A (Hopefully) Short and (Hopefully) Reasonable Discussion on Art

People often ask if I'm taking an art course when they see my sketchbook, and more often than not they're surprised that the answer is no. Truth be told, I actually haven't taken an art course since elementary school (No, that graphic arts class I took freshman year of high school doesn't count - it hardly even counted as a class at all), and it's actually for a relatively specific (In my opinion, anyways [What's with all the parenthesis in this post?]) reason: I don't believe that art courses, as they are usually taught, are able to teach people art.

Now, before you get all uppity (I'm looking at you, reader!) with me, allow me to elaborate. I think a structured art course can teach certain aspects of art, namely the technical ones: Perspective, shading techniques, etc. What art courses fail and are unable to teach, however, is an artistic way of viewing things. You're perfectly fine showing someone the technique of drawing what they see, but it's an entirely different matter to teach them what is worth capturing and in what way.

Take, for example, a still life - a pretty common assignment in art courses. Assuming a reasonably competent teacher, you can be pretty sure that most people in the class will be able to draw the objects as they are presented. But Art - with a capital A - is more than that. Art is being able to look at the presentation of the objects and decide upon a good angle to view them from, optimum lighting, the style in which one captures the objects, etc. It takes a special perspective on the world to be able to do this, and in my opinion, this is something that you can't teach someone. It's akin to telling someone who is colorblind to look at one of those generic "numbers hidden in the dots" images and say to them, "No, no, you just need to view the green dots as a single object" (I realize this analogy may not be completely appropriate to the situation, but it's the best I can come up with for the moment). You're telling the person to view the image using a means that they simply do not have, and trying to teach someone to view the world through a figurative artistic lens presents a similar challenge.

Now, I'll admit that I too am guilty of sometimes just drawing what I see, but I like to think that I have a certain talent for rearranging or creating scenes in a reasonably creative manner in my other pieces. One thing that would appeal to me is a more loosely-run art class, wherein students are given minimal (if any) direction as to their work and simply told to create a certain number of pieces by the end of the course. I've heard that these types of classes do exist, but they tend to have structured classes as a prerequisite. So maybe it is reasonable to have people got through an introductory, structured class, to identify those who can think creatively, before allowing them into a loosely-run class. Moreover, I think structured art courses are a definite necessity for someone who actually intends to go into the art world, because it's assumed that these people already possess the "artistic lenses" and simply need to refine their technique. But for someone who possesses no artistic sense whatsoever, I would argue that it's nigh impossible to teach them to look at the world artistically.

Personally, though, I think I'll just stick with casual sketching for now. Maybe sometime in the future...