How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Graphic Design

Throughout high school, my ability to render an image made me the best artist in school. I could take a photograph and produce a pencil drawing, a scratchboard, or an oil painting that looked very much like that original photograph. I decided to attend the Rhode Island School of Design, intending on being 'an artist' for a living. It took about 2 days into my freshman year to learn that my skill in photorealism was pretty much worthless. Not only could half of my classmates do it just as well as I could, and not only had straight photorealism been out of style for about 50 years, but it simply isn't an important element of fine art. The main analogy I would use regarding the fine art opinion of photorealism is this: Admiring a painting for it's realism is like admiring a novel for how well typed it is. It is the concept that matters, not the execution.

This took a while for me to really accept. My claim to fame as an artist up to this point in my life had been my ability to make this look like that and it was going to take more than one drawing teacher to convince me that I should ignore my biggest strength as an artist. A little further into my freshman year, in a 2 dimensional design course, I found that I had a natural rhythm in creating things on the computer. My teacher strongly recommended that I declare graphic design as my major. I had heard this before and it annoyed me. During several of the portfolio reviews I had in preparation for college, people were constantly suggesting that I look into graphic design. Looking back now, this makes total sense. The paintings I created in high school were basically graphic design with paint. However, at the time, I enrolled in art school to be an artist, not to work on a computer all day. I wanted to draw and paint and spend time in a studio, not stare at a computer monitor and spend time in a computer lab. So, I declared illustration as my major....and switched to graphic design after one semester.

In illustration I had a drawing teacher who basically said this: an artists most most valuable possession is their eyes. The ability to visualize a composition and know what to do and what not to do is the real talent. After that, anybody in the room can render it. At the same time I was becoming more interested in how I could use the computer to supplement my drawings. Most of the work I was bringing in to my illustration classes had a heavy computer element. Maybe it was the fact that a precise drawing wouldn't have impressed anyone, but I was clearly moving away from drawing and toward the computer. So I figured I would just embrace what I'd been told for two years and become a graphic designer.

The upside to this decision is that it has been much easier for me to stay employed than all of my friends currently trying to be illustrators. I found an internship soon after graduating and have been employed every day since. The downside is that I miss drawing and painting, and while I would spend more time painting as a hobby, I keep hearing echoes of old teachers, telling me that I need to do something more than render pictures. If I'm spending time painting, it had better be 'fine art'. I guess if I'm going to spend time doing it, I might as well do it 'right', and just painting a pretty picture isn't 'right'. But the thing is, I like rendering pictures. Maybe it is just a more impressive version of someone doing a crossword puzzle to relax, or maybe it is art.

In the meantime, I can tell anyone who is concerned that working on a computer will suck all of the art out of them that you use all of the same visual skills you use when making any visual composition, you just arrange it with a mouse instead of a pencil. No, you won't really get to say that you are an artist when someone asks you what you do, but you can just do what I did and get a bunch of tattoos so that people know that while you might work on a computer all day, you are still more creative than they are. And being a graphic designer is still cooler than most professions.