I have taken many other academic classes before I started taking art classes. It was a dream to have been able to take classes at OCAD and other art classes. Definitely I miss not taking any this season while I’ve been busy doing other things. Here’s what I thought were very different from a usual academic class.

Demonstrations of technique

We would have demonstrations and gather around the teacher as they spoke. Each teacher tended to have different ways of doing demonstrations.

The usual method was to have students try to peer over one another to watch the instructor.

I saw one which showed a video on a projector to avoid the issue of having too many students and not enough space.

Another would walk us through her own thought process as she created her drawing. She was one of my favourite because she taught me that making mistakes was actually part of the process, and the importance of erasing as part of creating a drawing.

Having time to practice in class

I don’t think I can remember a time when I had time to do the actual studying in class.

Much of the class time would have time for doing our own art. While this sounds like “grade school busy work”, this was a critical part of the art class. It allowed us to absorb the demonstration and put it into practice. Time would fly by because we would be enveloped in creating our work.

Homework was more difficult than I thought

I constantly found myself without enough time to do my homework. In that way, it was part still a chore. When we came back, we would show what we created to others. We were able to show students what we created, and sometimes what I thought was not good, others had found the good in it. When I showed something that I knew was good, the comments would be even better.

Critiques were nice and useful

One of the scariest parts was when we would critique each other’s work. Unlike how I imagined, no one slung mud at my creations. In fact, it seemed students would instead try to bolster up each others’ fragile esteems, pulling out the nicest parts of what someone’s vulnerable creation was in front of them. The teacher would also give constructive feedback or a new method to try.

Some teachers did it better than others. As they would walk around and observe us trying to create, some would give recommendations. I liked the ones where they would really take it as a growth opportunity. While I was quick to say all the terrible things were about what I made, they would be able to bring us back to a level of normalcy.

I envied others and copied them

There were definitely other students whose styles I really liked. I would try to adopt some of their styles and see how it would go. For some, I got the sense that they were so good, other students would wonder why they were taking the class in the first place. I too had wondered – do they get a kick out of compliments?

In reality though, it seems like everyone is critical of their own work. What surprised me was when they would (and I think they were honest) praise something that I created. While I only saw flaws, they saw beauty.

What I learned was that though I envied others, it was also an opportunity to learn from them. While what I made would never be what theirs was, that too was part of the process.

If I’ve learned anything, it is basically impossible to re-create what an artist makes. The soul of the art is always a bit different.