Serious question for Current/Past Art Students etc......

[glody]

OK...the other day, i was in my drawing class at school. Its unfortunately very general drawing class, and the teacher i feel is horrible...

(his site http://www.johnhughson.com )

hes very much into abstract art and stresses experimentation with a spectrum of materials. Which is all and good. But he DOESNT TEACH US ANYTHING....literally....i learn more on these boards than i do in class....is that sad? i think to a degree.

I feel that the drawing program at my school really needs to be revamped, and i was just curious as to what other peoples art programs are like....possibly a general run down of what types of courses other schools offer, and what they stress in regards to art etc. The different opportunities they possibly allow on top of just your art courses, maybe some optional fig drawing classes etc.....

If you could list like where you go and what the programs are like there, your opinions....what should and shouldnt be in the program, i would be very greatful to hear from as many people as possible regarding this topic.

Thanks in advance.

[Lev_0]

I'm takin a few classes from the university here. The ideas behind the stuff the teachers teach us is good but I don't think any of them understand any of the concepts they're trying to teach us, so no one ever learns anything, except those who've done a lot of research/work on their own and know what the teacher's trying to get at. We spend most of our time doing gestures..which would be alright with me for figurative work to begin with but we end up doin gestures for things like plants and pots and bags..then once we get into the value section of the class, the values will never look right because it's mostly gesture work. Nothing's attempted to be drawn accurately, everything's about making the current drawing look good/expressing things about what you're seeing rather than drawing what you see.

I think if they restructured our drawing program so that everyone has to measure things out accurately to begin with, most of the students that are frustrated now wouldn't be. We finished the perspective class of Drawing II yesterday but the teacher didn't really know anything about perspective. She said it was a tool you learn and forget but no one bothered to learn it in the first place to forget it lol. It's like everyone skipped to the forgetting part. I feel bad for the students in my class cause a lot of them don't have access to the internet where they can get some real info, they're stuck with the teacher as their primary source of help which can suck..I'm thinkin maybe print out a bunch of addresses to places like conceptart and sijun, fineart.sk where there's lots of kickass books etc. and giving it to the people, but then I think it would completely overwhelm them and they'd say fuckit lol. Anyways wtf I duno if this is what you asked but whatever i'm gonna watch tv

[hyphen]

i go to the art institute of la and am in the media arts & animation program. currently the program is split into 4 categories of classes, fine art [i.e. structural drawing, figure drawing, sculpting, etc], 2d animation, 3d animation, and electives. I'm only in my 2nd quarter but i feel as though i've learned a lot through my fine art teachers regarding drawing. we haven't worked with many mediums yet, just mainly pen and pencil, but i've learned a lot of technique. especially with value, shading, contrast, and line work in general. oh, and a LOT in perspective.
my first quarter taught us how to measure proportions with a pencil, how to tget the grayscale going, blocking & centering, etc. so i feel we have a relatively strong drawing curriculum. this coming quarter i start anatomy, 2d animation, intro to 3d, and cinematography, which should be an interesting quarter.

all in all, i feel our program is fairly strong, though not as strong as art center or otis. but one thing i learned though, is that a student shouldn't rely on his teacher for everything.