Why I HATED School Art Competitions (ft. @CDawgVA)

miss teacher oh yes Miss office assistant yeah uh do you have ill LLC in your class um yes could you send her up to the office please we have something uh special here for her are you Elsie uh I think so am I in trouble here why yeah your picture from art class won third place growing up I was known as the art kid I was always drawing in class I was the ideal partner for poster board projects no I will not draw you and of course art class was hands down my favorite class but one fateful day in third grade I became known as the art kid who won ten dollars and a third place ribbon at the North Carolina State Fair and let me tell you ten dollars as a third grader is like a billion dollars in today's money I could with that kind of cash but the best part I didn't even know I was competing my dinky little art piece that won was from a very basic assignment you take a bowl and you take a sponge and you dip the sponge in a bowl of white paint and you dab three big dots in a line on a sheet of black construction paper to make a snowman and by you I of course mean the art teacher because you can't trust little kids to not eat the paint right guys anyway after making the Snowman you hand those little rascals a bunch of colorful construction paper and safety scissors to carefully snip out little shapes to decorate their little snowman with and because I had sorry have a special interest in cats I made mine look like a little cat snow cat nice wait I can make money how to give you some context every year in elementary school our art teacher would pick a couple students artworks from each grade level to enter into the state fair without telling any of us and when you're a kid growing up in bump nowhere seeing you your art displayed like that was like earning a spot on the biggest fridge for the whole world to see so once I got a taste of success I was hooked from then on out I was determined to get my art into the state fair every year oh yeah that blue ribbon was mine so fourth grade rolls around and our art teacher assigns us this Wiggly abstract drawing assignment that you outline and Sharpie so you can freely color without losing your lines and of course by you I mean the teacher because you cannot trust fourth graders to not sniff Sharpies right guys anyway the most important part about this project was my art teacher told us she'd be selecting a student work from this assignment to submit to the state fair yeah just got real so I started thinking what am I going to draw what would win well what worked last time ah yes my hyper fixations but I've already drawn a cat I can't do that again I have to show my growth as an artist prove my versatility experiment with new motifs and that's when it hit me Spyro the Dragon from the Game Boy game I played but couldn't get past the first level because I was nine and an idiot I draw my squiggles sketch my dragon and the teacher Sharpies the squiggles around my beloved creature I grab a black washable non-toxic marker and carefully outline my muse then I grab a purple marker a yellow an orange Now red pink purple no violet 45 historic minutes pass and it's done oh yeah that's art I'm done miss teacher I'm done I'm done I'm done miss teacher I'm done now quick reminder I grew up in a small town the kind word not many people leave so I saw these art shows as my opportunity to get my stuff seen for a chance at making art my career one day unfortunately though my Spyro fan art did not make the cut but that was okay I was still so proud of my hard work so I took it home walked up to my dad and said look what I did in art class and I'll never forget what he said to me is that Barney oh what I'm sorry I'm inspired spiral honey no [Music] what did you do I was crushed was that why I didn't get in was my Spyro that off model did the judges really think I a distinguished and cultured fourth grader Drew an ugly portrait of freaking Barney the purple dinosaur from our imagination it just didn't make any sense and it broke me so after that I swore I'd never enter any art competition ever again I was gonna do art for me and no one else well until middle school rolled around when I was in Middle School I was selected to be in my school's Junior Beta Club Beta Club is a student organization that quote promotes the ideals of academic achievement character leadership and service among Elementary and secondary school students so basically a club for teachers pets like me and it was awesome I finally made friends with a bunch of other kids who got bullied we got to run the canned food drive I drew the poster we gave tours to fifth graders I drew a map for them and we got to leave class early for weekly Beta Club meetings which was just an excuse to sit together in a classroom and do nothing for the last 30 minutes of school yeah Andrew Lion King fan art but in seventh grade we got to go to the National Beta Club Convention which not only had its very own art competition but also a t-shirt competition yeah Gabriel again all right that's Spyro fan art knocked me down but I have to get back up again have to try now I had just gotten my first drawing tablet which is like a slightly bigger track pad but with a pen I know iPads and touch screen stuff is very common these days but back in 2009 this was cutting edge technology I bought that tablet with 80 of my own birthday and Christmas dollars and now came the payoff I humbly approached my computer I said a prayer on the Windows XP Hilltop and that's when I noticed today's video is sponsored by Opera Opera has a beautiful browser called Opera desktop that includes a free VPN for safe and secure browsing a built-in ad blocker to fight off those pesky pop-ups a special player feature to access all your favorite music and podcasts a messaging tool conveniently tucked into your sidebar as well as an integrated AI tool named Arya and Arya is special because it works with the internet to find information that other AI Bots can't find one thing in particular I really like about Arya is the Highlight tool tip if you have light a paragraph Arya can scan it and explain it briefly back to you or if you want to explore that topic more in depth Arya can suggest links and Search keywords to send you on your Merry way it's the perfect tool for anyone's hyper Focus midnight internet Rabbit Hole session not just mine so if you'd like to make your time on the internet safer funkier and more connected than ever use my link below to download Opera for free today now back to the video I opened Photoshop Element 7 and I got to work in the middle of the shirt I sketched out our School's mascot a Jaguar confidently marching forward he was the perfect subject no longer would my special interests in cats in The Lion King bring comments of can't you draw anything else no no I cannot I was born for this I cleaned up the sketch Inked the outlines color matched our official school colors onto the cat carefully speckled his spots into perfect position and shows the ideal font to border the illustration Middle School Beta Club oh yeah that's art I emailed it to our teacher printed out a copy to present to the next meeting and my club loved it we got him printed onto t-shirts we got them delivered in seven to ten business days and all 30 something of us little betas were the colors of our class proudly into that convention center and that's when I realized there was a prompt for the T-shirt design the design was supposed to represent all students from all beta clubs Across the Nation and I didn't know that because I didn't read the prompt I don't know I don't like reading it's just not my thing God the anxiety melted into me because this art didn't just have my name on it it had my school's name on it it had Chipotle burrito stains on it by lunchtime because again my whole freaking class was wearing this I mean shirt God what a fool I was I didn't even bother waiting to read the results or even look up what the prompt even was hate reading anyway because at the end of the day none of that mattered I let my club down I let my school down I was a failure but to my surprise my club didn't think so they loved the shirt they didn't care if it won or followed the prompt heck half of them probably didn't even know there was a t-shirt competition they were just psyched to get a free t-shirt and that's when I realized it didn't matter whether or not some stranger liked my art as long as I liked my art and my friends did too I felt successful even though I definitely came in last place which leads me to high school now if you really enjoyed art like I did you went beyond the graduation requirements and took art three art four even art AP where you would do much bigger focused and complex assignments and where you got to choose your own artwork to submit to a county-wide school art showcase I was back in business baby but what would I submit well one day my amazing art teacher Mr Hudson walked in with a big heavy bag so vending machine broken again come get a rock this is a soapstone it's a rock but it's on the softer side making it perfect for sculpture sculpture this your assignment is to carve your rock into an art piece using these tools started here folks for this assignment you grab a rock you grab a mallet a chisel a pick a a scrapey thing this sharp doohickey on a stick and you get rocking and by you I of course mean me I was old enough to drive so I was old enough to be trusted with potentially dangerous objects with adult supervision and it was awesome for a week straight I'd go into class pop in my earbuds and chisel away at my little soapstone bunny the bunny the bunny ooh I make the bunny I was down a week but I wasn't gonna let it deter me carefully this time I tapped away at the corners picked along the little grooves and made sure to use the filing tool as I roughed out the details I was laser focused on this thing occasionally working all the way up to the bell and showing up late to my next class and although I did get an extension to account for the first rock falling apart I still had to keep up with the rest of the class who were about to begin Mr Hudson's favorite assignment the infamous pun project using whatever materials we wanted we had to make a sculpture that represented a pun for example a friend of mine sculpted a moose and made it look like it was melting then she painted it with glossy brown paint and Bam chocolate mousse cool right wrong I thought this project was dumb I hated puns puns are the ultimate dad joke and school was the only respite from my father's Terror and I told Mr Hudson that I told him it was a waste of my time I'd rather be adding some finishing touches to my rock bunny well that's too bad I guess you'll get a zero I don't care zero on a project will deeply impact your overall grade for this class still don't care how about this if you don't do this pun project I'll take points off your bunny's grade you wouldn't dare oh I would dare one might even say I would hair hey don't you pun at me don't take my puns for granite fine make it the freaking ow okay well I'll be in the other room let me know if you need anything done Bell pepper um bad needs a stem though oh to be fair my teacher just wanted me to get a good grade in his class he knew how much I loved this bunny sculpture and he made sure I could finish it to Perfection he even whipped out a drill to carve the negative space between its ears and its back so finally after three weeks of hard work I knew what I'd be submitting into the Showcase so what else are you submitting what what ever made no don't even think about guess which one got a blue ribbon now this next one this is Bell Pepper made from found objects created by oh oh elisi I think wait for it get it bell pepper this thing is awesome it's ridiculous don't get me wrong I was stoked to win my first and only Blue Ribbon but for this come on it was made of blood literal garbage and spite look at that you can see it's searing it I don't give a that Jingles hot glue and you not only let it sit next to the Majesty of my soapstone bunny but you awarded this Blasphemous affront to Nature a first place ribbon the only thing that could have pissed me off more is if I was one of the sorry folks who came in second and third behind this piece of well I think you did a great job what it didn't make any sense I didn't care about that thing I didn't put any passion into it why did bell pepper win but my soapstone bunny didn't I carved this thing from a rock like a caveman and none of that mattered I could put all my time and effort and passion into something but I couldn't control how people were gonna perceive my art let alone predicted success there's just no winning with art and that was a weird conclusion to come to Art is something that intrinsically motivates us to make it and in turn satisfies us so if we're lucky enough to find success win an award or even make it into a job that's really special and rare and awesome but anyone who does art for a living will know you need to also make time for art that isn't for a grade isn't for a studio isn't for an award an audience or a paycheck you have to find time to make art for you because that was the whole reason you got into art in the first place remember so from the bottom of my heart thank you for being the audience that allows me and my team to do what we love and afford to do it to survive not many artists have the privilege to do that I'm gonna go do a call now and not show you what it looks like but thank you for watching my videos and as always stay safe

Channel: illymation

Views: 2,749,308

Keywords: illymation, illymations, illyanimation, illystrations, storytime animation, animated storytime, animation, illymation real life, illymation face reveal, illymation ex, illymation boyfriend, illymation abusive boyfriend, illymation song, illymation animal crossing, illymation vidcon, illymation cat, illymation luigi, school art competitions, elementary school stories, school stories animated, middle school stories, high school stories, art competitions

Id: UkEjq8-MPwc

Length: 16min 0sec (960 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 28 2023