hedwards: Nice trolling there.
The fact is that the methods work for a lot of students. And nobody would ever manage to complete art school if they were as bad as you seem to think. Students who look at the examples as if they are unattainably good are clearly not listening to what the instructor is saying. Or they've got a shitty instructor that isn't adequately explaining what the point they're illustrating is.
And yes, your whole post is dripping with venom which leads me to suspect that you're not actually making use of the instruction available.
Art is art, while there is a fair amount of leeway as to what exactly good art is, the rules necessary to create decent pictures are hardly as complicated or unattainable as you seem to believe. This sounds more like a mental problem than one of pedagogy.
MaximumBunny: The point of my last post was that you were ignoring the fact that everyone is not at the same place, and you're simply villainizing me to maintain your worldview of art. I could argue with you about that, or I could just say you win to make you happy because you're not content in understanding how something could be different than what you've come to accept.
And you're welcomed to continue hurling insults rather than help, because that's what I've come to expect from 'artists'. Nothing in my post was offensive, yet you decided to tell me that I'm the problem, the system is fine, and that everything I said should be ignored by everyone.
I'm replying to you not because I want to argue with you, which I'd like to see an end to, but because I don't like your portrayal of my several years of going through hundreds of resources and communities with no success. Paid resources, free resources, all the same. I'm obviously doing things wrong, and the solution for me would also be beneficial to everyone beginning art. Though if you'd like to promote "learn perspective, then learn shading, then learn this, then that" that's good for you who have developed enough skills prior from scribbling on walls to learn the classic route. But like language and music, it's still something that you develop and you need to start at the beginning.
Oh please don't give me that crap. Nothing in any of your posts here has been constructive.
It's shitty advice to tell people not to pay money for art lessons unless you can physically intimidate the instructor. There's tons of good resources and classes out there. Some of them are free and some of them cost money. Nothing, I suggested is likely to break ones budget.
What's more I wasn't born a natural artist. I spent years working on various art forms and putting a ton of effort into it. The attitude that you're taking about how nobody should go through the steps is just bullshit advice. The steps that are involved with a classical education in drawing or painting are the way they are because they're by and large necessary. Yes, some of the steps that the masters had to go through were that way because it was a more efficient use of resources to make people apprentice so that the master didn't have to stretch the canvasses etc, but these days most of those things are done by machines or by non-artists anyways.
If you don't understand why art classes are taught in the way that they're taught, then you shouldn't be commenting in such a categorical way about how stupid it is. My only regret with my art education is that I didn't get enough of the classical approach as most of what's held me back over the years was adequate exercises and fundamentals.
I realize that it doesn't work for everybody, but realistically if things were as dire as you're suggesting, art colleges would have gone out of business decades ago and realistically probably wouldn't have been created in the first place.
In any endeavor, there's effort that the student has to make in order to understand the utility of the techniques and integrate that knowledge. An instructor can show the techniques and lead by example, but the student ultimately has to draw some of the connections themselves and learn to analyze other examples.
Back to the advice I had for the OP, if you want to learn to draw, it's almost certainly well within your grasp. Assuming that you're interested enough to put in the effort. Most people can draw, even if they never attain the level necessary to make a living by drawing. There's no reason why most people can't draw simple cartoons or pictures.
