@SatyrToon

7 months ago

Art classes were generally a struggle for me all through elemetary and middle school because the art teachers wanted projects done a VERY SPECIFIC WAY and discouraged us from making our projects OURS. We weren't allowed to add unique flair, our own characters, our favorite colors unless the prompt involved using them. It made going to those classes a chore. When I got to my senior year of high school and was put in the art class (because they had no more required classes to give me) I expected more of the same. One of our first projects was to mess with perspective and use a vanishing point to create a street or hall scene. Everyone around me was doing just the buildings or the items in the hall, but I finished early and decided to make a "zombie school" scene by adding the undead and two survivors in the middle of the hall. The art teacher walked up behind me, saw my work and ask if he could see it. I let him, expecting to be scolded for not "following the prompt" but when he took it, he held it up to show the class and said "This is what I want you to do! You should have fun with it!" That class became the first art class that I EVER enjoyed. He encouraged us to do our own thing, to let our personalities and interests come out in our work, to use the prompts as a framework and to not just follow them to the letter. He only scolded us when he thought we were being lazy about an aspect of our work because he knew we could do better. We collected all of our art and kept every project in a student-specific folder as our portfolios. I was sick the last day of our class and when I came to school for the last day, he made sure to hunt me down to give me my portfolio because "I KNOW you don't want to forget this." Some of my art even got put in the display case for him to keep and show to future students. It was genuinely a great experience.

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