I remember when I was younger, I actually had the ambition of moving to a big city like New York, or somewhere in Florida, Georgia or California in order to make contacts and get a leg up in the illustration and/or animation fields. Looking at the output from animation studios and the art world in general, I can't imagine working for an art company and being able to look at my face in the mirror each day. If there is one area of culture that the theological and political Left control with an absolute iron fist, it's definitely the art world. Trying to make contacts with people who aren't basically card carrying members of BLM, ANTIFA or the Communist Party/Cultural Marxism is a laughable joke.
I'd recommend anyone wanting to become an artist, to self train via online tutorials or schools, similar to what is recommended on this list/article:
I will no longer encourage aspiring artists to attend art school. I just won’t do it. Unless you’re given a full ride scholarship (or have parents with money to burn), attending art school is a waste of your money.
noahbradley.com
The author of this article also started his own online art school:
artcamp.com
Also if you happen to be blessed to be near an old school style atelier, and can afford it, then go. They are very traditional and conservative, and will train you in the manner of classic masters like Leonardo and Michelangelo:
www.artrenewal.org
Whatever you do, avoid standard university/secular art schools like the plague. Both for being overpriced, usually having a "too many cooks in the kitchen" type of inefficient training, and the constant Marxist indoctrination you will have to endure/bite your tongue at (I speak from personal experience.) The Marxism in universities is already bad enough; in a university art school, that already noxious level of Marxism is turned up to 11. It's like being in the very center of the Hive, just mere feet away from the queen.
It is a blessing that the internet can aid us in pursuing training and a possible living outside of having to uproot ourselves from communities and go into devilish cities. I do not know how the current online purge of conservatives may affect this in the future though.
I was wondering when I’d find a fellow artist on this forum. Now I wonder how to go about telling my story without completely breaking my anonymity (this, when I’ve only been on here a week).
In the 1980’s, in the Mid-Atlantic—a year out of high school—I enrolled in my one and only year at a big-city private art college. At the time the place had yet to completely devolve into a cultural-marxist babysitting service, but it was well on its way. “Art School Confidential”.
That was between my ages of 19 and 20. Me being the belated Gen-x son of two WWII-era parents (since deceased).
Well, my parents and other relatives had remembered the art college from its pre-1960s days, its pre pop-art days. Back then it had taught European academic painting, classical marble sculpture, architecture, etc. And it still taught some academic painting—to a degree. Still taught some traditional sculpture—to a degree. But the rest of the stuff was just Mark Rothko garbage, and there was no way to really convey this to my family (they weren’t artists themselves).
And would I say there were demonic influences there?
After I had left the place in disgust, I met this lady at our local church; she was an unattractive woman I didn’t particularly like—but occasionally she’d say something that struck me as unusually insightful. And as it turns out she had also been a former student at that same art college. And she just blurted out one Sunday after the sermon that she remembered feeling “dark unseen presences” the whole time she was there.
And so privately I thought about that—and I wound up agreeing with it. Yes, the place gave me those spooky feelings (as did that part of the surrounding city). Granted, I was so angry about the pseudo-intellectual “aesthete” garbage I mentally blotted it out, but I was having an awful lot of nightmares the year I was there.
But I agree with all the recommendations you put in your post. The Art Renewal site—I have that bookmarked. Learning from artists online.
I didn’t go back to oil painting until last year—32 years after leaving that art school. I did some drawings for payment, some pencil portraits and tattoo designs, but for decades I was engaged in much more basic vocations (the kind where you “clock in” and “clock out”).
My first completed oil portrait since I went back to it is one of Aleksandr Dugin. Don’t know how people on this site feel about Dugin, but I’m in agreement with him.
I’m now working on a Virgin Mary portrait in the vein of Bouguereau. I’m using the same black gown for my Virgin that Bouguereau used in his “Virgin With The Angels”.
Learn from people online, and if you weren’t blessed to grow up with family or friends who are artists (I wasn’t), then also seek some sort of intelligent social interaction online, as you’re dealing with a craft that demands you work alone for long stretches. And the social interaction is the only thing that’s going to pull you out of ruts.