Colors, shades, creation: there is a vibrancy that comes with doing art at an educational level. Excitement is piqued at the thought of drawing on a fresh page of a sketchbook, slathering a canvas with paint, creating groovy new effects with photographs, or just simply the idea of creation: be it small, digitalized, three-dimensional or even large installation-style. But as much as art sounds fascinating and whacky, there is a lot (extra emphasis here) of hard work and patience that goes into making it what it is, and most art students probably agree. Here are ten problems faced by art students at least once throughout their college experience:
1) Getting your hands dirty. Literally.
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Oh look, the soap distiller is empty again. The amount of times hands need to be washed cannot be pressed upon more. Charcoal smudges and peeling paint and glue and pastel marks and squishy eraser remains; we’ve seen it all. In fact, there comes a point where cleanup doesn’t even matter anymore, and going to the next class with colorful streaks all over les mains is a matter of pride.
2) An empty pocket.
Curse the prices of expensive art materials. And curse the fact that the supplies get used up so quickly.
3) A cramped dorm room.
Nope, the size of the room isn’t to blame, and neither is the furniture or the personal belongings. An artist could be looking for their round brush in a massive pile of supplies, artworks and kits spread across the room, and spend hours before realizing it was actually in their hand the whole time.
4) More clothes for laundry and even more to wear as nightwear.
You know you’re an art student if you have a night suit section filled with paint-stained clothes and if you spend twice as much on doing your laundry than any other student. (Sometimes you even wonder whether your clothes could count as artwork by themselves.)
5) Relentless questions from relatives.
So what do you even learn? Do you draw all day? It can be frustrating trying to explain your area of study to people sometimes, even though you really appreciate their genuine concern and fascination. The occasional cringe is seen on students’ faces when art is generalized to only lines and colors by others.
6) Arguments about what is art and what is not.
Justifying how a simple line is considered art, or debating about what makes something aesthetic enough to be called an artwork is possibly something every art student has done before. It can be a seemingly impossible task to explain this to others sometimes, and there are frequent discussions and questions on artworks (that sometimes cannot even be answered by the artists themselves!)
7) Pondering over the future.
This is something that will never cease to leave the heads of students planning to pursue art further. The tingling sensation of euphoria after a brainwave about a new artwork or thinking about a fantastically successful future is frequently fought back by the worry of not being able to earn enough and not having enough resources to express/build something in an artwork the way it was initially planned.
8) Constant planning and the occasional artist’s block.
And then there’s the artwork submission deadline. Sigh.
9) Hours of research.
From impressionists to cubist artists, to modern and contemporary artists, most art forms and eras have been researched about, along with significant artworks that were seen in that period.
10) Artworks for Sale?
Face it: every once in a while, thoughts about selling artworks pop up (as does the gloom with having to part with one), and most friends and family are eye-crinkly-wide-smiled about getting one made for them. Needless to say, a promising audience is always reassuring!
