...I've begun to dislike my art teacher.

The first few weeks of school have been great, obviously.
And I'm okay with my teachers.
But one's a slight exception. My third period art teacher. She is incredibly nice and grades fairly and is very talented. But I feel she isn't lenient enough when it comes to our views on how we'd like to go about completing our projects.

In the words of an older peer, she "kills our creativity."

Now I know Art is a tough subject to grade, because you have to set down your guidelines for the project and you probably grade along those restrictions, but still judge the originality of the project while it keeps within those guidelines.

Me? I stick to the guidelines, it's just that sometimes I want to do it differently. I still create with the media she instructs us to use. When I do work on a project, I still aim to get the point of the project across to the viewer (and the one grading for that matter) and usually I do it successfully, in my own way.

Take our last class project; a piece including three or more gourds using oil pastels. She taught us about Fauvism and their bright detailed techniques, and suggested we try to incorporate a little of that in our pieces. I chose to depict the pumpkins and gourds with their natural colors, and use a Vincent Van Gough type stroke in the background and stems. He was a Fauvist so I thought it was okay. But EVERYONE in the class used neon and crazy colors and trendy images like cartoon skulls in the background.
I did not want to ruin my already halfway done pumpkins with that kind of background. So I completed the project with a background and it still centered around our focal point for that project.

So I guess a lower grade is worth expressing myself.

Now we're working with charcoal. We're drawing white shoes. We all have a shoe, the same size piece of paper, and the same charcoal. Today we had to finish outlining the shoe with a simple contour drawing.
She came by like she always does. She commented on my drawing, saying the shoe was pointed the wrong way, and told me to start over and turn the shoe inward-mine was viewed from the back, with the heel in front, but it still showed a great deal of the laces tied and the toe of the converse. She said it looked like the shoe was pointed out and that in Art you should draw everything inward.

Is there somewhere in an art book that says nothing should point outward?
That was the point; I wanted to get a unique view of my shoe, that maybe translated a message like walking away or....disobedience.


Wow. I think my true colors are coming out. My feelings are finally starting to reflect in my art. Thats so cool for me. But am I being disobedient in that I didn't change the position of my shoe? Everyone else said it was fine and that I should just keep it. But still, I guess the teacher's word is final.
I don't care anymore. I will suffer a lower grade if I have to. I want to keep my converse the way it is.
I like it that way.

In the words of one of my favorite painters at the moment, John Sidman, "Artists must be true to themselves, for they cannot master this craft by shortcutting honesty."

I'm only sticking to my artist leanings and trying to keep my piece different from everyone else's shoe.
I don't want it to turn out like a manufactured looking variation of everyone else's work.

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Now I've given this situation more thought.
All of those things are just, that an artist must be true to themselves, and always strive for the very best they can do.

But the more I consider the weight that these assignments have on my life, I see it's not much. They aren't huge pieces that take months to complete and are being shown in an exhibit or gallery. They're just little assignments in a high school Art Media class. And they determine how well I do in the class. And how well I do in the class determines how well I'll do in my art career.

So if I start doing these assignments how she wants, I can learn new techniques and just broaden my view on art, I can still be creative and express myself within her guidelines, and I will earn a sufficient grade that will go toward a better art career where I can really start to express what I want to and show what I'm about. That's the time and place to have no rules on what paint or draw.
For now, I brought in a new shoe, pointed it inward, still used an artistic view, and started fresh.