In what order to learn art skills?
Question from Alexis S., Drawing Academy student
“I’m taking the Drawing Academy course and I love it! After the drawing course I would like to learn painting and do sculpture. Is there an order in which should I learn these skills?”
Dear Alexis,
Many thanks for your question; to answer it I have to give you a short example of how art is taught to children in professional Russian art schools.
They start art education from the age of 10 and for 4 to 5 years study the following six subjects from year one:
- Drawing (mostly in graphite pencil; this includes a human anatomy)
- Painting (watercolor, gouache, oils)
- History of Arts (in-depth study of art from the stone age to present days)
- Sculpture (starting from plasticine and then quickly advancing to clay)
- Composition (both drawing and painting)
- Decorative Arts (pen-and-ink, calligraphy, etching, stained glass, mixed mediums, etc.)
All those subjects are taught every year simultaneously, there is no sequential order or progression from subject to subject. However, within every discipline, the complexity and level is progressing from simple tasks to more advanced skills. There is no specialization at this level, all topics are taught to all art students.
By the time those children finish an art school, they would be considered professional fine artists by Western standards as the level of such preliminary art education is comparable to, or in some cases more advanced than in some art colleges in Europe and America.
Nevertheless, it takes another 5 to 11 years for them to complete their education in art by going into an art college and then to an academy.
So, my advice is to take on painting and sculpting at the same time. One will help the other. By sculpting, you will learn to better feel out the three-dimensional form of models and objects, so you can paint them with more confidence, and painting will help your creativity in sculpture.
Below, are some examples of artworks done by Russian pupils in children art schools:
I hope this helps.
To your creative success,
Vladimir
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This makes me happy and sad at the same time. This is what I always wanted: To have this kind of education as a child. I never found something like this in the Netherlands and even if I would have, my parents probably wouldn’t let me attend this school. It saddens me that I had to learn all of this myself and that I lost a lot of time by doing so. At the same time I’m happy for other children who had the pleasure of having such a cool school.
Thank you for sharing these.
Loved your article.
I was very impressed when i saw those drawings and paintings from Russian children.It proved to me that proper background in Art Education matters in order to achieve qualitative skills as one develops in art. The Russian art system of education is worth emulating. Thanks for the answer given.As a reader, i was quite convinced.
Wow