Monday, March 10, 2008
College Days Part 1
During my senior year in high school I decided to take an art school test. The was for the Famous Artist School correspondence course whose headquarters was located in Connecticut. Ads for this course were found on the back covers of numerous popular magazines and comics books during that era. I sent the completed test back to the company and sometime later a sales representative arrived at my home (I was away at the time of his visit) and spoke to my parents about enrolling me in the course as my test apparently showed I had some artist aptitude. At the time I had been taking high school art classes and drawing my own comic strips. I never actually met the gentleman.
It proved to be one of those bitter-sweet experiences of growing up. On the one hand the school thought I had enough talent to make the course useful to myself (I didn't think they were just interested in selling courses to anyone regardless of their potential abilities or lack thereof) and yet my parents decided not the invest the money in the course. Their reasoning was never quite clear (perhaps they thought that I wasn't ready for the sort of self discipline it would take to complete the course or perhaps they thought going to an actual school would be a better learning environment for me.)
I have wondered if my life had have taken a different direction if I had taken that course. It is possible that I would have learned more usable basic art skills faster if I'd taken the course than the college route that I eventually took. (An interesting post script to this is that when I jointed Campus Crusade for Christ in the 1970s one of the other staff artists had one of the Famous Artist course manual/binders and he deposited it in the studio library and I got to study it at that time. It appeared to be a very solid basic study course).
I remember also some investigation into other commercial art schools but my family income was not great enough to warrant sending one of their children to art school. Art training was not considered a viable career option. Even saying that an actual commercial art education I believe would have been a better option than what later I received.
It proved to be one of those bitter-sweet experiences of growing up. On the one hand the school thought I had enough talent to make the course useful to myself (I didn't think they were just interested in selling courses to anyone regardless of their potential abilities or lack thereof) and yet my parents decided not the invest the money in the course. Their reasoning was never quite clear (perhaps they thought that I wasn't ready for the sort of self discipline it would take to complete the course or perhaps they thought going to an actual school would be a better learning environment for me.)
I have wondered if my life had have taken a different direction if I had taken that course. It is possible that I would have learned more usable basic art skills faster if I'd taken the course than the college route that I eventually took. (An interesting post script to this is that when I jointed Campus Crusade for Christ in the 1970s one of the other staff artists had one of the Famous Artist course manual/binders and he deposited it in the studio library and I got to study it at that time. It appeared to be a very solid basic study course).
I remember also some investigation into other commercial art schools but my family income was not great enough to warrant sending one of their children to art school. Art training was not considered a viable career option. Even saying that an actual commercial art education I believe would have been a better option than what later I received.
# posted by Dino Don @ 4:14 PM 
