Art teachers could possibly be one of the worst types of teachers. Many of them believe that they are a modern muse. Not only do I find them to feel entitled to their opinions, but one teacher specifically impacted the way I perceived myself until my senior year of high school. If you ask someone if they are good at art, most will respond with no. Why? Because they believe it is something you are naturally good at or because someone had made a critical comment during their lifetime to cause this mindset. I have done art for the past 18 years of my life and I can personally tell you I was not “good” at art until the age of 17. At least that is what I thought.
Carol Dweck’s book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, has become a crucial part of my new and improved belief system. The two different mindsets fixed and growth. The entire book revolved around the difference between the two. Dweck argues that the mindset can be changed which I do in fact agree with. I would have never realized how negative I allowed myself to become and how I did infact have a fixed mindset.
Growing up my mother never forced us to do sports or any other hobby. She let my brother and I do almost anything we pleased. One thing she did encourage however is art. My earliest memory of any form of art is sculpting furniture for my Barbie dolls. Never did I think that I would later on in life take up art. In elementary school, we had to choose between art or music. Clearly, I chose art. The one assignment that has always stuck in my memory was an apple. Simple yet complex to a 9-year-old. The shading, the oil paints, it was a rush of adrenaline feeling those textures. I remember the praise my elementary school teacher gave me for the 3D appearance. I thought I was good at something. I knew I was not the best at math or the best in English. But someone, other than my mother, told me my work was “excellent.” Then came middle school. We were able to see some of the art displayed in the windows of the art classroom. “None of my work could ever compare to those” I remember thinking. Finally, first-period art. We had to draw a perspective city. I did exactly that. Little did I know instead of being told “I like that you did ____” or “good job doing _____.” I was told it was not good and I had to redo it because it did not look like the example she gave us.
Dweck dedicated a section of her book to the negatives of praising students and the danger of labels. She did a study and found that students, when praised for their ability, show a fixed mindset. But if you are being praised for being smart or good at something wouldn’t you have a growth mindset? Not necessarily. People with a fixed mindset take positive compliments as a way of knowing they are good at something. They also take negative comments as a way of telling them they are bad. Dweck describes the growth mindset taking both negative and positive comments as feedback. “When people are in a growth mindset, the stereotype doesn’t disrupt their performance.” Throughout the book, Dweck really emphasizes how growth mindsets put in the work and effort. And once a fixed mindset has “mastered” their skill, that effort no longer is needed.
I decided to stop taking art classes for the remainder of middle school and the first 3 years of high school. It was only until I realized I had more than enough credits do not have to take any unnecessary classes but found out in order to be enrolled as a full-time student it was a requirement to take four classes. Philosophy and Econ, done. But what do I take for my two extra classes? I regretfully signed up for statistics which I dropped 2 months before graduation. I had always wanted to take art. But I knew I did not want to take it alone if it became another insufferable class. I forced a friend to take it as she needed another class to join as well. Fast forward to senior year. The class was alright. I would say if my teacher hadn’t been so creepy I would have shown up more than twice a week. No matter how odd he was, however, he did teach me some viable life lessons.
I had a meltdown after my butterfly came out looking like a first graders mother’s day present. My medium was and had always been acrylics but the second semester focused on watercolors only. My first attempt the colors had bled together and the outline was awful. Two other girls also were doing butterflies. “Why doesn’t my butterfly look like theirs?” “Maybe I’m bad at drawing,” I thought. Dweck also had the thought that some people “seem to naturally draw well or poorly.” I told my art teacher about my struggles and he said to me “why would you want your painting to look like anyone else’s? Don’t try to compare your skills to others.” My skills were something I had never acknowledged. All of my life I believed some people were naturally good at art while others aren’t. I envied those who were talented and received high grades in art. Until my senior year, art class was everyone doing the same project with the same colors and while they all looked different, there would be a handful of ones that looked like the example. My butterfly would not look like anyone else. The main difference between my butterfly compared to the two other girls was I was doing a mission blue while the other girls were doing a monarch butterfly. Both equally as difficult to get the right colors, I found myself struggling more than the other girls. The blue on the wings was ombre and in order to get that effect, you only had one attempt of doing it so that the colors would not blend together.
Before taking that risk, I practiced on a different sheet of paper. They were awful. Not that I am showing my fixed mindset, but it would mush together or I didn’t work fast enough and the colors dried.
You might be sitting there thinking “ok but I am terrible at drawing and have drawn plenty of times to know that I’m not good.” This is where I will contradict myself. Like I said before you can change your mindset and go from a fixed to growth, but when it comes to art, many great artists are skilled from birth. Dweck also mentions Drawing on the Rightside of the Brain by Betty Edwards to which she explains how Edwards “agrees that most people view drawing as a magical ability that only a select few possess… But this is because people don’t understand the components- the learnable components- of drawing.” The skills that those who are artistically inclined possess are “seeing skills.” This means that they understand how shading works, 2D and 3D drawing, and many other learnable skills. They were born knowing how to shadow, it is something they saw and learned how to do. We aren’t born automatically good at something. We pick up on the abilities as we grow. Some will stand out more than others but that doesn’t mean you aren’t able to acquire those same skills.
I agree with Dweck. A mindset can be changed. I am an example of someone who had a set mindset. Believing that I was not good at art because of a negative comment made. I fed off of positive responses to reassure myself that I was just as good as I thought I was. Today, I still appreciate positive feedback but I prefer to have some negative as well. Knowing what could look better or become more prominent is something I like to focus on. A piece that I am personally proud of is my Cowgirl painting. I tend to not hang up my work because I will find things to pick at and start thinking its ugly (a fixed mindset) but with this one specific painting, I couldn’t help to hang up. It took months to do and many trials and errors but is my most prized work. Regardless of my family not being fond of it, It is a one of a kind piece. I took my errors and fixed them. I did not give up on this piece because I knew it had taken me approximately 3 months and a total of 40 hours put into it. After reading Mindsets it supported my understanding that there are people who are just naturally good at art. But for many, it is something we have to put in work for and effort. I had a set idea of what art was and should be until I met my highschool art teacher. I knew that work would not always be original but it should look a certain way. But I didn’t really know that I had a fixed mindset. I didn’t even know what a fixed mindset was until I started to read Dweck’s book. As for my middle school art teacher, I leave her with this: even though you told me my birds-eye view of San Francisco was wrong, maybe I was looking at it from a different angle than you.
