You’ve seen us before. Our Doc Marten boots, our dyed hair, our weird piercings, hidden around campus, sketchbook in hand: the ever-elusive art student. Many think being an art student sounds like fun, you get to sit around all day and draw pictures, listen to music in class and in general have a good time. And while I can say as a junior pursuing a BFA in Art & Design that yes, I do get to draw pictures and listen to music and have fun in class, there is much more to an art student than meets the eye.
Let me start off by saying this – being an art student is hard. I get to do what I love in class and that is great. I’m very lucky I have the privilege to pursue this career that I am so passionate about. But unlike a lecture that meets twice a week for an hour and half, my studio classes are three hours long and they meet twice a week. The time is for us to work on projects, which typically aren’t finished in class. In addition to finishing them outside of class we also have homework on top of that. And art isn’t something you can rush through – maybe you can bullshit an essay, but you can’t bullshit a drawing. If you don’t put in the time it shows – literally. So don’t be surprised to find me up at 2 am working on the same drawing I’ve been doing for the last 6 hours when you’ve finished all your business homework. I have a lot to do.
Art is extremely under-appreciated. I had an experience last year where I was on the bus with an armload of projects and I heard two people across from me say “What do you think is the most useless college major?” and immediately the other person responded “Oh art, definitely.” That is so hard to hear, even from strangers. It wasn’t the first time I had overheard a conversation of that nature. People do not see the value in art. “What will you ever do with a degree like that?” they ask. Meanwhile they’re not bothering to question who edits the final footage and does the makeup for their favorite movie, who designed their clothes, who designed the logo of their favorite brand, who created all the illustrations in the textbook that they learned from, who designed the handle of their coffee cup so it would be easier to hold… need I go on? Designers even created a specific typeface for people with dyslexia so there would be less of a chance that they would confuse the letterforms. Don’t tell me that’s useless.
Continuing along the same thread, art is under-valued. People might see a drawing that they like and think maybe they’d spend $15 on it or so and then are shocked to find out it costs $50. I want to break this down for anyone reading this – artists are allowed to charge whatever they value their work at. Period. Think of it this way; if an artist is making a living off of freelancing and they spend 5 hours making the drawing and sell it for $50, that’s $10 an hour worth of work. Hardly higher than minimum wage. One of my professors recently informed my Illustration class that it’s not unreasonable to charge anywhere between $20-$25 an hour as a student for work. And don’t make fun of how much I make – I’m aware that an artist doesn’t exactly make the same figures as a surgeon. But I would rather do something that’s important to me and make less than simply move through the motions of another career because it makes more. And before you ask, no, I don’t want to design you something for free for the “exposure.”
I could keep going on but the last point I want to make is that art takes time. And I don’t just mean it takes a long time to create a finished piece. I mean it takes time for artists to learn and develop their skills. Often when I’m working I’ll have friends look over my shoulder and say “Ugh you’re so lucky you were born with talent! I wish I could draw.” I can promise you I was not born with the ability to draw the way I do now. If you don’t believe me look at the two images above; the one on the left was a self-portrait I made when I was 13 that took me weeks to do. The one on the right was another self-portrait I made this past summer in about an hour and half. I have taken classes and I draw every single day to try and keep improving. I appreciate the sentiment behind people thinking I was “born talented,” but at the same time it invalidates all the hard work I’ve put into getting to where I am, and in a way contributes to people under-valuing art because they think what I do is easy. I have worked hard to make myself a better artist. But it will never be easy. I will keep working to make art that I am proud of and to keep improving as an artist.
Illustrations courtesy of Alexa Caruso; photo courtesy of scontent.com.