You had a sorta John Belushi look going on back then.

Huh. In elementary school, some kids told me I looked like Benny Hill. And then they'd sing a bit of music at me that I later figured out was called "Yakety Sax".

awwwwwww you're really cute :3
i'm glad you kept drawing despite your classes. it's infinitely sad when a crappy art program can turn a person off making art!

That's exactly what my high school art class did.

All this crap about forcing me to try out different styles and then giving me a bad grade when I did the style poorly. It was a huge blow to my confidence in that area. I still practiced origami for a while, but I only seem to do that when there's no internet available for long periods, so it's not likely I would be drawing much anyhow.

There seem to be two different extremes- The art program is bad, and doesn't challenge a person to improve, or the art program is good but the studeent isn't on the same page. I can only judge by the art programs I've taken. I loved nearly all of them, but there's a good amount of compromise involved. The art I produced for class certainly didn't look like my 'free time' cartoony doodles(see my ID compared to my recent submissions). But I still loved what I did in class in a different way, because when it gets down to it I love making drawings on paper.
The 'trying out different styles' thing, explain it to me? Because many of my instructors believed that style was the death of timelessness, and discouraged copying any 'styles'. That's a shame they wanted you to do that :C

Examples of styles/techniques the teacher wanted us to practice:

Drawing the 'voids' of objects rather than the object itself.
Drawing the object as one continuous line. With or without looking at the paper as the drawing is taking shape.

I just really needed to draw more and let it evolve. Art class ruined the fun of it for me. But as I've stated... Given how much origami I do, I don't think I would do much drawing anyhow.

Makes sense. Those are interesting exercises for the draftsman but if origami's your thing, it might not apply so much. Then again, there is a oneness in all things(not to sound lame) but sometimes, exercises that seem pointless make you better at seemingly unrelated things(..unless they actually are just pointless lol)

Yes, Mister Miyagi.

One complaint my teachers gave me was that my drawings were too "cartoony". But I decided, screw you guys, I *like* cartoony!

Cartoony's more viable than most teachers would have you believe!

You look exactly like someone I went to school with, same sort of smile n everything. If I could remember the guy's name I'd ask if you were related XD

Which city? I know NYC had vocational high schools, not familiar with others that had one.

Houston, TX. The Houston HSPVA building is a work of art in itself: rough grey stone with red trim around the doors and windows on the outside, black-and-white checkered floors inside with more bits of red here and there.

Very very awesomeness!! I hope Vocational highschools stick around: It helped me in my career quite a bit: Glad to see that Houston has them too!

Holy cow! A KT with no beard?!?! I thought you was born with it.


j/k.

I was forced to take Art in school, and was cursed with an Art teacher (in the loosest sense!) who forbid any kind of stick men. Which kind of translated to banning us from using construction lines, the very basis of drawing!

When I left school and met some people who COULD actually draw, I actually learnt something!!

Aww, you wuz a cutie :3

Whaddya mean "was"? I still got it, baby!

lol. I haven't seen a recent picture of you dork.
how was i to knooooow? XD

I think I seen you at AC.

Possibly!

Please stop asking.