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Surely there has to be some aesthetic guidance along the way? Up until my senior year of college, every writing course I took, I would never get any _aesthetic
by morley 8y ago
Surely there has to be some aesthetic guidance along the way?
Up until my senior year of college, every writing course I took, I would never get any _aesthetic_ feedback on my work. In grade school, my grammar and spelling would get corrected, but otherwise, what I wrote was what I wrote.
It wasn't until I took a sitcom-writing course in college that a teacher gave me feedback that would make my writing better: "this sentence is too long, you don't need to use these words, this character is too inactive, this scene has no point."
If someone had been that direct with me when I was in middle school, I'd have spent a lot less time writing crap.
- grawprog 8y agoLearn about value, perspective, colour theory, form and how they apply to art and human perception. Things like that I found were useful for learning art as someone who struggled to draw a stick figure for years.
- ThrustVectoring 8y ago>Surely there has to be some aesthetic guidance along the way? It's generally better to run the feedback through the same unconscious mental pathways you use to do the activity, rather than the verbal storytelling loop that can think thoughts like "I don't like how I did this". Use the parts of the brain that are good at painting, not the parts that are good about telling stories about your painting. I highly recommend reading "The Inner Game of Tennis" to get a much better sense of this distinction. It's broadly applicable to all sorts of skill acquisition and improvement. The best way to learn how to do something is to quietly and non-judgmentally watch yourself doing it. Your brain is really good at figuring that all out once you've started.
- repsilat 8y agoInteresting, this idea has a well known countervailing theory -- "deliberate practice". The idea goes that practicing with the intent of (and focus on) improvement is more effective. Perhaps "quantity over quality" is better for beginners because they're learning different kinds of things, or because their judgement itself isn't great, or perhaps it's just psychologically easier and less likely to lead to burnout.
- ThrustVectoring 8y agoThe Inner Game of Tennis etc isn't mutually exclusive with "deliberate practice". You're still telling yourself what you want to do, but doing this in the language your unconscious mind understands - that is, images and felt emotions, not words.
- ams6110 8y agoI don't think writing and painting can be compared. Writing has some elements of art, but it also has a lot of rules that come from the language. Painting is much more free-form.
- Aeolun 8y agoDepends on whether you are a realist or not.
- massivecali 8y agoThe problem with aesthetic guidance is it invariably leads to creation of 'product' over 'art'. Just because you can make a pretty painting doesn't make it art.
- pbhjpbhj 8y ago>Just because you can make a pretty painting doesn't make it art. // How to start a fight at an art school!
- watwut 8y agoIt still beating the "unable to create anything" state most people are in. Definitely I am. I would take ability to create pretty painting with mo art ability as it is miles better then now.
- forkandwait 8y agoWell, some of us would be quite happy with pretty, and wonder if Art is all it's cracked up to be...
- pbhjpbhj 8y agoCompulsory education is not for that. They're not there to change your aesthetic, if they did then we'd lose a lot of good art IMO: people developing their own aesthetic are often considered to be "no good" because they disobey the conventions. When you've learnt all the tools, and different normative styles, read a reasonable body of work in different genre, that's when to develop your own style. Which corresponds with University/school leaving largely. The sitcom course is almost certainly designed to help you write in a narrowly designed style that is commercially useful. But a sitcom that breaks many of the norms could do really well .. you're not going to learn to write opposing the established styles on a course like that, are you. Writing crap is part of the journey.
- barry-cotter 8y ago> When you've learnt all the tools, and different normative styles, read a reasonable body of work in different genre, that's when to develop your own style. Which corresponds with University/school leaving largely. This is far too kind to universities. You get taught Theory in university. You are assumed to already be able to paint. If you want to learn to paint in a third level institution you’re better off studying illustration or graphic design, not fine art.