In an effort to expand my portfolio and broaden my artistic knowledge I took a Drawing class in Highschool my Junior year. While I can say I enjoyed my instructor, I also found yet another reason why there are less artists today. I say this as a slight joke, because everyone is an artist. However all too frequently I hear a responce involving their inability to draw stick figures or circles. While it is true that there is more than drawing than pencil on paper, this highschool class didnt recieve anything more than technique. Even as an upperclassman in highschool, which may be the last art class for some, they have no aspect of composition or creative freedom. I saw works from my classmates mainly consisted of renderings of sports cars or portraits of airbrushed models from fashion magazines. Sure they could shade from light to dark and find the yellow tones in an orange lipgloss, but the concept of new ideas and the artistic basics I learned in elementary school were foriegn to them. They said the works that I had created were really good, but couldnt tell why.

The instructor had good reason for teaching the class in that manner. He always told me that you must know the technique before you can apply artistic value, and that a 2-semester class was only long enough for teaching technique. This reminded me of something my elementary art teacher had told me, "First you must learn everything, and then you must forget everything you have learned. Then, you can create art." While I see my instructors lesson plan as a legitimate step for one who either has the basics of art in mind or will learn of them in the future, most of my classmates had taken one or less previous classes and didnt plan on taking more. Words like "composition" and "texture" were like a foriegn language to them. While they thought that they had no talent, they really just didnt know where to look for it or what to make out of it.