Many Artists learn more from ‘online art courses than in college

I can’t tell you how many artists have told me via Facebook, twitter, YouTube, this blog, email, Skype, etc that they have learned more from online classes like FolioAcademy, SVS and otheres, than they did in four years of Art School at 500 x the price! As much as I’d like to pat myself on the back I won’t. I won’t pretend that I’m doing more than any art teacher should be doing.

How can this be happening? My theory is that art was never treated as a serious subject in K-12 and as a result students enter college completely unaware of what they need to learn in a visual arts program. “But Will, I had A Few great art teachers in high school” It happens, but quite often, in fact more often, art teachers spend most of their time managing students that were dumped in their classrooms from the counseling dept. – I know – I taught High School art and I was in High School Art.  I believe that a lot of art teachers that don’t teach either never became accomplished in their own work and never learned the rules, or perhaps they’ve simply become lazy and willing to take advantage of the system -a system that pays them just as much for being a great teacher as it pays for being a lousy one. It could also be that they are afraid that they will create clones of themselves who will take away their work – pure nonsense and scarcity thinking. Or maybe they spend too much time babysitting and policing those students that are only there to screw off and cause trouble. Like I say, I was there.

Drama majors, English majors, Music majors, and Dance majors come to college with much more experience than illustration or art majors.

They come with more experience because in Drama, English, Music, and Dance they are taught rules. You can’t have a school play if the actors are taught to act their “feelings”. Obviously you can’t write a story without learning rules about plots, sub plots, climbing action, climax, falling action, resolution. Not to mention, Language, spelling and of course grammar. You can’t make music if everyone is doing their own “interpretation” of the song and you can’t be an effective dancer without learning “moves” moves that were developed by other dancers.

“But Will, you’re talking apples and oranges.” Bologna! (see what I did there?) In a play you have a climax – that’s called a focal point in a painting. In writing you revisit the same theme throughout the story – that’s called repetition in an illustration. In music you you have to have balance, unity, divisions, and emphasis and it’s no different if you want to visually communicate in a picture.

Art teachers on the other hand have been getting away with murder. OK, not literally, and not all art teachers. I know many many great art teachers at the high school and college level and I have to put in a plug for UVU where I teach – a great illustration program with teachers who rock! However, I also know many who have perfected the art of NOT teaching. Their apathy towards their students is sickening. I hear reports that teachers tell students to “paint their feelings” to “experiment” to “explore” and just “figure it out”. I had an illustration teacher tell me over and over: “If I tell you how to complete the assignment you won’t learn anything”. I’m not saying that telling a student to experiment is a bad thing – but if that’s the only “teaching” a student gets – THAT’S BAD!

So what’s different about the visual arts? Why and how do these teachers get away with NOT teaching the art? Are there rules of art or not? If there are rules for actors, musicians, writers, and dancers why aren’t there any rules for visual artists?…THERE ARE!

Ignorance will not help your artwork

If you were never taught to keep your elbows off the table you could be offending people without knowing it. If nobody ever taught you to floss – your teeth might be falling out and if you were never taught to swim – you might be reading this from heaven. My point is that awareness comes from education and without it you might be walking around totally unaware that you are in desperate need of something.

One of our most important online art courses that we offer is called How To Design A Drawing. Many artists don’t realize that there’s a big difference between drawing and designing and that in order to create a GREAT image you need BOTH Designing and Drawing, and Painting and a whole lot more.

We grew up like weeds. We were given pencils and paper and told to have fun. Having fun is good but without instruction it’s just play time. Does your art look like play time? Our Elementary teachers had no clue how to teach art and most of our High School Art Teachers never learned the rules of design either (and I’m talking about a lot more than the rule of thirds).

I get about 50 to 100 emails/interactions on social media per day asking me about how to get better at art. Most aren’t serious. Most don’t have the kind of commitment needed to improve. Many want me to tell them how good their art is as if my blessing will help them convince themselves that it isn’t that bad. It’s bad. We all start out bad. I was horrible and I’ve blogged about that often. Horrible with a capital H – so don’t think I’m rude when I tell you that if you never learned the rules your art is probably suffering. It’s hard to give a good critique but honesty it is the only thing that will help you get better. If it’s time to stop pretending to be an artist and start being one, you may want to take a few courses. If nothing else start taking control of your future. Seek out good teachers and colleagues, that will give good critiques and good direction.

It is the supreme art of the [art] teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge. ~Albert Einstein

50% off our ‘Design a Drawing’ course for the Serious Artists

If you’re serious about getting better I promise you that our ‘How To Design A Drawing’ lesson won’t be a waste of your time… and we won’t tell you, “Just experiment.” In fact, I am going to give you a 50% discount off the regular price of $29.99 with a 30 day guarantee. But you have to know the promo code, which is blog all lower case and you have to go to our ‘hard to find’ promo page which is here and type in the promo code. blg81 then click on link below it to go to purchase at 50% off. For a refund, just email Wayne at his personal email WayneAndreason@GmailDOTcom

In the ‘How to Design a Drawing’ course, children’s book illustrator Will Terry explains what it means to design a drawing as well as an introduction to the design principles and elements. This is a fundamental course giving the viewer easy to follow explanations for making good design decisions and problem solving visually. Whether you’re a beginner or an advanced artist the insights by Will are personal to his work. Will uses detailed examples reaching back from the history of art through current professional illustrators from today. If you want to take your compositions to the next level this course will give you the tools needed to evaluate your own work based on simple design principles – and you’ll have a better understanding of how to get the results you know you’re capable of. Ages 16 up. approx run time: 3hrs