[Lunatique]

..."drawing them bug-eyed people, and be a real artist."?

That's what my art teacher used to tell me back in high school when I was obsessed with anime/manga/comics.

He would tell me things like, "Why are you wasting your time with those bug-eyed girl drawings when you obviously can do more serious work?", or, "If you concentrate on your fine arts work, all that comics/animation stuff will become very easy for you. You'll reach a point when you wouldn't even want to draw that stuff anymore."

Well, I have to say, he was about 50% correct.

15 years later, these are my thoughts:

Yes, learning your fundamentals and getting them rock solid WILL make drawing in different styles much easier. If you have your basics down(composition, value, color, rendering, anatomy..etc), you can apply that knowledge to anime/manga/comics/3D..etc.

BUT, if you DON'T get your basics down and just draw highly stylized work ONLY, you will find that down the road, you'll hit some serious road blocks that will hinder your artistic growth.

The other 50% I don't agree with is:

No, I didn't grow into some fine arts dude who looks down on anime/manga/comics. Just because you attain more skills does not mean you will choose art galleries over sci-fi/fantasy/cool stuff.

I don't see why the two has to be seperated. I mean, you can paint a fantasy painting with influences from someone like Sargent, or you can paint anime characters with a very serious/thoughtful/profound idea.

Anyways, did/does your art teachers give you grief for being a fan of anime/manga/comics/sci-fi/fantasy/3D/animation..etc?

[mucha]

rofl oh wow if i got a dollar for eveytime i have heard that...

[Norling]

lol.
I dunno what my art-teacher would tell me if i showed her my giant collection of spaceships...I do the excersises and collect my grades, nothing more.

Anyways, she hates when people use too much linework. And she's right, i don't see lines around every real-world object.

[wigin]

well when i was in highschool ( just about a year ago) My arat teacher actually encouraged us to go in the direction we wanted... But fundamentals were important and thats why we had life drawing classes ect... Soo that gave us to opportunity to practice stuff that isnt in our style.

Now that im out of highschoo l and in M y first year of art college and doing my art foundation course before moving on to animation. Its All about foundation skillz before doing stuff in my style. My teachers dont care if i practice my animation style on my off time but when its for school They want to see good foundation skills before they want to see your style. Dont get me wrong while doing these basic exercise we all have a different style of drawing but they dont want tell see umm cartoony painting style when your painting a nude model if you know what i mean. My foundation year is almost over ( 1.5 month left) and after a whole year of just doing life drawing everyday and painting from the nude and doing perspective drawings all this stuff from observation has made me a MUCH MUCH MUCh better artist because now if i start sketching my characters they come out more clear and they look MUCH better. Without this year my art would suck ass and it would have taken me maybe 5 years before i would be where i am now.

So next year I got accepted in traditional animation and well that course is all about a STYLE and doing stuff for animation. But then again sometimes i just have to put that style aside and practice my life drawing EVERYDAY. the one style that sheridan hates i beleive is ANIME and MANGA. Alot of this cartoon is just a template of prefixed characters .. I dont know how to explain this without offending anime fanatics.. But anyways sheridan doesnt mind the anime/manga influence BUT DONT do it PURE MANGA OR ANIME...

Anyways All this to say that i think its cool that people like to draw there anime characters and cartoons or whatever style they draw. But you would be a much better artist if you could get to understand the basics and even go beyond that of perspective , painting, colour, human figure , anatomy.... These are the tools of artists.... Not learning these pushes you into a style that you use as an excuse of not understanding stuff... i not saying that you do anime just because you dont understand anatomy or anything like that.. But what im saying is that i see alot of illustration students here that dont understand anatomy soo thats why they will distort it and use it as an excuse of not understandding how real anatomy works... You can distort things RIGHT by nowing how things work and then you can distort or change anatomy because you dont understand and then the picture just looks like a weird anatomy problem even thought its distorted...

Just my 2 cents...

[BlackPool]

I didn't get serious about drawing or art in general until my senior year in highschool. The previous two years I took art classes because they were an easy A. But Comics were the intial inspiration for me to really decide to dedicate my life to art. Well I was talking ot my art teacher about comics and he told me basically to not even try because only the most talented artist could do it because you had to know how to draw EVERYTHING from every angle. Well let's say I listened to John Buscema and Stan Lee instead.

[gekitsu]

one more time, i totally agree to you, lunatique.
of course, learning the basics makes things easier but should not make you sit in an ivory tower of fine arts.
i for myself see it as a lot of fun to always widen the horizon of my fantasy while making things for school.
my art teachers always went nuts with me but couldn#t say that much against my work as i always fitted my personal crazed things into what they wanted.
example: charcoal drawing. we were told to make very living and energy-filled lines and work colored area vs. untouched area.
i drew a lot of papers full of manga people under a strong lighting.
example two: soap carving ( ). everyone made something like elephants etc... out of his/her little piece of soap. something where you have to carve out a bit and that fits very well into the blocky shape of the soap.
this was called "work with the soaps initial shape"
i worked with the soaps initial shape by carving a gigeresque deformed head (it was deformed into a blok. i left the soap block untouched up there )
it obviously fulfilled the teachers goals but was something that just did not belong into the world of ivory-tower fine arts.

i like the sound of the heads of these ivory-tower fine artists bonking into their own set frontiers

[ZippZopp]

a big yes to that! as a senior in college i get that all the time... actually at the beginning of the semester i had to come up witha topic for a semester long drawing project, one topic was to do fantasy work. I showed my professor a drawing of darth maul and he proceeded to laugh at it. so i've come to the conclusion that i like a lot of artwork that art teachers aren't too fond of.

[dontfallin]

I failed art in high school

[Duckman2]

Yeah I think if kids draw from life from an early age they will become much more skilled and versatile in ALL aspects of art. This reminds me of something I saw on child prodigies. I saw a nine year old girl doing huge wall paintings with these insane colors and patterns that made no sense what so ever. She had no drawing skills what so ever. Now when she grows up and she's sick of doing that she won't be able to do anything else except abstract metal sculptures. I say so what when I was 9 I was outside rendering realistic landscapes. I have strong drawing skills, so now I can switch to what ever other medium I want to with relative ease.

[Steelwind]

I had a teacher that told me art wasn't for me. Top that.

[Dr. Bang]

My art teacher doesn't care. HORRAY!!!!!!!!!!!111

[jr]

my teachers were pretty surportive, in college, we had a manga/anime class.

[Anthony]

Well, since I was already into DaVinci and others like that in HS, I didn't have that problem :] My art teacher in HS did say once that "Anthony and I draw surrealist stuff because we can't draw well." I started laughing, since she couldn't draw at all(she was a photographer).

[mic]

Hehehe... My current Drawing instructor says it's "Aesthetically shocking".

[jome]

I was making a lino-cut, and really put a lot of effort in it, in the second last year in drawing school (age 16-17). We printed it multi-coloured, so I did that too. I was under the impression it came out quite well. At that time I was under the influence of grafitti-artists, reading Henry Chalfant's book(s) and hanging out with a crew of taggers and bombers.
The teacher came over to me, and said "That's quite good. Now do the same again without the caricatures."
The second cut I made was obviously a lot worse than the first one.

And as you say, Lunatique, I recently ran into some difficulties, noticing I missed some of the basics. Worked them away, with some patience.

[beans]

I've only had 2 art classes so far (both college level), but in the first class, I kept most of my comic/anime style drawings out of my sketchbook I turned in...then I snuck a few in one day, mainly out of boredom, and my teacher actually asked for more of them. O_O However, my life drawing teacher has asked that I cut back on those and concentrate more on realism, which does make sense.

I agree with your points though. I started out learning by copying the art out of video game instruction manuals (too poor for comics and anime was damn hard to come by) and by the time I found internet tutorials and then even later was able to take some art classes, I discovered how much time I had wasted learning things the hard way. Stylized drawings are the end result...by starting with those I missed all of the basics, so now I'm playing catch-up.

[gArGOyLe^]

My Highschool teacher was very supportive.. my elementary school art teacher HATED ME.. I drew houses the way I saw em.. but she wanted me to draw a Triangle and a sqaure.. and a piece of brocolli for a tree.. when I didnt she gave me an F ... I would love to meet her again and hit her on the head with a canvas.

[turnip]

*shudders* I hated highschool art. Felt like kindergarten but instead of crayons they give you charcoals and watercolors.

A lot o kids tend to start from comic/anime form and unfortunately really screws up their theory of anatomy. That is why art teachers hate it. Kids draw what they like and not necessarily understand it.

BUT...what REALLY peeved me off in HS was when students with..really...really...bad anime draws would get praised. While mine were considered too anime. I bit my lip went back and drew a semi realistic portrait to shut her up.

moral of the story: I hate HS art teachers. A lot of them are old and refuse to accept changes and my golly what will become of them if they let KIDS trample over teacher status.

[Eric Pommer]

Well, I AM a high-school art teacher, and I certainly support sci-fi/fantasy/anime work. Any subject matter that gets students excited is what they should be doing, since they won't strive to improve or challenge themselves if they're doing them just 'for the marks'.
Having said that, I think that some kids who come into my classes having drawn nothing but Anime do have some problems drawing realistic anatomy. You can argue about whether that's important or not, but I think it's fair to ask all art students to learn that.

[Liser Studios]

oh yes, i've had many teacher problems....
my teacher once said that i'm "not an artist, illustrators aren't artists" i then asked him what an illustrator is, he just said "he... illustrates things"
and then there's his "golden child" Calvin... he thinks calvin's the best artist in the school... weelll... look for yourself

this is his try at realism. how photorealistic.
something him and the teacher (note, "golden child") painted on the walls in the cafeteria. look at the amazing anatomy on the rider (you know when you lift your arm, that "ball" of your shoulder raises.) and the amazing dynamic shading of that dragon! wow! It's always great to put no shading when you're trying to show depth!
i hate my teacher. he's just a guy who tried to get into the NFL, wasn't quite tall enough, and used art education as a backup.
but hey, at least in one of our recent little arguments (i was arguing that we should have critiques, he didn't see the point) he said i'm a better artist, but that i "only take people's suggestions if i find them valid" or something along those lines.
but, i don't draw anime, i'm a realist (or i'm trying to be one). What's funny is, most kids complain their teachers won't let them draw what they want; i complain that my teacher won't teach us the basics, won't let us draw from life, and only lets us do abstract and cartoons.
I guess the more limited you are, the better he likes you. So much for his "disney worthy" 4.0 "great art student" from last year (the one before calvin), who couldn't make it into an art school. I guess he doesn't realize drawing cartoon girls from the same viewpoint (only frontal shots) all the time isn't gonna get you into Savannah College or Joe Kubert, eh?
man, that guy really pisses me off
sorry for the language and rambling

[ February 20, 2002: Message edited by: Liser Studios ]

[ February 20, 2002: Message edited by: Liser Studios ]

[roundeye]

yeah, most of the time teachers are right about discouraging kids like that. there were WAY to many kids copying comics and drawing anime. in my classes at least. they should be discouraged. they should be told if they continue that path, the best they can hope for is to be a second rate, poorly paid illustrator. not for new yorker or time, but doing inbetween frames in those shitty japanese rip off shows. i caught grief for outlining things too often. i like outlines. its curious that so many illustrators (and potential illustrators) on this board are so adament againts that title. it amuses me. theyre all like: "im an artist, damn it!" hehe. ok, ok. everyone that draws is an artist!

ps i dont claim either title. i just draw for fun 99% of the time. most of the time im a "designer" but thats another story=)

just my 2cents...