01-11-2016, 12:27 AM
Well, about art schools.
As a teen I was fairly active with creating art in highschool and had high grades, 3.88/4.0 and winning even some art competitions. I was manically overachieving in short. All of this was a desperate effort to earn my way out of trailer-park poverty back in Michigan, to surpass my limitations/circumstances and all. I didn't know how college worked so I went to community college to study art for 2 more years and learned how financial aid worked. With my mania and magical autistic powers combined, I figured out how to use financial aid and writing to make it to UofM Ann Arbor to study art and Japanese. All the while I researched and visited several art programs across Michigan, saw the work they produced in their halls, as well as chatted with people who went to those schools and others who taught there too.
To be honest, I created the best work during my 2 years in community college. Private art schools in America, and universities in general, are incredibly expensive and what you get from those schools in terms of illustration and base art skills, in my opinion, is not worth the $30,000 plus a year when there are these resources online for mentorship and instruction. In a physical studio one you don't necessarily have that much access to your instructors. Yes they are relatively small classrooms (15-20 people max) and yes many of them (not all) are passionate to teach you, but there are far more limits to their time and yours that no one tells you before you pony up the tuition and fees.
Many art teachers that I've come across actually teach at other schools just to make ends meet, less and less of them are full-time faculty. I remember trying to talk to a number of them after class and they couldn't because they had to rush to their car to drive to another college to teach another class. Yes they have office hours, but there are always other people trying to get to that teacher during them, plus those hours are not in a studio, they are in an office. You at best can talk about criteria of the assignment but it is not like you can get the paint overs from them like you could get online. They also have email contact information, provided on the syllabus, but again, their time is limited and they don't have the time to really discuss too much about your work. Many of the part-time teachers could easily be juggling 2-3 plus classes at one college and who knows how many more at other universities and even community colleges. The full-time teachers have the better credentials/achievements, but also better perks, like only offering one class that everyone is in a rush to sign up for. If you are a freshman or sophomore, you can't sign up for those classes as early as a 3rd or 4th year student, at least at the schools I went to. Those awesome classes are not even available to you in the first 2 years out of 4 for several reasons.
No matter public or private, colleges that offer degrees have to have general education credit requirements. You will be spending money on classes that do little or nothing for you in terms of improving your craft. Community colleges have slightly less bureaucratic mess, but going to any college to improve your art will have tedious and expensive hoops of fire you will have to jump through like a sad circus tiger.
I could write more about this, anyone feel free to ask me more about art schools, or anything really.
As a teen I was fairly active with creating art in highschool and had high grades, 3.88/4.0 and winning even some art competitions. I was manically overachieving in short. All of this was a desperate effort to earn my way out of trailer-park poverty back in Michigan, to surpass my limitations/circumstances and all. I didn't know how college worked so I went to community college to study art for 2 more years and learned how financial aid worked. With my mania and magical autistic powers combined, I figured out how to use financial aid and writing to make it to UofM Ann Arbor to study art and Japanese. All the while I researched and visited several art programs across Michigan, saw the work they produced in their halls, as well as chatted with people who went to those schools and others who taught there too.
To be honest, I created the best work during my 2 years in community college. Private art schools in America, and universities in general, are incredibly expensive and what you get from those schools in terms of illustration and base art skills, in my opinion, is not worth the $30,000 plus a year when there are these resources online for mentorship and instruction. In a physical studio one you don't necessarily have that much access to your instructors. Yes they are relatively small classrooms (15-20 people max) and yes many of them (not all) are passionate to teach you, but there are far more limits to their time and yours that no one tells you before you pony up the tuition and fees.
Many art teachers that I've come across actually teach at other schools just to make ends meet, less and less of them are full-time faculty. I remember trying to talk to a number of them after class and they couldn't because they had to rush to their car to drive to another college to teach another class. Yes they have office hours, but there are always other people trying to get to that teacher during them, plus those hours are not in a studio, they are in an office. You at best can talk about criteria of the assignment but it is not like you can get the paint overs from them like you could get online. They also have email contact information, provided on the syllabus, but again, their time is limited and they don't have the time to really discuss too much about your work. Many of the part-time teachers could easily be juggling 2-3 plus classes at one college and who knows how many more at other universities and even community colleges. The full-time teachers have the better credentials/achievements, but also better perks, like only offering one class that everyone is in a rush to sign up for. If you are a freshman or sophomore, you can't sign up for those classes as early as a 3rd or 4th year student, at least at the schools I went to. Those awesome classes are not even available to you in the first 2 years out of 4 for several reasons.
No matter public or private, colleges that offer degrees have to have general education credit requirements. You will be spending money on classes that do little or nothing for you in terms of improving your craft. Community colleges have slightly less bureaucratic mess, but going to any college to improve your art will have tedious and expensive hoops of fire you will have to jump through like a sad circus tiger.
I could write more about this, anyone feel free to ask me more about art schools, or anything really.