zhian, it is good to be kind, but sometimes the greatest kindness is to tell someone plainly that they have no artistic talent when that is the undeniable truth of the matter. Consider the auditions on American Idol and the heartbreak suffered by so many people who thought they had talent when they had no talent at all. It is sad, and it speaks of wasted lives and pipe dreams.
I am all for being creative and for making meaningful self-expressions, but so very much is lacking in the teaching of the creative process that most people never learn the language. In fact, most people do not even know that the visual arts are a language that is expressed in line, color, shape, form, and texture, and that the language can express purposely in visual balance and imbalance, and in visual harmony and disharmony, especially as those elements pertain to symmetry and the geometry of nature.
Like the user of any language, the visual artist must have something to say � a reason to make a visual expression. Unfortunately, most people who wrongly imagine themselves to be artists never figure out that most basic of all basic things. Their so-called "art" is the stuff of gibberish nonsense that has no conceivable purpose whatsoever. It is comparable to the utterances of someone who cannot form a simple declarative sentence to describe a person, place, or thing.
Schools should teach crafts, and should stress the value and importance of craftsmanship. A person with no artistic talent can be trained to be a fine craftsman, and that is a very worthy accomplishment.
Val, forget drawing and visual artistic expressions. But do learn to make things. What an artist does is make things, and that is exactly the same thing that a craftsman does, too. So be a craftsman. Pick an appropriate craft for your interests, and then learn to do it well.
I spent some time in art school myself, and I have been married to an artist for almost 35 years now. I have known my wife ever since we were both five years old and were across the street neighbors. We were classmates from first grade through eighth grade, and I have had a crush on her since fifth grade. My wife has been an artist since early childhood � her whole life. It is who she is and has always been. Making things is her language � her means of self-expression � and that language flows from her naturally. Truly, her artistic ability can be correctly thought of as a language fluency at a poetic level, which is the highest level of proficiency in my opinion.
My wife's name is Koe, and the following is her website:
http://koe-sylwester-artist.blogspot.com/http://koe-sylwester-artist.blogspot.com/2009_11_01_archive.htmlhttp://koe-sylwester-artist.blogspot.com/2009/11/introduction.htmlIf you click on an image, it will enlarge.
Val, both of my daughters are very creative. The oldest is a writer who finished writing her first novel at age 23, and the youngest is a visual artist who has been a visual artist since early childhood � her whole life � just like her mother. My wife and I recognized our youngest daughter's artistic gifts when she was a young child, but we had no idea about her remarkable genius-level gifts in the sciences until she was a freshman in high school. I will describe all of that sometime later at the "NASA Academy of the Physical Sciences" thread, because it is a good and appropriate story to tell.
During the summer between her sophomore and junior years in high school, my youngest daughter took a Drawing class at the University of Oregon. During the previous summer, she had taken a Drawing class at Lane Community College in which she had made the following linked drawings:
http://kingnapoleon.deviantart.com/gallery/#/ddq30chttp://kingnapoleon.deviantart.com/gallery/#/ddq2vmThe art professor at the University of Oregon who taught Drawing was so stunned by my daughter's ability that she seriously advised my daughter to immediately quit high school to enroll in one of the premiere art schools in the United States, and she recommended The School of The Art Institute of Chicago. The art professor was certain that my daughter would be granted early enrollment wherever she applied.
Five months later during the spring of that daughter's junior year in high school, a chemistry professor at the University of Oregon told me that my daughter was easily in The Top One Percent of all the students he had ever taught during his then 20-year career as a chemistry professor at various universities in the United States, including at Princeton where he had earned his doctorate. That chemistry professor told me plainly in no uncertain terms that my daughter should now be majoring in chemistry at either Stanford or Harvard � and he told me this when that daughter was then a high school junior!
That daughter had sold ten artworks before she graduated from high school � six of them to total strangers!
My daughter's name is Liesel, and the following are her websites:
http://kingnapoleon.deviantart.com/gallery/I strongly recommend that you browse through all six pages of Liesel's gallery. The artworks are posted in chronological order. If you click on an image, it will enlarge and Liesel's description of the artwork will appear. If you then click on the image again, it will enlarge one more time.
http://www.etsy.com/shop/LieselSylwesterhttp://www.etsy.com/listing/45558260/ruffled-chambray-shirtdresshttp://www.etsy.com/people/LieselSylwester Artists are very different from people who are not artists. Liesel has been very challenged by being both an artist and a scientist, because she is remarkably gifted in both and truly enjoys both, and because artists and scientists are very different from each other. However, whenever she has free time, Liesel's natural inclination � her joy � is to design, flat-pattern, and make clothing. She designed, flat-patterned, and fully constructed all of the clothing shown in her gallery website, including doing the hand embroidery and even the fabric dying in some cases.
People should follow their joy. What that means for Liesel's future is still unknown. She would love to apprentice herself to the fashion designer Oscar de la Renta.
It is a joy to be Liesel's father, but it is not easy.
Steven A. Sylwester
