"Cartoons Are Not Art" - How My School Art Teacher Broke My Heart
"Cartoons are not art."
Cue the sound of my heart, hopes and dreams shattering into a million pieces.
Fourteen-year-old me was being told that my kind of art didn't count.
And if my school art teacher said so then it must be true. This was my teacher; custodian of my education and development. The person who knew all the ‘rules’ of art and was tasked with the responsibility of imparting that knowledge to me, an eager student still early in my artistic journey. I trusted her.
I had always been an arty kid; I’d drawn cartoons and comics for as long as I could remember. Art was my thing. Everybody knew that. It was woven into my identity even then. But with this heart-crushing statement, suddenly the only thing I had to offer wasn’t good enough to be part of the evidently exclusive club of ‘artist’.
Suddenly I wasn't allowed to draw cartoons in my art class. I was told to draw portraits and bowls of fruit. I was told that I had to learn to 'paint properly'. Art assignments involved emulating classic fine-artists, but despite my best efforts my work continued to take on a ‘cartoon-like’ style, and for that I received lower grades.
Frustrated tears were a regular occurrence the night before handing in assignments as I prepared myself for the next round of comments about how I wasn’t trying hard enough; I had talent, but no discipline. The way I chose to express myself was incorrect and received notes on my homework that suggested I didn’t really want to do art after all.
I'm not the first artist forced to conform at a young age to narrow-minded artistic boxes and I’m definitely not the last. It would be melodramatic to say that this art teacher ruined my life, but her influence played a significant part in the life choices that followed.
Firstly, I stopped studying art.
At 14 years old, I quit art class. Studying art had always been the plan for me up until then, but I felt like I wasn’t capable of the ‘real art’ that my teacher was talking about. To this day, I hold zero art-based qualifications.
From that point forward, art was just a hobby. I still wanted to draw, but could no longer think of art as an integral part of my future. The first crack in my identity as an artist.
Next, I tried not to draw cartoons.
Again and again, I tried and failed to draw the way my art teacher had expected. I tried to draw portraits, still life and landscapes. I tried to design characters that didn't look like cartoons; I tried for photo-realism, tried to study human anatomy and muscular structure, inspired by hyper-realistic high-fantasy or science fiction art. None of it suited me.
I was waging war with my own, apparently unbudgeable, natural style of drawing which I had been conditioned to hate. In the end this constant, frustrating battle with myself led to the inevitable.
I began to hate drawing.
Waves of fury overtook me because I could not draw what I could see so clearly in my head. Nothing turned out the way I intended. Pages upon pages of sketch pads were furiously balled up and launched across the room. I scribbled venomously over my failings, driving pencils into the paper so hard that they tore it to shreds. Then the worst part happened.
I gave up drawing.
I couldn't do it, so that was that. If I couldn’t draw ‘properly’ then I wasn’t going to draw at all. My focus shifted to writing instead - novels, short stories; any ways to tell stories I wanted to tell without relying on creating an image to do so.
I still doodled here and there, but I fervently maintained that I did not want to draw anymore.
I stopped being an artist.
Instead, I explored other creative avenues such as animation, filmmaking, and music. I got hold of Photoshop and poured hours of my life into photo manipulation. Diving deep into digital media, I learned about audio and video editing, music composition, photography and more. At college and university I studied filmmaking and set up my own media business when I graduated. I became a filmmaker a visual story-teller; a digital media person. This was my new identity.
During this time, another layer of my identity continued to grow quietly without me really noticing. I was 16 when we finally got broadband. As one did back then, I joined forums and found like-minded people and learned that art could be digital.
I discovered webcomics.
More accurately, I got hooked on them. The sequential art format and the broad variety of illustration styles was, to my mind, liberating and wonderful. I wanted to make my own.
Inspired to doodle again, I invented characters that I used to illustrate funny real-life moments from hanging out with friends. Several webcomic-style comic strips came out of this. With Photoshop at my disposal, I could add colour in a way I'd never been able to before and with the assistance of the Internet, I was able to get my work out there to be seen.
These comic strips were my outlet for drawing for the next five years or so and the archive of them is a week by week record of me gradually re-embracing cartoons, and art in general.
I was slowly becoming an artist again.
It snowballed from there and I started to draw other things too. I started designing other comic projects and digital illustrations. Art was becoming enjoyable again; fun, like it had been before.
Combined with this was encouragement from my friends and loved ones, positive feedback from my work and the start of a new wave or developing my work. My interest in actively studying and learning about art started to come back to life.
Fast-forward to today.
I’m now a somewhat-professional artist and I love art again. It's taken a long time to get back to where I was before negative and discouraging influences did their work. I know now that my teacher was wrong because of course cartoons are art.
Art is whatever you want it to be.
The public debate over what art is or isn’t rages on, constantly, but it shouldn’t be used as a vehicle to destroy someone’s passion or identity that matters to them. As far as I'm concerned, it's art if you decide it is. If you're expressing yourself, it's art. It may be your right to disagree with others too, but it's your responsibility to do so with caution and respect.
We are all the sum of our experiences and I wouldn't change the decisions I've made, but looking back I can still see clearly how many seemingly insignificant thoughts and decisions in my life have been affected by the statement that “Cartoons are not art.” I wonder where I would be now if my art teacher had never said it.
I was 14. You might be 6, 16 or even 60. The idea that you shouldn’t let other people stop you doing what you love is a well-spoken message; the idea that it is not exclusively your responsibility to keep that passion alive, less so.
People frequently underestimate the damage that can be done with idle comments about people’s creative works - especially young people’s work. A lack of encouragement, or even the wrong kind of push at the wrong moment can shatter confidence and belittle a person's passion. Some people never get it back.
The trajectory of my life changed because of that art teacher. Her voice is still in my head, even now, telling me that my cartoons don’t stack up to ‘real art’. I'm fortunate to have the kind of positive encouragement in my life today that helps me overcome that. Perhaps this is why I feel so strongly about offering the same support to others that I wish I'd been given when I was 14 and to encourage perseverance for passion.
Not every artist has a lifetime of positive artistic development. I suspect, in fact, that too few do. Too many have their passions challenged and have to fight to get where they are.
Passion isn’t a given. Passion, confidence, and motivation can be crushed all-too easily. We all hold the responsibility to treat each other’s passions with care and respect. Don't tell people that what they love to do doesn't count. And for the artists and creatives out there on the receiving end of negative comments like this:
Don't listen to them. Your gift is beautiful.
Written by Vic Iddstar Hill
Vic “Iddstar” Hill is a comic & concept artist, illustrator, storyteller, and across-the-board creative based in Bristol, England. She creates and draws comics, characters and illustrations - sometimes even live on the internet and always has numerous exciting original projects going on.