Personally, I don’t think art classes should be actual classes in school. And I say that for one reason only.
Art is completely subjective.
Whatever you create, there are always going to be people who like it and people who are going to hate it.
That’s why I think the idea of having one person looking at someone’s work and grading it doesn’t sit right with me.
I remember back in high school, I was watching an art teacher grade some of her students’ drawings. She picked up a student’s artwork, looked at them for a few minutes and wrote their final grades on the back.
To be fair, it was the end of the school year and a lot of students turned in late work, so she probably had to rush.
I even watched a video where an animator talked about taking a high school art class and his teacher forced him to draw with a different art style because of personal biases.
Not cool, in my opinion.
However, there are a lot of resources online that guide art teachers on how they should grade their students’ art, and there’s one thing that I read that I agree with.
That is grading based on how well the students understand the principles.
Yes. When it comes to any kind of art, there are certain principles you should always follow. As long as you follow them, anything else you do beyond that is A-OK. At least that’s how I view things.
That’s also how I see email copywriting as too.
Because email is so personal by nature, there’s a lot of freedom around how you want to write. But as long as you stick with the principles, like the ones I teach in How to Become an Email Titan, then however you write (as long as there’s no excessive profanity) will be A-OK.