The season of finals is upon us. Which means moving the contents of your dorm room to the library and hitting the books... unless you're an art student.
Sure... art students take calc and bio too, but since their final critiques have to take place during the last week of classes, their week is more likely to look something like this...
First, there are some things you're going to need:
Essentials:
1. Dropping copious amounts of money that you don't have on art supplies you're going to ruin or use up on one project.
2. The willpower to leave Blick without buying out the entire store because you obviously need the 15 dollar sheets of decorative paper, you don't know what for, but you can stare at it until you think of something.
3. Coffee to replace every hour of sleep you miss in studio. Pro-tip: set up a coffee maker next to your sleeping bag.
4. A sleeping bag to keep in studio. You think I'm kidding? That's cute.
5. The ability to sneeze creativity out in the clouds of pastel dust that you will inevitably be inhaling.
6. Hermione Granger's time turner plus an extra 80 hours to spare on top of that.
Then there are the stages of doing a project:
How To: Be an Art Student During Finals Week
1. Say you'll have time to make plans.
2. Be in studio all week.
3. And by all week, I mean sleeping bag in studio, coffee machine plugged in, deodorant and toothbrush in backpack.
4. Dress like a starving artist because you'll be covered in art supplies anyway.
How To: Spot an Art Student During Finals Week
1. You probably won't.
2. If you do, they're the ones running back to studio with giant pieces of art material.
How To: Begin a Project
1. Receive assignment with vague unspecific function. Examples include: a self portrait, a structure that moves a ball from point a to point b, or a sculpture that represents the current political state of our country.
2. Buy materials necessary for the project or decide you can work with the cardboard boxes you have in your room and free crayons you take from restaurants.
3. Stare at the blank sketchbook pages that are supposed to house the copious amounts of creative ideas you have.
How To: Do a Project
1. Plan when you're going to do each part of it so you can handle it.
2. Get horrendously off schedule.
3. Pull a excessive hour stunt in order to finish it because you're tired of looking at it.
4. Run out of materials halfway through.
5. Try to make sleep out of coffee.
How To: Tell You're Done with a Project
1. You're completed your goal.
2. You're sneezing pastels, charcoal, saw dust or all of the above.
3. You're in critique.
How To: Survive Critique
1. Go in the middle so the professor is already tired of critiquing but not yet crabby.
2. Hide food and caffeine outside the classroom so you can fuel when you pretend to go to the bathroom during the next 3 hours.
3. Make sure your project is done.
4. If your project isn't done pretend every mistake was a creative choice.
How To: Be Done with Critique
1. Feel the need to go to studio still.
2. Finally relax, knowing you don't have to do anything.
3. Relax by sketching.
