I’m learning some important things at art school. For example:

The number one killer of artistic passion is greed.

This truth is easily observable out there in the industry. But it has been doubly confirmed to me simply through my short time at the Art Institutes.
In my opinion, too many teachers put too much emphasis on “career preparation” here. They almost have their own dialect in which every other sentence translates roughly as “what you’re learning is going to make you money.”
Great. It’s good to know that before choosing a program of study… but it’s bad habit to make students forever dependent on that carrot dangling in front of them. Commercial art is a means to money – and a whole lot more. And even money is not an end in itself.
Because of the materialistic focus, I was starting to lose sight of why I was even here. And then, in Jacob Dobson’s class, I found it again – Oh yeah, graphic design is positively life-giving for me. I like sensing when something is right and wrong. I get a thrill when a new visual concept shows up in my brain.
It’s nice, because we actually discuss art in his class, not the rat race.

This morning we looked at the influence of greed on art, among other things. This schema of Jacob’s explains a lot of things, so I’m reproducing it here.

Elements & Principles of Design Hunt

My first assignment in Jacob’s class involved searching the internet for design pieces that exemplified an element or a principle of design. I’m just going to give these as links, so that I don’t mess up as far as copyright is concerned.

TEXTURE | TONE | PATTERN | TIME | LINE | SPACE | EMPHASIS | BALANCE | SCALE | LIGHT

A color wheel assignment and a perspective drawing assignment are in the works. Stay tuned.

Sure, you’re entitled to ask.
Why would such an optimistic, upbeat girl choose to her write her “How Art Is Reflected in Society” paper on the Black Death?

Answer: I am already very curious about medieval culture. The art and music that came out of that period of about five hundred years fascinates and transports me today. So I was looking for a topic that addressed the Middle Ages (das Mittelalter, for those in German III).
The Black Death, for those who don’t know, was a catastrophic outbreak of bubonic plague across Europe and Asia in the 1300s, killing roughly 1 in 3 people. When I discovered this, I drew a parallel between that unimaginable scale of destruction and the devastation that the Bible predicts for the years just before Jesus’s return. And being a firm believer in the proximity of these events, I decided that this topic could actually be personally applicable.

I won’t claim to have received any divine lightbulbs in the end, but it was fascinating.

Creation out of Destruction: The Black Death Period in Europe as Seen through the Arts

Read it and weep.

P.S. A word of advice to my classmates: If on YOUR papers, the 1″ margins aren’t looking right… your document might still be set to A4. *nostalgic sniff*