Anyways I think it would be a fun/helpful exercise to blog about art school!
Intro, I go to the Rhode Island School of Design, I study Illustration and have a concentration in Scientific Inquiry, I'm a junior and I'm really, really into Science Fiction/Fantasy Illustration.
So I think every week or two I'll make one of these and post some of the work I do for class. I have three studio courses that meet once a week, and these courses tend to assign one/two week homework assignments, so I thought it'd be fun to share whatever I'm doing for homework and talk about it and school or whatever.
My classes are:
Visualizing the Natural Sciences
Fantasy Painting
Artistic Anatomy
Fun stuff!
So RISD is a pretty fun school, kinda, its like, a shit ton of work, but its pretty fun because our mascot is literally a this
NSFW
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Yeah, you saw that right, thats our mascot. Whenever I give tours I've been advised to call it a crayon when children are near
So like, RISD goes like this, Freshman year is Foundation year, noone declares a major until midway through the Spring semester of Freshman year because most people come here without a fuckin' clue what they gon do since we have so many majors, from Graphic Design to Glass to Architecture to Ceramics.
This
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happens every year for the freshman, they give you glowsticks and a local marching band comes through and everyone fucking conga lines/dances with them and its a god damned riot.
Foundation year is just Drawing courses (all observational, if your teachers know you use photos they cut you) Design courses (color and composition! this is the class where future Painting majors get away with not doing work) and 3D ("spatial dynamics" its called, but as my now-deceased 3D teacher said, "thats a name come up with by some candy ass ponce in an office") Drawing class makes you use fucking charcoal, the devil's anus powder, it gets everywhere and does not wash out, I have a friend and he seriously had dark grey arms for the whole damn year, every day, THE CHARCOAL BECAME A PART OF HIM. I sneezed black frequently. Many white shirts were ruined.
The studio courses are from 8am - 5pm and they assign 8 - 12 hours of homework per studio, they meet once a week each, and then the non-studio days only have about 3 hours of liberal arts that noone cares about/puts too much time into 'cause this is fuckin' art school.
After freshman year you choose yo major and in Sophomore year you go through ANOTHER FOUNDATION YEAR!
WITH YOUR MAJOR!
In my case, Illustration, its Drawing class (againnnn), Painting class (Oil painting, all of it) and Concepts class (editorial illustration class).
I did all that shit, and I produced like two things that I don't want to puncture my eyeballs out over.
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The second one is a master copy that I still have not and never will finish, but I poured my fucking soul into that thing for like 4 weeks neglecting my other classes because LOOK AT THE END RESULT, I'm super proud of that.
The first one is my Drawing I final in Sophomore year, its life sized, done with .5 mechanical pencil over a fucking week and I also poured my god damned soul and all of my fury into it. I had spent 8 hours on a first copy but it fell off the board and got run through the mud and rain and was ruined.
Okay, so Sophomore year I produced shit I didnt hate, thats a nice feeling, and after Sophomore year people get to PICK THEIR FUCKING CLASSES, YES I GET TO CHOOOOOSE MY FREEEDOMMMMM
So I figured I would really, really, really try and bust my ass since I could do shit that I enjoyed/inspired me instead of standing for 6 fucking hours drawing naked people (seriously I've seen way more naked old people than I need to, I dont know why RISD loves naked old people) so yeah I'm psyched I get to pursue my interests, hopefully that'll inspire me to do some good shit that I can post here and explain and blah, blah, blah.
Here are my two Fantasy Painting class projects, both unfinished because seriously 1 week to do paintings like I like to do is ungodly
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The top one is my most recent one and was way more ambitious than it should have been, this shit requires so much intricate, loving painting that I would have needed two weeks to paint it. The project was, "paint something in water" and I've been trying to practice my spaces/landscapes/structures, so I investigated some various brands of architecture, settled on some Korean inspiration, and then I'm like, they're Korean water serpents pulling a treasure-offering on their way to dragonhood.
The second one is my first assignment, fucking unfinished, that sand tears my soul apart, IT TEARS IT APART. This assignment was to illustrate an excerpt from a book about the world if humans suddenly vanished and I got a chapter about South American tribes and eating monkeys or something and since I'm taking a liberal arts class called Art of Ancient Mesoamerica I figured I would do something inspired by that since I really, really like mesoamerican style, so I did and this is how it turned out.
Also I like candy. I'm like an old school dragon but with candy, I don't eat this stuff (regularly) but I like to know that I'm sleeping near it, its comforting, you know?
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We get these things called points with our mealplans that we can spend on extraneous bullshit and I choose to hoard candy with it.
Also, Painting majors are stoned homeless people, ILLUSTRATION MAJOR SELLOUT NUMBER ONE W000T