor to "bring me up to speed" with the rest of the class after a long absence who continued to help me with my homework till the end of the school year. Obviously, it's rare for most people to get that, that's practically like a mentor, but I believe the point remains the same, at least in reference to myself: I do better with an actual human being teaching me something and who is willing to explain all the "whys" because I am one of those annoying people who ask why you have to do a certain thing to say, run a machine which I've found drives people nuts.
Getting back to the point, I'm guessing that's my learning style at work here. But coming back to art, I would have to guess having a human being that can look at your art and tell you what you did wrong is better, because in art, there are so many different, wild, creative ways you can do something wrong compared to (most) maths! Okay, with advanced maths you do often have to go back and un-tangle a huge mess to find a tiny mistake which threw the whole thing off that was frustrating, but again, with most maths, you CAN find a place where you went wrong yourself if you're good enough. I see art as...well, art is at the mercy of your pencil, which is guided by your wild human brain, which perceives the world in its own way that may not make some things as obvious as they are to some people, so I just can imagine since again, with all that taken into account, there have got to be dozens of ways to go wrong with something, but for the artist themselves it is usually not as easy as going back and seeing if you dropped a "2." Hell, most artists have trouble seeing it at all until the piece is FINISHED, god knows that happens with me. So, I figure, to counter the human element that produces almost limitless variables, wouldn't it be best to have another human?
(On online crits: I find most non-forum based, heavily moderated crit formats online rather flawed; mostly say, dA crits: Most of the crits I see are on finished pieces. ...THAT'S USUALLY WHEN I DON'T WANT A CRIT. By the time I upload something 99% of the time I do not want to touch the thing again! People who ask for crits on WIPs on dA are rare, I guess because it's a "gallery" [if you can honestly call it that with a straight face] people are always queasy about "flooding people's inboxes" with WIPs and sketchy pictures. Which is a shame, but oh well. I think, honestly, that's often the only reason forum-based crit can often be better: PEOPLE LEARN TO BRING IN WIPS. That, and if it's a good forum, they keep the people who just make asses of themselves and don't know how to give concrit a nice hit with a ban hammer. Yeah, I know art teachers can often act like asses, but seriously, I'd rather have an art teacher I can see in the flesh tear into my art rather than some anonymous name on the Internet who is often using offensive terms that I have the class NOT to repeat here. And yes, there are bad art teachers, but there are bad ANYTHING teachers. Sadly can't do much about that.)
Again, I guess a lot of it would have to do with your learning style, but I gotta imagine for most artists, at least when it comes to art, their learning style is visual. JUST SORT OF MAKES SENSE, HMM? Text crits are often very much lost on me, honestly, probably for the same reason that while one of my biggest strengths is my verbal abilities, I am absolute rubbish at describing things, especially more fiddly details. And also why my mind may often run off and create its own mental image or idea of what a character in a book sounds like even if it's not anything like the book describes. Whatever. And having not just a book to show you what's "right" and the most common image of what's "wrong" (which 99% of the time is SO AMAZINGLY OBVIOUSLY WRONG) that most likely does not look like whatever thing that is "off" and bugging you BUT YOU DON'T KNOW WHY is often not enough.
While I love online artists communities, I seriously cannot see one come as close to mastering the fundamentals as a human can (no artist is ever done learning) just by online support. I just don't. And while meeting artists that do stuff you like online is fun, it isn't anywhere near as awesome as being able to sit around and draw together and poke at each other's sketchbooks and bounce ideas off each other LIVE. Jus' sayin.
Also take into account that you can only get so far learning anatomy from 2D pictures and while there's life drawing there's a LOT of anatomy that is just as important that IS covered up...and no I don't mean important like THAT get yer mind out of the gutter! It is very hard to learn how the muscle structure works and moves and such when people have clothes on. Sorry, it's true. Frick, I get embarrassed when I start drawing a char in public because while I obviously don't fill in details it's still obvious that I start off the pic with the char having NO CLOTHES and sometimes I wonder what non-artists think if they see that. Luckily no one has inquired. But, for those stubborn about not going to a proper art school, a lot of places offer figure drawing sessions.
Again, I know this is mostly for going to an art school, but this is really me saying WHY I'd want to go. I think to sum up my tl;dr I'd just have to say: I WANT SOMEONE TO TEACH ME AND TELL ME WHAT I'M DOING WRONG IT'S HARD ON MY OWN AND THE INTERNET IS NOT AS RELIABLE FOR ARTISTIC HELP AS SOME PEOPLE ARE TRYING TO PUSH IT TO BE. (Seriously, I think some people reading this will probably just LAUGH at the idea that some people think they could learn solely through help from people online, but some people believe it! Or at least they give off the impression of believing so VERY HEAVILY.)
I better end this before I write another rambling five paragraphs. I THINK I got my point down...I think...