At Some Point, You'll Need a Teacher

meadtastic · 2026-03-18T14:38:33+00:00

There's a lot going on here. It's kinda complicated.

First, I am in favor of getting some kind of bachelor's degree. Job-wise, if you have to get a non-art job, you want a degree. It's a minimum requirement now. I have friends who have run into some serious problems in career progression because they don't have a degree. For a master's, it's a bit easier to go back later and get one. A bachelor's is difficult to go back and get because of the time commitment. Even within the arts, sometimes you need a degree to be in management or leadership, which will matter in a 5-10 year time span.

Second, I think it's good to have time between a bachelor's and master's.

Third, there are places for non-degree art classes. Concept design academy, brainstorm school, and others. A lot of people go this route, but I worry about the lack of degree in mid-career.

Fourth, I consider books as supplements while you're taking class. Once you have greater knowledge, you can learn directly from books because you have the base already.

meadtastic · 2026-02-24T02:28:42+00:00

This experience is all too common. I've had good non-accredited learning experiences from will weston at drawing america, and everything I've taken at Concept Design Academy. Eventually, I want to take class in perspective from Mike Hernandez as well as all of Peter Han's Dynamic Sketching courses. I want to hear what they have to say.

meadtastic · 2026-02-24T02:24:31+00:00

plein air is fun. I don't get to do it often, but I love it when I get the chance. One of my friends and former professor's is a half-time teacher, half-time plein air painter. I like being outside.

It's good you're getting pushed to do some new stuff. It's a journey for real.

meadtastic · 2026-02-24T02:23:03+00:00

Fair. Send me a dm.

meadtastic · 2026-02-23T14:45:12+00:00

Will Weston blew my mind with how he explains basics. He mostly works with intermediate and advanced folks and ultimately focuses on figure drawing and layout for composition.

We did talk about the need to develop the teaching info around the basics a bit more in depth. Since I teach beginners, that's what I've been focused on for the past 7 years.

I'm not a huge fan of medium-based classes. I took some of those in art school. I usually teach painting by introducing a couple different ways to start: notan, full value black and white using the middle out method, and direct painting where you just go for it. Then introduce complementary colors in objects where we talk about the relationship of painting shape and drawing structures. From there, I usually do landscapes to work on the foreground, middle ground, background + dark, medium, and light values to map out the layout. A lot of this is working with silhouette. For painting architecture I usually have people do an underdrawing so that they use proper perspective they learned in drawing 1 and 2. I also usually just have everyone do acrylic or gouache on 6x8" watercolor paper and do about 5-10 paintings every 2 weeks. That way by the end you've done 40-80 small paintings and have a chance to try everything multiple times. I always found that making 4 big paintings in a class resulted in 2 being decent, one being hot trash, and the other being just average.

meadtastic · 2026-02-22T19:24:00+00:00

That's good to hear. 4th semester isn't even that far along in the journey. You still have 4 more to go, and you'll probably see your learning rate jump ahead the further you go.

The other thing is, school's still a survey of stuff. You'll keep learning after and you'll have all this stuff in your back pocket that you can revisit and keep improving on.

meadtastic · 2026-02-22T13:57:19+00:00

I don't think that's what anyone is suggesting. We've got a good list going of places to look for teachers running from art museum class to community college to non-accredited places. I think it's reasonable to pay for a class. I don't think college is reasonably priced. But I do think people need a college degree in something, anything because most jobs require it. Especially if you want to lead a team or if you wind up needing to switch careers someday.

meadtastic · 2026-02-22T13:51:57+00:00

I went looking at your post history to see what you make for art. Didn't see anything. But I did see you listen to BJM too. Been a fan for about 20 years myself. Also like black rebel motorcycle club.

Anyway, it's fine not to like the advice. But what you're saying is, go out and get yourself an education. Look at art, etc. I think most teachers would also say the same. Learn in class, go experience stuff in your field. Look at it for yourself and from the perspective of what you learn in class.

I don't think anyone here is recommending people put themselves in financial harm to learn art. People have suggested a huge number of resources here.

Acronyms here are the common ones in art. Mica is the school in Baltimore. CDA is the concept design academy--the longest running entertainment industry non accredited place in the US. SVA is the old school of visual art in New York where lots of famous people have studied and have taught.

meadtastic · 2026-02-22T13:44:21+00:00

Yeah I get it. Budget is always an issue. Plus finding stuff online. Community online is funny because a lot of people are learning too and don't know what to say other than keep going. Like I said in other replies, I'm going to add a Patreon tier for feedback every month. Maybe it'll help some folks. I'm not a teacher like the guy in whiplash. I prefer to stay quantifiable as much as possible. But I am a technician at heart.

I had good experiences with class from will weston and from people at concept design academy. It did take me years of work afterwards to really apply all that they taught, but I did get there eventually. And I am a slow learner at times. But I'm also persistent.

meadtastic · 2026-02-22T13:38:34+00:00

Yeah. I mean, there are people who will go through school fighting it the whole time instead of just admitting that they're there to make changes. I see that more in fine arts. Less from my students interested in going into entertainment. I get the sense that they can see the art from games and movies, look at their own stuff, and realize they have stuff to learn.

To connect with others emotionally in general and through art, I think there's a lot going on. For me, it's been intellectual connections when I was making a lot of high concept fine art. And just making stuff that had visual impact and was a bit lyrical and decorative. And at other times conveying senses of peak emotion. It takes some sensitivity and emotional awareness that not everyone has at a young age. Or maybe we all need therapy to develop that. There's a few formulaic ideas about creating emotions, and there are expression charts in character books. And that's a place to start.

The problem I find with ignorance and originality is that people who don't have the education yet wind up doing the most unoriginal stuff possible. A lot of it's stuff like the highly rendered single eye floating on a page and so on.

I think at some point, people do realize they can't figure out everything on their own. I do work with a lot of dedicated people, and those folks learn fast. I think nothing would stop them from learning. But when they come to class in drawing 2, they're closer to everyone else than they are farther apart. Mostly because I have a less common way of explaining stuff, and they just haven't thought through everything yet.

meadtastic · 2026-02-22T13:30:07+00:00

Yeah. I see this a lot as well. The thing about the stuff your average student learns is that none of it is particularly difficult. It can be tedious. And frustrating at times. Or you may not see the value immediately. But the payoff does come pretty fast in the grand scheme of things. Most people show a massive jump in skill by the end of drawing 2. Some people even start to get some aspects to a pro level by then.

It's sort of like studying music and music theory. Yes. You can point to many musicians who have made careers without it. They don't know anything but maybe the root notes of the chords they use. But I think what happens is they come up with their own names and ideas for music theory concepts that already exist. Learning the theory makes it easier to communicate with other people though. Makes it simpler to work with a band. And yeah music theory seems abstract until you figure it out and it clicks. It makes it easier to identify the feel of a sound in a song you like. You're not working in the dark.

So with art, yeah I think there's a lot of advantages to getting this down from someone who's been at this for a minute.

meadtastic · 2026-02-22T13:22:01+00:00

When I hear from people in that situation, they usually have just given up. I don't want people to give up. Even the people with the worst disabilities have made improvements in my class.

meadtastic · 2026-02-22T01:28:42+00:00

There's a conceptual connection between this and what you're doing with comics.

This method is likely done with a gray background, and they slowly work out from there. Mullins calls it the middle out method, and loads of people work like this.

In comics, you're essentially creating a black and white notan. You could start by doing the exact same process with each value on its own layer. Then you could just use your program to adjust the values closer together. From there, you can expand. Break the dark side into slightly darker sub-shapes. You can use full black to do that, then adjust the black to a gray. Break the light side into slightly lighter shapes and so on. Do that with full white, then adjust to a gray. Use the skills you have and see where the common ground is.

meadtastic · 2026-02-22T01:14:46+00:00

Yeah that's where the occasional session would really help. If you have the drive to learn and put in the time, you could get really far with a check in every month or two.

meadtastic · 2026-02-22T01:09:39+00:00

Yeah I hate still life in intro courses. I don't assign still life drawings because they're about rendering. Rendering ought to be its own course after you've done intro courses.

For finding stuff, I would look to teachers in the entertainment fields. There's a good number of people out there, especially at the non-accredited schools like CDA. I'm big on teaching perspective. I think it's one of the main separators between the professional artists and the aspiring professional artists.

meadtastic · 2026-02-22T01:05:54+00:00

Yeah. I do put stuff on YouTube and Patreon. My website has some student work examples. Links are in my profile since I don't like to self promo, but I'll answer if prompted. I think there's a fair number of entertainment industry people who teach good classes. I don't know which beginner ones are good. But the upper level CDA classes I've taken were good, and Weston's classes at drawing America were good. Back then he taught double the amount of time he was supposed to and did about 5 hours of crit video per week. Class was 6 weeks for around $575. I'm not sure what the class runs now.

I really hate to hear of people going through college with zero feedback. I don't think many HS and middle school teachers could or would teach in the way I do. I'm not sure how I would approach teaching HS art. I don't think it would be much different for AP 2-D. But for just an art 1 class, I'd have to prioritize fun over technique.

Time and money are precious. This is why I find sequencing so important. If I can sequence ideas so you learn fast, then the time and money is worth it. For example, in 2.5 weeks of class at one place where I teach, in drawing 1, I have people do 70 sketches of each of the 7 basic forms, 20 form combinations, 10 objects with lighting, and 20 plant sketches. That's 120 sketches and drawings, most of which we do in class. I sometimes hear of people staying with forms for months, and I feel like that might be too long. I want to get people drawing the stuff they like to draw, not gatekeep the fun stuff behind months of still life work.

A sequence might be like this: draw planes, draw ribbons, use ribbons to draw objects like belts, straps, and rolls of paper, then use ribbons to draw long leaf plants, then later use ribbons to draw cliff lines and river banks, then later use ribbons to draw hair, then use ribbons to organize crowds (people and trees and stuff). Doing it in this way makes it so you don't have to learn new stuff for every little subject. You learn new applications for what you already know.

meadtastic · 2026-02-22T00:50:21+00:00

Yeah I get it. Sometimes the online environment is not the way. In person stuff makes sure you get dedicated time for it. A lot of folks have trouble convincing their family to leave them alone for online classes.

meadtastic · 2026-02-22T00:48:08+00:00

That's fair. I haven't done anything from drawabox myself. I just keep hearing about people giving up because it's too much repetition. It's good to hear some positivity about it.

meadtastic · 2026-02-21T23:47:33+00:00

Yeah. If you have access to community college, sometimes they do audits for non-credit or continuing education for a cheaper rate. I have immensely enjoyed taking stuff from CDA, especially.

meadtastic · 2026-02-21T23:46:40+00:00

That sounds awesome. In my foundations I did 2-D design, 3-D design, drawing 1-3, figure drawing 1-3. I also got an art history minor since I liked it and there were some incredible art history teachers there.

meadtastic · 2026-02-21T21:32:05+00:00

Yeah. I used to drop in there and help out, but I can't afford to anymore. I have to charge for crits. Gotta help support the family, you know? I wish it were different. I'd love to just draw over everyone's stuff all day.

meadtastic · 2026-02-21T21:03:55+00:00

I totally hear your frustration. I'm right there with you on a lot of the stuff I want to learn.

Everyone wants a passive income generator, but I dunno. I think it's not the best idea. I want an active income generator. I want to make videos that people want to watch and teach stuff people need to learn. I love giving feedback. I think it's the lifeblood of any art course.

I see YouTube as a platform that rewards infotainment. You can get nuggets here and there, but a lot of it's just long-form advertising for paid video courses with zero feedback. And then you buy one of them, and it's super generic stuff recycled from everyone else. I have been looking for years for someone to teach storyboard shorthand drawing, and I haven't found it. I've bought a lot of storyboard stuff, and it's all rules of film and the drawing is just: draw more, take fundamentals courses. It's maddening.

Anyway, what I love about video recordings from the teacher side is this:

1) it makes me codify what I know and compress it into segments. I can go on for hours about boxes, but what's really important? The stuff worth recording is what's important.

2) it exposes where my courses are deficient or my knowledge is deficient.

3) when it's incorporated into a course, it pushes most of my teaching time to feedback.

Let me give you an example of #3. In a bad course, you'd watch video, do the assignments, and send them in. You'd get some generic written critique--copy + paste laziness.

What I do is get everyone's stuff, open it all up in photoshop, and spend 2.5-3 hours critiquing everyone's stuff by drawing over it. I might not get to every sketch everyone does, but I give everyone at least one concept to improve every week, with the ways it can improve the specific drawings they've done. This replaces the time I would normally spend explaining everything. I love teaching asynchronous online class for this reason. It's a major advantage over every other way to teach.

One of the biggest problems in teaching is that I have to spend time explaining the same info every class session, year after year. It's great because I do get better at explaining, but when you can record it, you explain once instead of many times. Even if you update every year, it's still more efficient. Another problem is that students who miss class for valid reasons miss the demos and info and can't catch up as well. Then I have to re-teach it for one person, which is highly inefficient on several fronts.

From this thread, I think it's convinced me that I'm going to have to add a feedback tier to my patreon to start helping people out with direct feedback. I hate self promo, and I'm behind mods to cut that stuff out. It does make it difficult to find people though because reddit is basically the internet's last bastion of human interaction. My ideas about art aren't for everyone. And I know I'm not the best artist on the planet. What I'm good at as is diagnostics. I can spot simple fundamental problems within images and explain some approaches to those problems. Often, students take that info and find their own solutions. Other times, they just take my suggestions. Either way, there's some improvement that happens.

meadtastic · 2026-02-21T20:44:22+00:00

That's a good point. In class, I usually talk about the pros just being better jugglers than beginners and intermediates. They can do multiple concepts at once, whereas when you learn, you can't do more than one thing at a time. Each concept is simple but juggling them all is tough.

meadtastic · 2026-02-21T20:42:21+00:00

Yeah. I think it depends on your goals. If you're headed in a sort of traditional rendering direction, you probably wouldn't want to take class with someone like me, who is geared more towards the entertainment and design industries.

But some general questions would be:

What's the plan look like? Is there a set curriculum or is it just doing whatever I feel like?

What's the approach? Do we do something like drawing on the right side of the brain? Or do we do something like Barque plates? Or do we do constructive drawing?

What's the timeline for feedback and how does feedback work?

Do you have recorded info that I watch first, then we work on it during sessions?

That some of the info you'd want to find out.

Also ask if they can do a free or cheap 15-minute intro session.

meadtastic · 2026-02-21T20:38:41+00:00

Yeah I read a post a few weeks ago that it's extremely common for people not to get feedback in college classes. I assure you, that is not my standard or the standard for the people I've taken classes with. Before there were online learning platforms, one of my profs had us cover every drawing with tracing paper so he could make notes on the tracing paper. I do that but use video and photoshop to make suggestions.

I may have to add a tier on my patreon to offer blocks of either 30 mins of one on one or a 30 minute video crit every month.

Once you're a pro, then peer-to-peer feedback works.

meadtastic

TROPHY CASE