Hidden Talents

One of SMU's general education requirements is to take an art class. Most of the options are studio art classes, so you can choose from painting, ceramics, drawing, etc. Although these are offered as introductory courses and you need no prior skills at all, this is false. Last semester I chose to take the introductory painting course because I figured that would be much easier than drawing, seeing as I knew that I was already artistically challenged. As I progressed through my first week I thought I was doing pretty well, given my natural talent. But then as I walked around the room and looked at other students works, it looked like they had been painting their entire lives!

One of my personal work's of art from class

Although none of these students were studio art majors or pursuing any kind of degree in fine arts, it was astonishing to me how talented some people were and that they claimed they were merely taking the class for pleasure because they enjoyed painting. And even though my TA told me in our first critique that my painting of a nude male model looked quite "cave like", I received a decent grade in the class for effort because my professor saw how hard I tried. Even though I was not one of those people in my class with natural artistic ability (my brother just graduated college with a degree in fine arts- I guess he got all that talent), it was eye opening to me to see how many people can be good at something like that, and simply pursue it for personal pleasure only.