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Art teachers assure us anyone can draw

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By Jaqueline Pérez Covarrubias
June 6, 2024

To become an artist is to have patience and consistency, and McNary has many art classes, ranging from Art 1 to AP Art History, where students can learn and improve artistic skills.

Mr. Mark Kohley and Mrs. Tracy Rhoades are art teachers and both said that art is a skill that takes time to learn.

“The bottom line is, it's a craft. Now once you learn how to draw, what you do with it, that is what becomes the art. That's the artwork,” Kohley said.

Kohley is the Art I, AP Art History, and Unified Art teacher who has worked here for some time now. “Yes. Drawing is learning how to see and how to interpret what you see,” Kohley said.

Rhoades, the Basic Art, Art 1, as well as aerobics teacher, said that art is about enjoying drawing.

 “I think anyone can learn to draw, some people have more of an aptitude for it. Like they enjoy drawing and they desire to get better and they are really good observers. They have the patience to spend time learning,” Rhoades said. “I mean now more than ever, there's lots of YouTube tutorials. So if I want to learn something, I get on YouTube and I listen to someone else who knows how and can speed up the process of showing me tips on how to do something better and faster.”

Art sometimes won’t come out as you expect it to. “They just needed to spend some time and have someone say 'Nope, we're not going to do it that way, I want you to do it this way’ and you give them a few cues,” Rhoades said. 

It isn't just students who have rough patches with their artwork. It can happen to experienced artists too. “It's just that there are certain periods of time when you are working where you kinda suck and you have to improve and work hard at overcoming obstacles. You have to overcome the problems you're having,” Kohley said.

A couple of ways to learn how to draw would be through hard work and drawing things multiple times until you got it memorized.

“There are certain things that if you do them over and over and over again you'll get used to seeing subjects in a certain way, you'll get more comfortable drawing them,” Kohley said. 

Enjoy art to the point where you want to learn about it, take advice from experienced artists, and even just look up some tutorials is something that helps out too. “[Students] blow their own minds when they really invest in it,” Rhoades said.