katiedoesnothing asked: Hey there! I'm recently going through the SVA tag hoping to start an Illustration degree maybe 2015? I'm getting my Studio Arts Bachelors at UT Austin right now but it's not what I want (but I have to finish here D;). Anyways, do you feel that the school is worth the price? I keep seeing people having great experiences and then seeing people say that folks could get the same for less elsewhere. I think the name of the school carries some weight for your degree so is SVA a good fit anyway?

I think SVA is worth the price. I have been very, very happy with the quality of education I’ve received at SVA and I think it will be worth the years of student debt. But yes, the eternal “is art school really worth it? Can I get the same education for less at a state school?” question that pops up over and over again for people in the arts. People that have more life experience than me have answered this question many times, and the consensus seems to be that art school is one of many paths you can take to a career in the arts, though it is no guarantee. I think it’s worth the price for the type of person that does well in that type of collegiate learning environment and wants to network with the people within that environment, compared to a “loan wolf” type who wants to learn and work on projects on their own and prefers to network through other means (like online or through conventions). There’s no 100%-going-to-work path to success, and there are people that have MFA degrees from top schools who don’t succeed and people with high school diplomas that do, and vice versa. You can’t know what’s going to happen to you.

I do think that, once you already decide that college is your path, there are ways you can analyze and compare programs offered by different colleges (be they community colleges, state universities, liberal arts schools, fine art schools, etc) that will help you choose one where you will get the type of arts education you want. These are the questions I used myself:

1. Is it a BA or BFA program?

The quick-and-dirty explanition of the difference between getting a BA and a BFA in a visual art major is that when you get a BFA you’re taking a lot more studio art classes—probably 2/3rds of your credits will be studio credits. A BA might end up with 1/3 to 1/2 of their credits being studio credits. BFAs are generally harder, more intense programs that some people see akin to masters programs in the liberal arts. BFA programs are usually a better fit for someone that wants to become an arts professional, but are harder to find outside dedicated art schools.

2. What majors do they have and what are they like? 

Do they have the major you want (or something similar)? Or are the visual arts students all lumped into one major and you choose a “concentration” to take classes in? How many classes will you get to take within your chosen major?  What is the size of your chosen major—how many teachers, classes, and studio facilities do they have—and how does this compare to other arts majors? And when you put the information together about your chosen major, does that program sound good to you?

3. What courses do they offer?

This is similar to the last question, but looking over a school’s course catalog is really important. When you’re reading the course listings, how many of these classes sound relevant to your interests and also your future career path? Like if you’re an illustrator who really wants to work with traditional media and most of the illustration classes a school offers are in digital media, that school might not be the right fit for you. Also you want to look for said interesting/relevant courses at a variety of skill levels (like if you’re into comics you’d be better off at a school with four comics classes—one for each grade level—than one with four different comics 101 classes) and teachers. Also, pay attention to the required courses—do they sound relevant to you and like they would help you grow as an artist (and yes, if you’re an illustrator you need all those life drawing courses). How many required courses do you need to take a semester and how much room does that leave for electives? 

4. Who are the teachers?

Are the teachers people who have spent their entire careers teaching, are they professionals in their chosen art fields who have a side career in teaching, or a mix of both? I personally think there is a real benefit to learning from professionals in the field you hope to enter. The art industry is hard to break into, and having people in your life that have already lived through that experience and can now show you the ropes, give you advice, and even give you contacts that might help you get your foot in the door is awesome. So I would prioritize finding a program whose teachers have the type of professional lives you one day hope to have over a program where the teachers are academics that have never had commercial arts careers. 

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Personally, when I added all that information together (obviously this doesn’t include stuff like location, cost, campus environment, etc) the art schools I was considering came out way, way ahead of the local state schools. At least in my case, while my state’s schools were much cheaper, they didn’t have full BFA programs, separate majors for what I was interested in—only a class or two—nor were the professors teaching them industry professionals. I decided I would get a much higher quality of education and be better prepared for a career at SVA, and I think I was right. But this isn’t true of all state schools or otherwise cheaper-than-art-school colleges, and some do have robust arts programs. So you can get an art-school-quality education for less if you choose the right school, but good luck finding it.

And yes, having SVA’s name on your resumé could potentially look good to certain people, and there is a lot of networking you can do within SVA that can help you get your foot in the door. But without a good portfolio none of that means anything—though I fully believe that a good student can come out of SVA with a very good portfolio.

Also, it sounds like your plan would be to finish your current bachelor degree and then get a second one in a similar field of study? I don’t know what your current program is like and why you have to finish it instead of transferring, but that plan makes it sound like you would end up with a redundant degree. I would suggest contacting SVA admissions and explaining your situation and the type of education you’re currently getting, it is possible be the time you’re done with your first undergrad degree you would be better suited for a MFA illustration program or continuing education classes rather than repeating undergrad. 

geesrevenge asked: So this is kind of a vague question but I just really want to know anything you can tell me about the cartooning major, like anything you think would be important knowledge for me to know. I'm really stressing out because I know cartooning is what I want to do, like I'm 110% sure, but I feel like I'm not good enough, like I feel if I did get accepted at sva I wouldn't be able to keep up and that everyone would be better than me. Ugh, ok any advice would be awesome, thanks!

First: calm down and take a deep breath. I looked at your blog and you’re only 15, which means you have years to prepare yourself to attend SVA. You’re in a much better position than many people that that only start thinking about what college they want to go to when they are seniors in high school. You can do this.

Yes, your question is vague, but I guess a good place to start would be an overview of the Cartooning program, so you know what you’re in for.

I already talked about freshman year foundation pretty extensively here, where you learn your art basics and work from life.

Sophomore year you properly start being a Cartooning major and get to finally start making comics. You’ll take two semesters of Foundations of Cartooning, Storytelling, Drawing for Cartoonists, and Western Civ. Each semester you’ll also take a studio elective and an art history class, and one of these art history classes has to be History of Cartooning.

Foundations of Cartooning and Storytelling are the classes where you’ll be making comics. Theoretically I think the Cartooning classes are supposed to concentrait more on technical craftsmanship (like how to ink or letter or make a nice composition) and the Storytelling classes are more about, well, telling a story! Like if we were writers, Cartooning would be about grammar and vocabulary, and Storytelling would be about plot and dialog. But, in practice you’ll adress both sides of making comics in each class, so treat it more like you get the opportunity to make comics under the tutelage of two different cool artists, instead of just one! In both classes you’ll be making a lot of short comics, probably between 1 and 8 pages each. Some professors will give you pretty strict assignments about what to do, content-wise (like giving you a basic script to work off) and some will let you do whatever. You may experience both in the same class! You’ll also get introduced to all the tools and technical skills you need to make comics. Basically lots of making short comics, lots of critique, lots of learning new things. You should have a good grasp of the basics of making comics by the time you’re done.

In the Drawing for Cartoonists class you’ll be doing a lot of life drawing again, but your professor should teach you how to apply what you’ve learned by working from life to the drawings you do, usually from your imagination, for your comics. The professor I had (Jason Little, cannot recommend him enough) also covered human anatomy, clothing, landscapes, and one/two/three point perspective. I’m not sure if every Drawing from Cartoonists professor strays that far from drawing humans?

You’ll also get a choice of one elective studio class a semester. We share our studio electives with the Illustration majors, so you’ll have a choice between more comics-based classes like Inking for Cartoonists and more Illustration-y classes like Watercolor or Etching or even Figurative Sculpture!

The Western Civ class is a mish-mash of history, philosophy and literature. Not that much different than an AP/IB/otherwise advanced high school history class, just harder because it’s at the college level. The Art History classes, including the comics-based one, are what you would expect from a college-level art history class, y’know?

Now, junior year you’ll mostly be working on your junior thesis, which is a longer comic (I think the minimum is 16 or 18 pages?) based on a theme that the entire Cartooning and Illustration department shares. Past themes include Greek Mythology, Fairytales, man-made monsters—basically they want to to adapt an extant narrative into your own. Near the end of the year the best projects will be selected by the department head to be in a big show at one of SVA’s galleries, and this is a big deal!

You’ll be working on your thesis in a two-semester class called Pictorial Problems, but you might do some smaller or supplemental projects, especially at the beginning/ending of the year, depending on your professor. You also take an academic class called Culture Survey for two semesters, where you read things that fit into that year’s thesis theme. Each semester you also take an “advanced” studio elective, it’s sort of a similar deal to what you did sophomore year but the choices are less introductory, more specialized and specific? Like instead of taking an introduction to printmaking class, you’re taking a class about making a silkscreen artist’s book. The rest of your schedule are academic classes.

Senior year is the one year I haven’t achieved yet, so I’m sorry this is going to be vague because I’m going off what my friends have told me, but it’s mostly about getting you and your portfolio ready for the job market. There’s a specific portfolio class and classes on making a website and something called “professional practice” which seems to be about surviving once you get out of school based on the course description? I think you take some advanced studio electives too. And according to my friends that have been there it’s all very stressful. Sorry my explanation of senior year sucks!

I hope that general overview of SVA’s Cartooning program helped! I’d also like to give you some advice on what you can do now, as a high school student, to prepare yourself to be successful at SVA and to assuage your fears about not being able to keep up with the rest of the students, but this post is getting really long so I’m going to put it in a separate one. Stay tuned!

starsbeyondtheglass asked: sva dorm questions: are most of them the standard two bed dorms or do they have a lot of multiple bedroom ones with a shared living space? also which one is a freshman most likely to get?

You’re going to want to poke around the student housing area of the SVA website—their website is generally very good and should be your first stop for non-subjective questions like “how are the dorms set up?”

But yes, there are dorm rooms with two beds, suite-style dorms with multiple two-bed rooms and a shared living area, and single-occupancy dorms. There are five different dorm buildings and each one has different rooming set-ups, different amenities, and different costs so look around on the website and see which one appeals to you.

When I was a freshman the vast majority of other freshmen I knew lived in either the New Residence (which, unless something has changed, is freshman-only) or in the George Washington (the biggest/”main” dorm). This isn’t to say they were assigned there randomly: when you put down your housing deposit you fill out a form listing your 1st/2nd/3rd choices for housing (unless something’s changed, which is possible because they were moving towards choosing your housing online by the time I stopped living in the dorms but still the placements are not random) so you should end up getting one of those, I’ve never heard anything about someone that couldn’t be placed in housing. Shit, I once moved into the dorms on very short notice at the beginning of the spring semester after an off-campus apartment situation went bad and they had rooms available so I don’t think there’s cutthroat competition for the dorms, possibly because so many upperclassmen end up moving into off-campus apartments. 

Basically just pay attention to the letters and emails you get from SVA because they will instruct you how to sign up for housing and when that time comes, don’t procrastinate because it’s first-come first-serve and you should get what you want.

star-dusk asked: Is SVA hard & time consuming ?

If it isn’t you’re doing something wrong.

Anonymous asked: Hello! Thank you for answering questions about SVA, So I'd like to know a little more about Freshman year foundation.. how is it? Is it very stressful? What kind of work do you focus on? Your previous answers have really helped me and I can't thank you enough :)

For those that don’t know, when you’re a freshman Cartooning, Illustration, Fine Arts, or Graphic Design major you go through foundation year, which is mean to give you a “foundation” in a variety of fine arts mediums and working from life. You take two semesters of Drawing, Painting, Survery of World Art, and Writing and Literature, along with one semester each of Foundations of Visual Computing and Sculpture. Each class is three credits, but the studio classes last six hours one day per week and the academic ones last three. You register for your classes as a block, so you will have the same group of people in all your classes. 

Now I’m going to talk a bit about what happens in each class. From what I understand there’s a good degree of similarity across the board, but ultimately your experience may vary from mine if you don’t take the same professors I did (if you’re curious: Nils Karsten [drawing], Nancy Chunn [painting], Tina Fong [visual computing] and Steve DeFrank [sculpture], all come highly recommended). 

Drawing: lots and lots of drawing from life, mostly nude models and still lifes, especially during the first semester. We mostly worked in charcoal and pencil at first, but later branched out to other mediums colored pencils and pen and ink. During the first semester a lot of our homework was drawing still-lifes and self-portraits, so if you own any interesting nick-nacks you like drawing, bring them to school with you! Later, during the second semester, you’ll likely branch out a bit from doing everything from life and start working from your imagination and photo reference too.

Painting: Similar to drawing, lots of working from life both in-class and for homework, but because of the nature of the medium you’ll be working on the same painting in-class for multiple weeks. You’ll probably be working with oil paints in class, but maybe with acrylic paints for homework if your teacher recognizes that oils are a pain in the ass to use in a dorm. A lot of your homework will likely be gradient charts, color wheels, still-lifes and self-portraits during the first semester. In second semester you’ll probably get a chance to branch out, I’m not really sure because my professor (Nancy Chunn) does this really cool thing where we work on multi-panel paintings of “beaches” the entire semester which we combine working from live models she brings in, photo reference, and our imaginations into doing our own version of a beach. 

Sculpture: You’ll get an introduction to different sculptural mediums, like clay, plaster, papier mache, and wood. So you’ll be learning how to use the wood shop and how to mix plaster and stuff like that, while making a project or two using each medium. 

Foundations of Visual Computing: basically and introduction to using computer programs to make art. The professor I had taught us the basics of Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and Dreamweaver by having us follow along with her tutorials in class, and later we applied what we learned to more personal homework projects, like designing liner notes for an album or making a website. I’ve heard there is some variation in what programs your professor concentrates on.

Survey of World Art: your basic art history class. Listen to the slide lecture, read your textbook, go on field trips to museums, write essays, take identification tests.

Writing and Literature: read books, discuss them in class and write essays. Like a higher-level English class in high school. 

Is it very stressful? Well, it really depends on you! Yes, you’ll get a lot of homework (how’s your time management?), and yes, you’ll probably get pushed out of your comfort zone (can you handle harsh critiques?), but the amount of stress you experience from that is very individual. You can coast through your classes doing the bare minimum of work and you probably won’t get stressed out, but you won’t learn very much, grow as an artist, or get good grades. Or you can treat every project like it’s the end of the world and become so stressed out you have a nervous breakdown. Try to shoot for somewhere in the middle—constantly strive to do your best, to challenge yourself, and to learn new things; but not at the expense of your physical or mental health. In art school—not just freshman year—how much you get out of it is very much tied to how much you put in. So yes, some stress is good because that means that you care and that you’re challenging yourself, but overwhelming stress all the time is very unhealthy and you should visit SVA’s counseling department before something bad happens.

mikecyr asked: I can't thank you enough for the post about portfolios. I'm trying to get my portfolio together now, but I was wondering if you know where I could find examples of successful portfolios? I think I'm too critical of mine, but I can't be sure.

Just for you, I swallowed my pride and looked up my old Deviant Art—so here’s my portfolio from back in the day (this is missing a few pieces? At least one sculptural group and some life drawing—I remember my final portfolio having sketches I drew of zoo animals and skeletons???). I might be kind of embarrassed by it now, but I still get thousands of dollars a year in merit scholarship money from it. So I guess mine would be “above average” in terms of portfolios they accept, but something to shoot for (is this really the right term? You shouldn’t try to recreate my portfolio or anything) when it comes to portfolios that get merit scholarship money.

I’m not really sure where you’d see more, except maybe googling something like “SVA accepted portfolio” and trying to find examples of other people who have posted their portfolios on places like Deviant Art, blogging sites, or forums. Or asking people you know were accepted into SVA to show you theirs?

Last week I wrote this post giving an Anon advice about getting a portfolio together for applying to SVA. Since then it’s been steadily accuring likes, presumably from people who want to apply to SVA or another art school and found my advice useful.

In light of this, I just wanted to put it out there that I am available to answer questions pertaining to SVA or going to art school in general anytime. Especially right now because I’m medically banned from drawing for the next day or two and thus have lots of free time, so take advantage of my pain, perspective art students!

For a bit about me: my name’s Erin, I’m 22 and a Cartooning major at the School of Visual Arts (SVA). I was originally a freshman in fall ‘08, but the fact I haven’t graduated yet is my fuck-up. But it does mean that I have been around a lot a have a lot of ~life experience~ to pass on to you.

Some topics I am able to answer questions about/give advice regarding include:

• Choosing to go to an art school/SVA
• Preparing to go to art school
• Preparing to go to art school when the art department of your high school is incompetent (as was the case at the first HS I went to)
• Getting you portfolio together (most of my general advice was already given out here, but if you have more questions, ask!)
• Successfully transitioning from high school to art school/SVA
• Freshman year foundation at SVA (cartooning, illustration, fine arts, and graphic design majors all take this)
• Successfully transitioning from foundation year to the Cartooning department
• The Cartooning department/major/classes at SVA (except senior year, the one grade level I have yet to achieve) 
• Dorming at SVA, specifically the George Washington Dorm, where I lived off-and-on for three years
• General questions about student life at SVA 
• Probably more things????

So if you have any questions about SVA or art school in general feel free to ask me about it!!! :3c