Hitting the buffers with an art scholarship and the quaint old fashioned notion that 'digital art isn't real art'

 

Anyone who's ever attempted to 'do something with art' has probably lugged one of these bastards around. Normally filled with a mixture of terrible artwork, charcoal dust (never, EVER EVER EVER use charcoal or pastels, they are the bloody WORST for dropping dust all over your work, your house, your entire life for the next fifty billion years) and the hopes and dreams of an aspirational young naive artist, they are the greatest reason for embracing an entirely digital art portfolio that I can think of. 

So over the past week or so, Little Miss has been diligently prepping her own portfolio for her next art scholarship application. Her school and her art teacher both seem to have a rather victorian attitude to art (in fact we're surprised they 'allow all that mucking about' in the first place tbh). Nevertheless the brief for the collection of work to be submitted for the scholarship was a bit annoying if not completely harsh in its expectations.

• Only single sheets of work should be submitted, not entire sketchbooks (which meant she has the prospect of dismembering her carefully collated sketchbooks, art diaries and other journals she'd put together as part of other art courses)
• No digital submissions, not even printouts (we don't have a printer at home and haven't had one for years, but this seems very harsh and I'll come back to this point in a sec). 
• Nothing you've submitted previously (so you can't resubmit your best work if you've already submitted it in previous years? Are you having a laugh?)

We've had tantrums, tears and little miss has suddenly realised that this will set the pattern for any dalliance she will have with the creative arts from hereon in. It's a rites-of-passage that dates back to the stone age and really doesn't look like it'll ever change. What's more, it's the perfect way to completely put a child off ever wanting to pursue a career in art, or to take their artistic endeavours to the next level. 

Some folk are natural curators, lovingly keeping beautiful sketchbooks and art diaries that would make an angel weep. Some folk produce fantastic Tumblr sites, shove all their work on Pinterest, or produce a bespoke website filled with their glorious work. 

Kids, of course, don't think or work like this (unless they're really precocious little sods and let's face it, if they are, then they deserve every success really). Quite often though, a child's collection of artwork is a rag-tag bunch of loose paper, scrawled in sketchbooks and (in little miss's case) a whole load of stuff they've got stashed away on their laptop or iPad. 

So back to that. The attitude to digital art in this, in fact the attitude to digital art in general is quite frankly bizarre and old fashioned.

Little Miss's art teacher clearly doesn't think it's worthy of attention, but LM has been spending a lot of time going up the steep learning curve of drawing and painting in ProCreate on the iPad - and her work there has been pretty amazing. Yet school wouldn't allow any of that work to be formally submitted, a real shame as there were so many items that would've been brilliant as an example of her ability and her 'style'.

When you consider the amazing work that can be produced digitally, particularly on ProCreate, it stinks a bit to completely dismiss a branch of art that still comes with the same reliance on core skills that using any other medium does. 

It was encouraging to hear similar experiences talked up on Twitter, and the fantastically talented Lorenzo Etherington (he of awesome comic art and brilliant art tutorial book fame) talking about his own attempts to change the way art is taught (and if you've ever been to any of the workshops with Lorenzo or his brother Robin, you'll wish that schools could fill kids with an OUNCE of the inspiration those guys do). 

Kids take knockbacks hard, particularly at the age little miss is. The world has also moved on, it's moved on colossally and though we're not expecting the school to just wave her through a scholarship without her putting in the required effort, the 'rules' for this submission really do suck.