To some it seems like a dream, to others it's a huge disappointment. I'm somewhere in between at the moment.

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad I can attend my school and hopefully get my degree, but there are a lot of things that really bother me. And I'm pretty sure that that's probably the case for a lot of art school students these days.

When I passed my entrance exams, I was thrilled. It was like a dream come true to me. I've always wanted to do something with drawing and design. I love drawing and although I'm not super talented at it, I am proud when I see myself improving. I don't have that much complaints about my Drawing class. I've had to do my first year Drawing twice before I passed because I had little to no knowledge of drawing beforehand. Sure, I 'drew' anime ever since I was 7 years old, but the teacher in my first year basically told me all of that was useless.

They hate anime/manga in my school. It's like a taboo there. Something that after 2 years of being there already, I still don't get. I'll always like those kind of styles no matter what.

Which brings me to the following; I love drawing or painting digitally, I'm much more spontaneous on a digital canvas than on a real one. It should be the other way around, but I guess I'm weird like that ^^' But that's another thing they hate. Especially with illustrative design. I get that you need the traditional skills to understand how things work, but they shouldn't diss digital drawing/painting like that and should allow us to do that. It's not like we actually get taught anything in our design studios.

No, it's like; you get a couple of assignments. Some big, some small. Most of them are big. They brief you about it and boom, then you're left to fend for yourself. Okay, fine, then when you have an idea, or have something to show, you go to the teachers for feedback. Do they like it? Wow, then you're really lucky! But just to be sure, I'd go check every week, because they often tend to change their minds in a week's time. They don't like it? Tough luck. Better luck next time, but fat chance of getting that when the only 'advice' they give you is 'experiment' or 'don't think'

Right... stellar advice. It almost brings tears to my eyes. Thank you so much for telling me that oh wise ones. I really never could have thought of that myself!. That is exactly why I pay so much money to study!

And if you're even unluckier - like I was last year - they'll tell you that you're bad at drawing people and never will get better so you should stop waste your time with trying, and try something unrealistic. Which - with all due respect to the illustrators that draw in that kind of style - I don't like at all.

Funny that my Drawing teacher this year thinks my figure drawing is good enough. Never good at drawing people. Right... Great teacher by the way, the guy who teaches us Drawing this year. He's real classical, which I love, actually explains techniques instead of letting you just 'experiment'  He does like if you experiment, but it has to be backed by technique. And in that way, I don't mind experimenting at all. He even gave us anatomy lessons!

So you know, it's not all bad for me. But besides Drawing class and theory classes, I don't feel like I'm learning anything at all, and sadly art education is a lot like that these days. I also think we should have more Drawing. We only have 4 hours a week. I bet that teacher that we have now possesses so much knowledge about so many different drawing areas, but 4 hours really aren't enough for him to teach us everything. I'm almost tempted to ask him for private lessons! He's the best Drawing teacher I've ever had.

I think it's clear now - even though this first post seems to have ended up more like a huge rant - that I made this thread to let people share their thoughts or experiences about art school. People hoping/wanting to attend art school can also tell their hopes and expectations here. Information can be shared. Briefly put: anything to do with art school can go here : )

It seems like through this process you'll learn to be more self-dependent.

But I really don't know too much about art.

I've gone in a different direction, science. But I've found many of the same things.

College has turned out to be more self-driven, and teachers are of little help. It seems like the bulk of what I'm actually learning is what I can motivate myself to do outside of classes.

Thanks for posting this. It was interesting to read about.

Aah, so it's in just about every study direction... that sucks. Self-dependency is important, but it's also supposed to be school. A place where you learn things.

One of my younger brothers is doing a science direction as well. He's kind of arrogant about it though, saying that everything he's now seeing in his first year, he knows already XD but oh well, the better for him if it is. I was never good at science. Only Chemistry, which I had for two years in high school. But that had more to do with the fact that I had a huge crush on that teacher haha. He was a really good teacher too. He explained things in a way I could understand that. In Physics, that wasn't the case. Biology was okay too. But I absolutely sucked at mathematics. I just don't seem to have that problem-solving logic that's needed in order to be good at it.

You're welcome : D it's a very rare occurrence that someone thanks me for my longwindedness! If I could ask you a question... your nickname here is EideticMemory, is that merely a name, or do you really have an eidetic memory? If you do, that must be a great help with just about everything! I've always found that very interesting.