#this would also help with my college welsh bacc grade

[bugbugboy]

I would post my own art as well as offering prompts and advice to help you advance yours!

Under the cut is a taste of some of my work

[red-retro-rose]

My Experiences with Art Class

This is gonna be a long one! Make sure to go grab some snacks and a drink before you start reading.

Okay so I forgot to talk a picture of the Winston chibi, and since all my work is at school to get graded I can’t take a picture of it. I also can’t take pictures of some work I did that is a lot better because I was rushed for time and forgot, so I figured I’d write about my experience with art class.

So, I’m just going to explain how things work at my school because I know other schools work differently. I go to school in the UK, in Wales, and we have this thing called Sixth Form (which is mainly for people aged 17-18, but sometimes can be younger or older if for example they were move up or held back a year), which is basically like doing college (high school in America) but you stay at school. I originally wanted to go to college but there are only two colleges near me, and one of them would mean me taking a train at five or six in the morning since I can’t drive (I’m old enough to but I’m scared or it), so there was really only one option, but then I found out that the college wasn’t doing a history course which I was dead set on. So, I ended up having to go to Sixth Form.

When applying I had to choose four subjects, well three really as Welsh Bacc (which is really pointless, and therefore I’m not gonna go into details as to what it is) is compulsory. I chose history as that’s what I wanted to do, and English Literature, as there was no English language option. Then I had to choose something from the last column, and the only option that somewhat interested me was art. I had taken photography for the last two years so it made sense, I also really liked drawing but never thought I was that good, so I figured this would be a good way to learn new skills.

Just so people know, I’ve never been much of a fan of the idea of doing art as a subject as I felt it would suck the fun out of it for me. I was right so yay I guess?

So I thought that we would be allowed to do whatever we wanted as a theme, as that had been what the years before had done, but no, we got given a theme, and were not told that this wasn’t compulsory. The theme we were given was coast as we live in a coastal area so it would be easy to get references because of loads of beaches. I hate the beach, I don’t like sand, I don’t like the sea, so yeah, I wasn’t happy, but I did work, however my teachers thought the class weren’t working hard enough. We were set to do 24 pages of our books over two weeks.

Okay so to some people that might not sound like much, but keep in mind that I did not do art that often, I had not built up my skills like everyone else in my class. Oh and I’m also going to say that my class was on five people including myself, and three of them had taken art as a subject for two years so they had built up more skills.

So 24 pages in two weeks. Guess who was the only one to do that. Go one guess… It was me. I had stressed out over doing these pages, but I did them. Two artist studies, because we were forces to do artist studies. They took up four pages, a page of information and a page of work I had done in the style of the artist for each of them. My first three pages were a title page and a collage that took two pages. I can’t remember all that I did, but there were pages of concept art, and trying out different techniques for making dolls based on characters from Asagao Academy. I worked so hard on them (these were not the final products, they were flat versions) before doing these I didn’t even know how to sew.

The first lesson back, I was the only one who had done the pages, my male teacher looks at all our work, apart from one of the girls (our class was made up of three girls and two boys) as he didn’t have the time. When looking at a lot of my work he would ask for references when I hadn’t used any and they were just from my head. When looking at the Asagao Academy work he said he ‘didn’t get it’ and he would dismiss a lot of my ideas. Dismissing my ideas was a theme when he looked at my work. He then at the end of the lesson apologised to the girl whose work he hadn’t looked at, stating that he was sure it was great, ‘better than all the rest.’ This angered me as it was blatant favouritism, and there was also the fact that everyone else had made it clear that they hadn’t done 24 pages while I had.  

My female teacher, who was later replaced as she went on maternity leave, when looking at the concept art for the dolls said they were too simple, which I find rude considering it took me a long time to work on them. She did seem to be more on board with my ideas at time but still was very dismissive.

So, time goes on and I get more and more annoyed. Here’s a thing that I really hated and disagreed with doing art at school. We had to write about the work we had done and be all technical about it, we had to have a reason for what we had done, and it couldn’t simply be “I wanted to” or “I liked the idea.” It basically had to be a mini essay and I hated it because in real life artist don’t do that. We were constantly being told to do these things that weren’t done outside of school, and I stated this, I said that art was about freedom of expression, it was about what you wanted, that there didn’t have to be complicated reasoning behind it. Now, I have really bad anxiety, I hate having attention on me, so the fact that I was annoyed enough to say anything shows how bad things were. There were times where I wasn’t even polite about it, like I wasn’t overly rude, I was just frustrated and it showed. My friend who was almost always in class with me since she had free lessons when I had art was even surprised at me and knew that things were bad.

My male teacher actually started mocking me. I had triple lessons with him once every two weeks and he had forced us to do some drawing practice that I had no interest in because I was happy doing my actual work, I had found the style of art I enjoyed doing by myself and gotten better at drawing on my own because my teachers weren’t any help and even if I wanted help I’d rather work something out myself than ask them due to how they treated me. I had gone to my head of year and she had spoken to my teachers but it changed nothing.

Anyway, so this triple lesson my teacher kept remarking how I had said that art was about expression and such, but he kept bringing it up, kept bringing attention onto me even though he knew I hated it, and he used a lowkey mocking tone at times.

I started just not going to school some days, especially on the days when I had triple art. I was getting sick a lot anyway due to the stress of it all. My mum and my sister understood and never forced me to go to school, knowing that I wasn’t skipping anything important, on those days I also had Welsh Bacc, but it was with another teacher who didn’t know what he was doing really (he’s a really good teacher I have him for English, but I think he just knew how bullshit Welsh Bacc is).

Of course I did have to actually go to school on days I had art since I had other subjects on the same days as having art, and I wanted to do well in them, but I always dreaded going to art, but I couldn’t skip it, especially since I get EMA, which means I get money to go to school due to my family not having much money.

Now, I know some people reading this are probably wondering why I didn’t just drop the subject. For one thing, I was worried as to whether it would affect my EMA, and then there was also the fact that I was stubborn. My teachers believed that I was not going to do well, and although I do not care about grades in art, I think it’s bullshit which I made clear, I wanted to prove them wrong. This was probably stupid, but I didn’t know how much worse it was going to get.

So, I finished my work on coast, as we were told we could move on to anything we wanted, I believe I was the only on to do so. For my final pieces of my art I was told they weren’t advanced enough, which I mean who the fuck cares. So what if they were just drawings I don’t that were a bit less than A3 size and were painted with watercolours? I liked them, I was proud of them!

So I decide that for my next part of art I was going to do whatever I wanted, and split it into four sections, video games, make up, YouTube and fantasy.  Maybe this was a bit two ambitious on my part as the school year was about half way done, so I did put some of the stress on myself, but constantly being put down and treated horribly didn’t help.

In all honesty, I did start to slow down, and not because I was taking longer on my drawings, but because I just didn’t care anymore, I wasn’t enjoying drawing or doing any kind of art. As time moved on I knew I had to pick up the pace. For some stupid reason, I had decided to do art for every Overwatch character (except for Orisa as she hadn’t been announced yet) and it turned into such a rush that I don’t even like some of the pieces now that I’ve had more time to look over them. There was one day where I wanted to get everything finished for the Overwatch part so I just kept working all day, even though all I had eaten was one slice of toast, and when I was almost done I felt faint and had to stop to take a break. I was happy when I was done but this wasn’t all I had to do. Luckily with my work on make-up, I was half way done, and it wasn’t something that took a long time to do. I did ten looks overall, and I could get two or three done in one day.

I had chosen to do work based one Starbomb for video games as well, and I was proud of some of the work I had done, but it was as I was working on these that our class was told when the deadline was and we had less than a month to complete everything. The fact that I also had exams coming up that month didn’t help. There’s some work I did that I know with more time I could have done better, there were so many things I wanted to do that I wasn’t able to, and don’t want to do now because it just brings me back to art class and how horrible it was.

I did manage to get all of the topics I’d chosen to do done, but not with some help. I did all of the art work, but my sister helped me with the writing and presentation of my book, without her I don’t think I would have gotten it all done. I remember looking at the list of everything I had to do and crying because I didn’t think I would be able to do it. It didn’t help that I also got really sick again, and it lasted for two weeks, but I couldn’t really relax and focus on getting better because I needed to get all this work done, as well as revision for my exams.

I think that something that helped me get all the work down, other than my families help, was the fact that since I had learnt everything, and Welsh Bacc lessons had been cancelled so people could revise, I didn’t have to go to school and therefore I had more time to get stuff done, and I wasn’t surrounded by negativity.

Overall, taking art class was a terrible experience for me. It was emotionally draining, and also affected me physically as I was getting sick every other week. Looking back, I should have stopped when I wasn’t enjoying it because it wasn’t worth being stubborn. I won’t be taking art next school year. It took me a few weeks to even be able to do art just for myself because I couldn’t shake those feelings of being put down and told my work wasn’t good enough. The art I’ve been doing over the last few weeks has been really good, and I’m able to take breaks when I need to, and not rush. I can’t wait to show you all what I’ve been working on because I’m so proud of the work I’ve produced.

P.S. I’m going to stop putting the Overwatch art up one drawing at a time, and instead do a post dedicated to each character because I think it will be better and also I don’t like some of the work and want to start posting new work as soon as all the Overwatch stuff is gone.