Realism rant (bc I can)

You’re welcome!

I think there is something just relatively hidden when people talk about learning realism before doing anything else. There are at least two angles to this…I’ll mention the more useful one, first. (Now that I re-read this, I realize that I’ve forgotten the second one. I’ll see if I can recall it later…)

It doesn’t necessarily require any creative effort, to observe. Everything with the capability of vision, can observe. “Drawing what you see,” isn’t necessarily an exercise in creativity, it’s an exercise in building fine motor skills and in framing a composition. (Constraints of the latter still do irk me [“how does this fit into a rectangle?”], but that’s another post…)

What creativity goes into mimicking reality — how to translate what you see to what’s on the page, canvas, etc. — is secondary to getting your hands to move the way they’re told to move. Plus, the way to get the tools to do what you want them to do; and to mix the color you want to mix. It’s this precision that comes in handy later.

In my opinion, there’s no real reason that objective reality absolutely has to be the reference point where it comes to skill-building: but in a class, a still-life or a model may be the only reference that everyone has in common. You *can* build these skills outside of, “drawing what you see,” but no one will be able to grade it, because they can’t see what’s in your head, to know how faithful you were to it, or not.

Pedagogy is weird. After so many years in the system, I’ve realized that…in many respects, education has been gamified…but it’s kind of similar to how much else in our society is gamified (getting a job, keeping a job, managing finances, going to war, building a family, being law-abiding, etc). I’m not entirely sure why it’s like this. The thing is, it can be hard to opt out of these things without negative repercussions…but that gets into systems of social control and constructs of power and constraint, which is essentially, Sociology.

In teaching — and I am only here drawing from my own classes in Research Methodology and Instructional Design — there has to be some kind of yardstick that the teacher can use to see if she’s actually teaching anyone anything, or not. If she can’t prove she’s teaching anyone anything, she may lose her job.

More often than not, that yardstick boils down to grades, although I have participated in at least one alternate system (Credit/No Credit plus a personalized review at the end of the quarter).

To have something to grade, a teacher may try and level the playing field as much as they can…to see how students perform in trying to reach a given goal. Whether the students want to reach that goal or not, or whether the students understand why the teacher placed the goal where it is or not, is not necessarily on their mind. What is on their mind is whether you did what they asked. (I have had a teacher who encouraged creativity more than conformity: at the time, she was head of the Art Department.)

There are better teachers who actually care about students’ motivations and understanding of why they’re being asked to do what they are being asked to do. In fact, a student who approaches a teacher with these concerns may well mark themselves as an excellent (and conscientious) student, to an excellent teacher. But finding these teachers…it depends on the composition of the Departments you’re participating in for your major.

In my Undergraduate days, I found out that my Creative Writing department was awe-inspiring and forward-thinking, and my English department (my major was split between the two) was extremely conservative, to the point of insult for a minority student that didn’t want to assimilate into what they wanted me to become. This was amazing to me, as the University was in the middle of a city known for its diversity, and I joined that University because I wanted that diversity. I thrived on that diversity. I had left my previous University precisely because of feelings of alienation.

In contrast, to have a teacher call me “Godless” when I questioned her continual references to her own religion as though it applied to everyone, or to have to deal with a teacher who said no one was ever racist before the term “racism” was invented — those things were shocks to my system. Then there was the teacher who tried to act like she was woke and I wasn’t, when I questioned the implicit bias in her video selections.

The point for you is not to let these people stop you from getting an education. It’s *your* education. Don’t let crackpots deter you from it. And don’t let them make you hate it.

But if you can, in the future, avoid the instructors who make you hate what you’re doing, and who aren’t open to answering your questions. If you can’t avoid them, talk to them about your concerns outside of class — this will likely make them less defensive. If, after that, you’re still having trouble with them…there are other options.

I wouldn’t jump to them, but I did want to let you know that Art School has been hard for nearly everyone I know who has talked about it (and these were mostly the Art instructors).

Okay, this is getting to be a post, within itself. 🙂 Have a good sleep, if you haven’t, already. 🙂

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