Art School Insider #1

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This guest post was written by and features the art work of Ciaee Ching

I apologize for the late update, everyone! I want to blame it all on art school, but it’s really just me who’s terrible at managing my time. Anyway, I am going to try to make this entry as honest and unromanticised as I can.

Expectations and Struggles

I don’t know where to begin! It’s crazy to think that it’s just been a little over two months since I’ve gone back to art school. Let’s start with how I imagined going to art school here was going to be like.

I thought it was going to be like the perfect place for learning - everything was going to be wonderful and inspirational, and I thought that I had have a bit of a head-start on things because many graduate students at AAU do not have an art-related Bachelor’s degree. I was going to be creating impressive work from Week 1 through Week 15, be the best student in all my classes and hopefully manage to lead a healthy lifestyle as I do this. I have oils (never tried them) and watercolors (completely out of practice) to master, but I had this unrealistic idea of me being able to somehow grasp painting techniques overnight.

As you might expect, I was wrong. One week into the semester, I was already asking myself questions like, “Why I am doing this to myself? I’ve been through art school!” I guess I forgot how draining and technical the assignments can get. I also forgot how I won’t have any time or energy left to do my own work. By the time I feel fully rested (or almost), there’s next week’s round of assignments to worry about. I was too used to taking my time to allow myself to be inspired by the things around me that I found it really frustrating to have to think of ideas for each assignment within such a limited amount of time. After that I’ve to figure out how I want to do it, and then rush it done. I am in Week 9 now, and not a single one of my assignments has left me feeling satisfied. Some of my classmates are doing great in class, and I have no idea how they do it - they get their work done so well and come to class looking fresh-faced and well-dressed. Maybe I will ask them. I go to class looking like a zombie.

Teachers

Stephen Player teaches me ‘Drawing from Imagination’ and ‘Watercolor’, and ZhaoMing Wu teaches me ‘Portrait Painting’. The teachers I’ve had so far are great, but it might be because I did a bit of research before signing up for my classes. I know how that sounds a little creepy, but I really do think that the teacher of each class makes quite a big difference in one’s learning experience. If you are going to art school, you might want to ask around for opinions on the instructors available before signing up for classes. Or you could do some online stalking. (I did both.) I check out the reviews on RateMyProfessors as well, but they’re hardly reliable.

Relevance

A classmate of mine saw the work I have on my website, and she told me that she was surprised at the difference in skill level compared to the work I bring into class. I feel a lot of pressure when people compare my existing digital work to my assignments. I wrote to my friend Viet-My (ravenskar) a few weeks ago about my feelings of uncertainty:

“I feel like I’m not achieving what I want to achieve at all in my assignments. There’s never enough time and I’m never good enough. I kinda feel like I’m moving further away from finding my voice in doing these assignments. I mean, they might be beneficial to me (maybe?) but right now I just feel like I don’t know why I’m doing this at all. It’s like I almost found my voice in digital art but decided to put all that to a halt and then go try out watercolor and oils. For whatever reason I don’t know. I keep getting this feeling that I’m going to end up with a whole set of half-mastered skills.”

I really want to say that I got over that and that now I know exactly why I’m doing what I’m doing, but I don’t. It feels good to know that I’m facing my fear of traditional mediums, so I will continue to get the most I can out of these classes. Right now, I definitely find some joy in handling real paints but it’s still really difficult and scary. I will write again on this if I make any new revelations.

The Social Side of Things

I think that a huge part of going to art school is the friends and connections you make.

On the first day of class, I went in expecting the atmosphere to be lively and my classmates to be interested in interacting with one another. I thought that that would be natural since we all know that we share similar interests. To my slight disappointment, many prefer keeping to themselves or prefer staying in groups consisting of individuals who spoke their native tongues. There were times when I felt completely left out but I found it hard to invite myself into a conversation. The cultural differences among many of us also made me uncertain of what would be deemed appropriate or inappropriate.

Things eventually got a little better with time, more so in some classes than others. Workshops are also great for meeting people. (AAU provides free drawing, painting, modeling… etc. workshops almost everyday.) It’s easier to approach people at workshops because of the less formal nature of the sessions and also, the people who attend them are people who are generally more committed to improving their drawing skills. A friend said that going to workshops is like party-leveling in an MMORPG. Sometimes the students would host their own workshops or drawing sessions, and we’d all gather at their place to sketch. There’s usually good music, lots of laughs of chatter, we take turns to model (so there’s a great variety of some really fun poses), and everyone ‘levels up’ together. If I had more time, I’d be attending workshops every day of the week.

Things I want to achieve/practice in/during the remaining 7 weeks:

• Get to know everyone in class.
• Manage my time better, so that I don’t have to rely on energy drinks.
• Eat more healthily.
• Become best friends with Mr. Oils and Ms. Watercolors.
• Become better at drawing figures in perspective.
• Attend more workshops.
• Be open to new approaches/techniques and different perspectives.
• Prepare for FanimeCon.

It was a little difficult to set aside some time to do this. After completing this post though, I realize that it’s really quite important for us to sometimes put whatever we’re doing on hold and take some time to reflect on our struggles and discoveries. There were many times (especially at the beginning of the term) that I questioned my decision to go back to art school, but now I definitely feel like I’m on my way to something. I don’t know what it is yet, but someone once told me that suffering is a sign of growth.

(I’ll be keeping an eye on this blog entry, so if anyone has any questions for me please don’t be shy and leave them in the comments to this post.)

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