This post is by guest author, Rick Rotante. This article has been edited and published with the author's permission. You should submit an article and share your views as a guest author by clicking here.  We've promoted this post to feature status because it provides great value to the FineArtViews community.  If you want your blog posts listed in theFineArtViews newsletter with the possibility of being republished to our 16,000+ subscribers, consider blogging with FASO Artist Websites.  This author's views are entirely his own and may not always reflect the views of BoldBrush, Inc.

It's hard to discuss this topic without it sounding like a gripe session.  There are many new art grad students out there teaching and they have little idea what the real world is like in the trenches.

Seeing this troubles me. So many things are wrong with our teaching/learning process. I put in years of figure drawing and anatomy study before I considered passing this information on to others as a teacher. But I find most don't care, don't have the time or just plain aren't interested, even though they crave to paint the figure or do portraits.

It breaks my heart to see this. I see new painters struggling, in the dark, trying to paint with excruciatingly bad results and I can't say a thing, unless they decide to take my class. Not to say I am a genius. I deal with this head on every day.

You learn that if you teach, you have to overcome the fact every student you get will NOT know how to draw. Period. I audit drawing workshops and watch people making these little tiny figure drawings from a live model and the instructor critiquing the work. What can you learn doing tiny drawings? How do you articulate the bones and muscles on a drawing that you can barely see?

The émigré Chinese here are kicking our proverbial asses with the training they receive - until we wake up and realize drawing and painting are worthwhile endeavors for our youth and invest in real training, western art students are in for a very hard, disappointing time.

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Editor's Note: You can view Rick's original post here.