03-17-2017, 06:27 AM
Keep in mind that joining a school will basically make you practice the same things that you can have access to by yourself. The key isn't the knowledge, it's that a school will make you practice what YOU need to do and give you small individual feedback based on problems YOU have, even if it's a few minutes a day, to work on your problems.
If you go to a school where indoors don't offer much feedback, then you might as well study on your own. If you get responsible instructors who are passionate about teaching, then they will tell you what they see you doing wrong every time they pass by your shoulder. And what they tell you will be different from the person next to you. The learning experience is much more personalized, compared to learning from static videos.
The key, however, is just practice more. Just done personal anecdotal experience: at the school in studying at, I barely learnt any theory. However, I've improved more in a few months than I have in years. In my shelf, I have all the famous anatomy and perspective books, all the must reads in color, composition, design, mindset, etc. But I still couldn't do much after years of reading them. I just didn't practice much, which is harder than just taking in knowledge any experimenting it critical thinking. During my first year at the school I'm studying in, I felt like crap, because everyone is improving so fast, yet I wasn't doing very well. Turns out all the instructors were working on undoing bad habits I picked up over the years from reading things I couldn't really understand yet. Simple things here and there make a huge difference, and it's the negative ones that were engraved into my muscle memory. This is singing I never would have gotten from learning online, as nobody will spend hours every day watching me draw in real time behind me.
Every classmate learns differently, and good instructors will pick that up. You can get something similar online if you can have someone really invest in your progress and see how you are doing, but it is harder as when you go to a school, the instructor is paid professionally to do that anyways, and not everyone online will dedicate many hours a day just for teaching. But it is very possible thanks to the Internet.
In the other hand, I've also went to a terrible art program and wasted 2 years of my life in at classes that yielded no results, so the best thing I can say is do your research. I was honestly surprised by my current teachers' behavior at first as I was expecting long lectures and demos, not drawing in class all day, which I could have done at home.
Both good and bad schools can be equally expensive and you may discover halfway that you might not really want to do what you are studying.
Talk to the students of schools you are interested in, ask their opinions on the work they do and try to ask as many people as you can. That's all I can say I guess?
Currently just studying, so I stand corrected on everything I said.
If you go to a school where indoors don't offer much feedback, then you might as well study on your own. If you get responsible instructors who are passionate about teaching, then they will tell you what they see you doing wrong every time they pass by your shoulder. And what they tell you will be different from the person next to you. The learning experience is much more personalized, compared to learning from static videos.
The key, however, is just practice more. Just done personal anecdotal experience: at the school in studying at, I barely learnt any theory. However, I've improved more in a few months than I have in years. In my shelf, I have all the famous anatomy and perspective books, all the must reads in color, composition, design, mindset, etc. But I still couldn't do much after years of reading them. I just didn't practice much, which is harder than just taking in knowledge any experimenting it critical thinking. During my first year at the school I'm studying in, I felt like crap, because everyone is improving so fast, yet I wasn't doing very well. Turns out all the instructors were working on undoing bad habits I picked up over the years from reading things I couldn't really understand yet. Simple things here and there make a huge difference, and it's the negative ones that were engraved into my muscle memory. This is singing I never would have gotten from learning online, as nobody will spend hours every day watching me draw in real time behind me.
Every classmate learns differently, and good instructors will pick that up. You can get something similar online if you can have someone really invest in your progress and see how you are doing, but it is harder as when you go to a school, the instructor is paid professionally to do that anyways, and not everyone online will dedicate many hours a day just for teaching. But it is very possible thanks to the Internet.
In the other hand, I've also went to a terrible art program and wasted 2 years of my life in at classes that yielded no results, so the best thing I can say is do your research. I was honestly surprised by my current teachers' behavior at first as I was expecting long lectures and demos, not drawing in class all day, which I could have done at home.
Both good and bad schools can be equally expensive and you may discover halfway that you might not really want to do what you are studying.
Talk to the students of schools you are interested in, ask their opinions on the work they do and try to ask as many people as you can. That's all I can say I guess?
Currently just studying, so I stand corrected on everything I said.