Hello Steemit
As I said in my #introduceyourself post, I am a student in a (very good) French Art School. But I will not give the name of it because I am not living a very pleasing experience there.
This is my first year here, I was in a preparation class (in France you can do preparation classes to make your book, progress and prepare some exams or diplomas) last year in another school, were I was feeling good.
It was small, it was cool, people were nice to each other and the teachers were actually caring about our lives and difficulties we could encounter.
But I had to go to another school because the scolarship of this one was too much. I'm not complaining, the new school has a better rank and is very prestigious, some students from China even come here to study. And the state gave me a fee to help my parents pay for this.
But I'm here, struggling. Feeling like the students are hypocritical, prone to backstab each other, badmouthing everyone around them. Feeling like the teachers couldn't care less about our asses. The lack of communication is critical there, and some of the professors just don't want to talk.
Everybody I talked to in this school basically said to me when I asked for counsels to keep my place here "Just smile and swallow".
So here in this long post, i will talk freely about everything, every pros and cons I can think of in this moment, about studying in a big art school.
Pros & Cons number 1 : The Teachers
Let's talk about them, because they can make your life dedicated to progress, or want to kill yourself at every minute of the day.
Some of the teachers are amazing, and are true recognized artists. These professors you saw on the internet, on the school opening gates or anything like it, are these people who just make you feel like "Wow I wanna go there and become as good as this guy !"
In this first year, I have 17 different school subjects, and I can count.. Maybe.. 6 of them in this category
And then, here they come. The bad guys. This kind of teachers. The ones who are hating everybody around them, the ones who make their students cry, the ones who makes you think "I swear to God, opening my veins with a rusty razor and painting with my own blood would be more fun than this"
The good new is : I can count only 2 of them in this category for the moment.. But when your classes are 8 hours long, you can imagine the nightmare..
Last but not least : the ultimate boredom. You do not care about any of these classes, or teachers. You're just sitting here, doing your best being bored as fuck. Yeah, it's the rest of them..
Pros & Cons number 2 : Academic Drawing Classes
Every artist will tell you : by doing academic stuff you can make enough progress to forget the rules and make your own.
IMO, it's not totally true.. Of course academic drawing forces you to progress in some techniques, getting the good proportions, etc etc but is it obligatory ? So, if you're bad at realism but killing everything in a comics, abstract, cartoon, or manga style, are you not an artist ?
Some people can study this for years and still be bad at it. But as Einstein would say "If you judge a fish by its capacity to climb a tree, it will believe its whole life it was an idiot"
The first year is very difficult if you hate doing classical art studies, because you're going to do that at least for the 3 first years.
Pros & Cons number 3 : Lifestyle
Lack of sleep, eating junk food, sometimes not eating at all, back pain because you need to carry 150kg of artsy shit. Of course it's going to happen, but it does not mean it's nice to get through that..
Pros & Cons number 4 : Students and competition
In this kind of school, you have a numerus, meaning you have to be in the 20th better ranked students if you want to pass in the next class. It's a great deal of stress, self depreciation, mockery, sometimes insults, bullying and the list goes on. It's a very toxic environment.
Luckily, there's some people not taking it seriously, but it's not the majority of the students..
Why did I started this blog ?
Because in this kind of school, i felt like shit. You're never good enough, you never feel like you're ever making enough efforts. Everything you draw is shitty, and day after day, it's becoming worse.
I wanted to end that circle, and draw because I am genuinely loving it. There is nothing in the world that makes me happier.