When you hear an artist say “I’ve been drawing all my life”, they mean it, and they mean that they took any art class that was available to them in school. For me, well I’ve been drawing all my life!
Almost everyone goes through the required art classes in grade school. You know the ones where your projects are almost always in a different medium than the last. Unlike a lot of my friends, I consistently picked any available art class that I could when we could start choosing our electives. I’ll include FACS (or Home Ed) in this because I took it mainly for the sewing portion of the class, and sewing is a form of art too.
In high school, the options expanded into different disciplines rather than a general art class. As drawing has been my strong suit, I chose every drawing class that I could, and then dabbled in painting, graphic design, videography, and sewing.
When it came to college, I had chosen to major in Animation. My advisor allowed me to focus a majority of my electives in the arts more so than film production. And when I say a majority, I’m talking about other art students thinking I was an art major. If it hadn’t been for art history classes (my greatest weakness), I would have double majored, though I did end up getting a certificate in sequential art.
All the art classes I took in college focused on art fundamentals, drawing, ceramics, screen printing, graphic design, multimedia, art appreciation, art history, animation principles, 3D animation, video production, film history, film studies, and LGBT representation in film, digital art, and sequential art. A few had multiple levels of the class, and you can bet I did the additional levels for a few of them.
Beyond college, I did purchase a few online classes. Two were from a BOGO sale; I didn’t vibe with the instructor’s way of teaching, and wasn’t really learning anything, so those are currently still incomplete. The other course I took was through yearly subscription with Paintable. I did quite a few of the beginning levels as this was when I was really trying to work on my digital art skills, but I wasn’t able to invest enough time in it to justify how much I was paying, and canceled my subscription before getting into the drawing from the imagination sections of the course. I might take it back up later on if I find I need some guidance, but until I have more time availability I won’t be able to use it to the full extent that I should. But I still hope to participate in some of Paintable’s future drawing challenges.
Those are all of the art classes that I have taken so far, and I hope to take more in the future. In addition to all of these art classes, I learned a lot of my digital art skills from online tutorials, so don't feel like classes are the only way to learn or improve on a skill.
Let me know what art classes you have taken or your favorite art tutorials!
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