Studies

Some days ago, I was asked by a friend to contact a young relative of hers. This girl was interested about art; she likes to draw, and wanted to know about what I studied in my Illustration studies. A few days ago I talked to my friend about this again, and it gave me the idea to tell you what I talked with her about. 

Please, keep in mind I’m talking about my own experience with Illustration studies, here in Spain more specific in Cordoba, I can’t know exactly if that’s the same case out there, because every school is different. I’m just giving you my point of view.

Is it really necessary to have "talent" or vocation for art studies? In my opinion, I would say it's important to have “talent”, it will help you for sure, but what I really think is important is the student's interest/vocation. Even if the student is not "very talented", if he/she really wants to learn and is motivated enough, it will go ok, maybe with a little more effort, but they could get it.

One thing I recommended to this girl to think about is that she should get there with an open mind, and ready for critiques. This world is subjective, maybe too much, even if teachers try hard to be as objective as possible to their students, I think it's something really hard to get, because their opinion or likes and preferences always "show up", even a little.

Something they wanted us to try in Illustration was trying out different styles (and different “themes” inside Illustration), we may dislike some of them, but they encourage you to experiment and to get you out of your comfort zone (once you are graduated you can do anything you want, but it will help you to have a different point of view of things, and in the future, to define your art, style, or whatever). This happens with any illustration, photography or graphic design studies, for sure, they will try to get you to experiment with different styles, techniques...

  

If you want to study art, please be aware of this, not everyone is “ready”. Maybe you will get out of there not drawing the way you did before, it depends on the person and their way to draw, or maybe you will want to keep using your style every time, and depending on the teacher, it can give you a hard time. In my case, I'm glad they showed me many different styles, I learnt a lot and it’s helping me a lot right now.

Do you need to study art to be an illustrator?  Not really. Would it help you (in your curriculum, to learn more...)? Sure it would, but some of the most famous illustrators nowadays didn't actually study "illustration". Some of them studied originally graphic design, and others studied nothing related to art, but ended working as illustrators. You won't draw necessarily better if you study art, you are the one who decide what you want to be, everything depends on you.

Long post for sure, but I thought it was time to write about it now that school time is close. Have a nice day and tomorrow there will be something different, I promise ;).