Not-so-fun Fundamentals of Art

          It's funny that when we think of school art assignments, most of us have a general idea of what that entails. In classes such as "Intro to Art" we are taught the fundamental elements of art: color, line, value, contrast, etc. The teacher then has us do blind contour drawings, and sketching out basic shapes and its shadows. We are then tested on our knowledge of art vocabulary such as the differences between tertiary and primary colors, or saturation and hue.

          Here is an excellent video on how to do blind contour drawings. I completely agree with the notion that students should learn the basics before moving into more complex tasks. However, this is a tutorial that is done in less than 3 minutes, whereas in a classroom, this sort of lesson may take up to 30 minutes.

          In my personal opinion, I feel that although these assignments are meant to prep us for future art projects, they are rather lackluster, boring, and repetitive. I learnt all this in high school just to be re-taught the same exact lessons again in a college art course. These mundane art tasks we are given feels almost insulting—actually I am probably just jaded because I am an art student who already has knowledge of the basic concepts. Maybe not insulting, but a little redundant. I remember seeing a rubric of a well-planned out semester, with every detail perfectly placed as to what we'll be doing on what day. Although I did enjoy this class, I observed that most of my peers did not take many of the assignments seriously. I would labor for hours over one homework assignment just to watch the person next to me scribble theirs down last minute.

          It made me think-- maybe had we all been given assignments we were interested in, people would work harder in class. Perhaps if the mold was broken and we were allowed to explore things within our interest, we would be more motivated to produce better artwork as a whole. I think the idea of coming up with new and innovative ways to teach students is a brilliant idea, and would love to learn how to teach with those methods in the future. I think that creativity is a powerful talent to acquire, because it is one thing to replicate, but another to create something uniquely your own. A huge problem in the art community lies in that students go into college wanting to be artists, yet they don't know what they want to do with their career. Should they paint? Maybe sculpt? Become an animator? Perhaps dabble in architecture? In my opinion, it's these concepts that prepare us for the real world that should have more attention. Instead of teaching kids every cookie-cutter art lesson in the book, it might not be a bad idea to just let them dive head first into a project. If you think about it, you could learn everything you can about lines and colors. However, that knowledge doesn’t help you when you’re learning to keep a steady hand in ceramics. I think that art education will be greatly improved with less time spent concept learning, and more time spent on various hands-on projects.