Something I haven’t told you yet is that I’m now guest-blogging 2 times a month for Underground Art School. My first post went up Tuesday morning—and my plan is to repost them here a couple of days after, so here it goes:

Some nights you will find yourself sipping on a Red Bull trying to stay awake to finish a 2-D project due the next morning. Due to the caffeine shakes you won’t be able to fall asleep when you finally finish and wind up having a mere two hour window to nap before class. Don’t sweat, we’ve all been there before-you can and will get through this! Here’s my guide to surviving your foundation year:

Defend Your (Good) Ideas

One of the hardest parts of foundation year is being told “No” to an idea that you think is awesome. Sometimes the way you explain your best ideas make them an easy target to be shot down. Learn how to explain the most important parts of your ideas with confidence, and when you are met with resistance, learn how to defend your ideas with persistence if they are, in fact, a good idea. This leads me to my next point…

Don’t be Afraid to Throw Away an Idea You’re Invested In

Art school is about learning how to come up with a vision, following it through, realizing it’s awful, understanding why it’s awful, and tossing it to the side. You will have a lot more awful ideas than good ones when you start, you will spend a lot of time trying to make these awful ideas into good ideas, and you’ll be hesitant to cast them off due to the amount of time you’ve invested. Chalk it up to experience and move on. It is OK to have a bad idea. The best part about a bad idea is it always leads you to something better. Art School teaches you how to weed out those bad ideas from the first seed.

Critique Without Bullshitting

Nothing is worse in foundation year than staying up all night, putting your blood, sweat, and tears into finishing a project due the next morning and then you get to class and have to listen to a bunch of timid students either say nothing in response or bs about your work.
“I really like that you used green. It’s very organic”—that is not a critique, it’s a comment, and the word ‘organic’ is possibly the most overused word in the average art student’s critique lexicon. Don’t be that student. It’s OK to have an opinion in a critique, we’re not here to rub noses, we’re here to offer our honest opinions on the work presented and offer ideas on how to make it better. I remember being nervous in my foundation year that if I was to say anything too harsh that it would make it harder for me to make friends (as I would be labeled as ‘that bitch in critique this morning’). Don’t take critique comments as being a jab at you, the artist, the student. You are learning skills in foundation year, these skills and how they are applied are being critiqued. In the same vein, learn how to critique your own work in the same way.

Learn How to Generate Ideas

Always, always, always idea-generate before starting a project, regardless if it’s an applied arts or fine arts class. Even if you think you’re dead set on your initial idea; sketching, envisioning, and talking over other options might help you to make that first idea stronger or realize that there is an entirely different route you should be taking. The ideas you come up with when you are pushing yourself to brainstorm oftentimes can be the best ones. Make lists, write word associations, flip through books at the library, sketchbook, .

Save your Unused Ideas

I always wrote down lists in my sketchbooks of ideas that I—someday—wanted to pursue. Occasionally I’ll go back and read lists from freshman year and I’ll say “Wow that’s brilliant.” But more often than not I’ll say, “What the hell was I thinking?!!” No matter how small, write down your ideas that you haven’t used just yet, you’ll never know when they’ll come in handy, and if anything, they will show your progression and commitment to your art.

If you have questions you’d like answered about art school please email me! You can always check if I’ve answered it already. If your question becomes a post topic you will always remain anonymous.

Related posts:

1. Back to School / Senior Thesis
2. On Competition
3. How to get into Parsons School of Design
4. Questions Answered: Do art schools care about your GPA?