What is it like to take a visual art class in high school?

Art is generally understood as any activity or product done by people with a communicative or aesthetic purpose; something that expresses an idea, an emotion or, more generally, a view! 

However, art is much more than just that! It teaches you a broad range of skills and techniques.

Art is personal. It’s about sharing, the deepest of our feelings, emotions, pain, happiness – our experience of the world. An extension of an Artist’s personality! 

It is an expression of our intimate thoughts, and profound feelings that cannot be portrayed by words alone. And because words alone are not enough, an Artist finds alternate means to speak up, convey his/her intent. However please be aware, the intent that an Artist conveys through multiple mediums or supports is not art in itself. Art is found in how an Artist uses the mediums, and how the content is expressed! Art is a component of culture, reflecting economic and social substrates in its design.

And beauty is a measure of affect, a measure of emotion. In the context of art, beauty is the measure of successful communication between participants – whether it be pretty, bright, and bubbly or dark, evil, envious and sinister! Since neither the Artist nor the observer can be certain of successful communication between the two, in the end, the concept of art is eternally subjective.

For long arts education, has been an integrated part of the core study curriculum in primary and middle schools. Studies have also proven how crucial arts integration is, to the wellness of an individual, besides creating well-rounded, well-prepared learners and leaders. Conveniently ignoring learnings from such critical studies, arts education has remained an unwanted useless part of the high school curriculum to make room for more time to prepare for competitive exams!

Contrary to such a belief, art classes offer problem solving, bent of mind, critical thinking and opens a sea of creativity, besides many more advantages for growing teens. The numerous lessons that art classes provide to students such as next level creativity and divergent thinking skills cannot be provided by  typical academic courses! If children practice thinking creatively, it will come naturally to them forever in future.

Creative Aptitude 

Arts is all about creativity. Art is a firm of communication, an expression! 

Pablo Picasso once said,

“Every child is an Artist. The problem is how to remain an Artist once we grow up.” 

High school art education creates invaluable foundations to build creative professionals for the future. Teens are blessed when they have someone to foster and promote their creative growth, encourage their ability to solve complicated design problems, motivate them to think critically, and inspire them to work collaboratively on creative projects that further help shape them as a fine ‘fine Artist’.

Planning and project development skills. 

High school teens learn to have a forethought and a plan on how they want to approach the entire project or how they want to execute it, once they are delegated a topic. 

Different hands-on abilities

While a very few high school students are fully able to develop their skills and pursue the lifelong profession of a full-blown Artist after school, others, either use their artistic skills such as sketching, painting, clay work, paper projects, glass staining to enrich their creative professions or embellish their alternate professions with creativity!   

Ability to look at the bigger picture

Knowing the principles of design and practicing Artistic creativity can help students distill large ideas into concise forms and organize scattershot thoughts into a compelling narrative. Additionally, taking art throughout high school helps students succeed academically in all my other classes by forcing me to utilize all aspects of my mind.

Confidence

Not just by mastering the creative dimension, Art builds a student’s confidence, through a mere participation in art classes! Students are overwhelmed and amazed to see how materials magically turn into visual stories. This makes them more confident.

A sense of pride and achievement

Teens who take up art in high school are able to exhibit their works in several exhibitions organised by the school, and earn an immense sense of pride and success by participation.

Time management 

Art is not something that can be accomplished in one sitting, one class or even one day. Art projects need dedication,  involvement and are time consuming. Hence, unlike the other areas of study, art facilities are available until late in the evenings and weekends, so that teens can return to complete these types of projects. This teaches teens to balance their time schedules!

Focus and concentrate 

Art projects require quite a bit of concentration, from conceptualization of an idea until it’s creation and realization. Whichever medium the project involves on whatever support, there are various steps to follow. And each step requires a hell lot of attention to minuscule details by means of focus and concentration. High school students develop this skill multitude more times more than their peers.

Attention to detail 

Creating miniature or intricate art pieces draws the high school students so much into their work that they start developing what’s called a micro-vision of an Artist. Drawing skills especially help teens see the smallest facets of something that they otherwise may not have observed. This skill, this vision then develops as a habit and shadows each task they execute to make them skilled and professional at their work.

Visual Learning

Drawing, painting, and sculpting in art class helps teens to develop visual-spatial skills. Art education teaches students how to interpret, criticize, and use visual information, and how to make choices based on that information.

Fine-Tuning Fine Motor Skills

For pre primary, primary and middle school kids, simple things like holding a paintbrush, making marks with pens, pencils or crayons, and cutting with scissors are enough for  development of their fine motor skills. Developmental milestones around age three  include drawing a circle and beginning to use safety scissors. Around age four, it’s desirable that children are able to draw a square and begin cutting straight lines with scissors. This continues throughout the years until students begin to merge their technical skills with their creative skills. 

Improved hand eye coordination

Art projects involve hand eye coordination. Continually doing these types of projects, such as over a span of semesters, leads to improved coordination abilities in teens.

Creativity

Art classes boost a teen’s creativity and ability to think outside of the box. Other than this there’s another skill that interests most employers – The ability to follow through! In addition to time management and grasp on the actual skill itself, art teaches the ability to follow something through to its completion and to handle errors or problems in the way of execution. The creativity and innovation that students use for art projects comes from art-acquired research and critical thinking skills to incorporate multiple influences into their art projects. These skills apply to academic or professional experiences and disciplines beyond the visual arts.

Decision Making

We know the arts strengthen problem-solving and critical thinking skills. Learning how to make choices and decisions carries over to  other parts of life of a learner.

Problem solving skills 

Art goes through its own share of ‘destruction’. So if something goes wrong with a part of the entire art project, it must be handled in such a way, so that the rest of the project remains unharmed. These isolated problem solving skills, essential for personality development, not only enhance a teen’s motor functions but prove to be a gift for life! 

Perseverance

Creating an artwork is a challenging job. Each piece of art needs a lot of time and patience to complete! Successful Artists don’t quit; instead they learn to condition their minds to keep working hard and perseverance. This mindset that develops over time, helps them surpass every adverse situation as they grow, to continue developing new skills and working through difficult projects without getting anxious or frustrated.

Collaboration

High school projects are offered whereby  students need to work together, share responsibility and compromise to achieve a common goal. Art teaches them to realise and appreciate that their contribution as a  group is integral to the project’s success. Such social skills cannot be gained in other academic disciplines as easily.

All parts of high school education are crucial for overall learning. If a teen misses a math class, they will miss out on learning numerous computational skills. The same is true of art. The skills learned in art classes cannot be picked up as easily in other courses and are essential for long-term skill advancement. The next time someone asks about the reasons for art classes, you will be able to tell them that there’s much more to art than just painting: there are job skills to be learned!

Multibhashi is a leading online platform that provides various kid’s classes and other language classes as well. You can check the art & craft classes by Multibhashi.