My Beef with Classical Art Schools

My beef with classical art schools started many, many moons ago. Having been primarily self-taught and with a natural inclination to drawing, I entered art school with a fair amount of confidence. I knew I didn’t know everything, and I was far from perfect. But what I was able to do, I was pretty proud of and I was also eager for what they could teach me. What I wasn’t prepared for was the attitude of classicism.

It didn’t take long for instructor after instructor to tell me that #1, what I was doing wasn’t creating art. They said I was just a good copy artist. #2, they told me that the way I drew was amateurish. I bit my tongue, determined to learn what I had to for my own benefit.

Leonardo Da Vinci – Vetruvian Man (Photo from Luc Viatour www.lucnix.be)

Art school served its purpose. Classical art certainly has its place and I have a very profound appreciation for much of the work that the old masters did. There is definitely a lot to be learned from their methods. After all, our entire world of art grew from the old ways. But in every other major, it seems that they teach you what is necessary for you to go out on your own and continue to push boundaries.

Hopefully you’ll push the boundaries and find newer and better ways of doing things.
But not so with classical art schools.

Fast forward to a month ago. I enrolled in an online drawing school. It teaches art in the way of the old masters…the classical art way. I was reluctant, but there were some things I wanted a refresher on, so I enrolled. I’m telling you, my blood pressure is going to go up with all the proverbial grains of salt I’ve had to take in order to stomach their dismissal of any other method or technique.

For example, one of their “rules” is that the artist should draw the entire subject all at once as opposed to drawing from left to right (if you’re right-handed). That way, at any given moment the drawing looks complete. Drawing from left to right is an amateur method. Their words, not mine. But this is the classical art style. Therefore, it is the only way of drawing.

We work from one side to the other for good reason. It’s called, not wanting to smear your work.

Another example involves sets of graphite pencils. A classical artist apparently only needs an HB pencil. He or she should be able to make the marks they need and achieve accurate shading with that alone. Using pencils of varying degrees of hard/softnesses is not only amateurish but lazy.

My question with this one is, if I already know how to do that, why should I continue to struggle when the tools are there to make my job easier? I am not a glutton for punishment.

I’ll spare you the copy artist bit. I’m sure you’ve got the gist of things. But after all these years, nothing has changed. Instructors who teach classical art still hold to the old ways. And that’s fine. But throughout history, there have been dozens of art movements. Not all of them followed the classical art rules. In their world, any deviation is either an amateur’s attempt or not art at all. Digital artists? Sorry. Animation? Nope. Comic book artists? Definitely not.

Nothing gets under my skin faster than the narrow-minded ways of the uptight elitist art teachers who look down their noses at anything that’s not classical. What would this world look like if art had gotten stuck in the classical times? No growth. No pushing the limits. And no discovering of new styles, techniques, or even genre.

Art is about creative expression. How ridiculous is it that students are being told to creatively express themselves in one…and only one manner?

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