China Daily Global Edition (USA)
Art studios offer template for success
College hopefuls spend six grueling months preparing for the all-important entry exam. reports.
Few people would question the difficulty of preparing for the national college entrance exam, aka the gaokao, but the process can be even more stressful for art students.
Every summer, thousands of candidates in their second year of high school travel to the cities where their dream schools are located, move into art studios and join intensive training courses.
These studios, barely known outside of the art community, are specially set up to prepare students for the art exam. They are like a type of high school, where young people spend six months practicing sketching and coloring.
Living and eating within the facility, the students follow a grueling practice schedule, starting at around 8 am and returning to their dormitories at midnight.
Numbers vary, but hundreds to thousands attend different types of classes. The elite may be selected for some premium sessions, thus enjoying the best teaching resources.
It is not compulsory to train in these expensive studios, which cost an average of 100,000 yuan ($15,697) for the full course. However, it is rare to find students who take the art exam without undergoing this process. The exceptions usually attend art-based high schools.
Wang Jiayi, a second-year student at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, trained at an art studio in the capital three years ago. She said the studios systematically teach all the key areas required for the exam, and most of the teachers come from well-known academies.
“If you want to learn at home by yourself and not go to a studio for training, you have to be a genius, plus have very good luck,” she said.
Specific styles
Wang said the exams at wellknown art schools tend to embrace specific styles.
For example, the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, prefers more impressionist work, while the colors favored by the Luxun Academy of Fine Arts in Shenyang, Liaoning province, are bright, like those in comic books. However, that style is definitely not encouraged at the Academy of Arts and Design at Tsinghua University in Beijing.
Because of these different styles, studios train students specifically for the preferences of their chosen school to boost their chances of admission.
Ke Lin, a second year student at the Shanghai campus of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, said she has always been passionate about fine art and told her parents she wanted to become an artist when she was a child.
She started painting in kindergarten, but when she entered a studio in Hangzhou three years ago, the intensive training made her feel tired of painting for the first time.
“At the time, I felt that I didn’t love painting as much as I used to. The classes went on so long, and I didn’t get to paint what I liked,” she said.
The training, dedicated to preparing Ke for the entry exam at the China Academy of Art, featured three major elements: sketching; croquis (lightning sketches of scenes); and coloring.
Every year, teachers at the studio study the works that have been awarded high scores in the exam, analyze the trending style and train students in that direction.
Students had to practice croquis every day. They either made rapid sketches of each other or went outdoors to capture small scenes. For sketching, they started by copying busts before moving on to living models.
Ke’s studio was located on the outskirts of the city, and there were many seniors in the nearby villages who often acted as models. Color became Ke’s least favorite subject, despite being the thing she had cherished most before.
In the early period, the students painted every still object that could be found at hand, including apples, pears, various types of jars, wine bottles, shoes, spoons and bowls.
Busts, apples and pears are the objects that appear most in the exam, so in order to get good results, the students have to render the same object over and over again, focusing on the “high point areas” such as the structure of the face and the folds of the clothes.
“No matter how much I loved painting, I still felt exhausted after painting something I didn’t like for a long time,” Ke said.
She enjoyed painting landscapes and particularly employed the color styles of Vincent Van Gogh. In the studio, though, the students only attempted styles the examiners might like.
“The art schools’ exams are very formulaic. They don’t care whether you work in a post-impressionist or neoclassicist style. I just couldn’t develop an interest in painting still life at all,” she said.
Alternative entry method
For Ke, the atmosphere was the most frustrating thing, because once they sat in front of a canvas the students remained there for hours.
“I wanted to stand up and walk around for a bit of relaxation, but everyone was painting so attentively that it gave me a sense of guilt, as if I was wasting my time,” she said.
For many high school students, fine art offers an alternative way of gaining entry to a decent university without having to achieve high grades in academic courses.
Unlike other art majors, such as music and dance which require years of practice, the fine art exam is easier to cram for. With the intensity of art studio training, even students with little background can take crash courses because art exams have fixed scoring points that test basic skills.
Ke said she decided to pursue fine art out of wholehearted passion. At high school, she set herself the goal of attending the School of Architecture of the China Academy of Art because she admired Wang Shu, a well-known architect and the school’s dean. That prompted her to sign up for the studio in Hangzhou.
The intensive training made her change her mind. “During my time, I drew a large number of test subjects that appeared in the China Academy of Art admission exams, and I realized there was a gap between what I had expected and the reality,” she said.
“The training really suppressed my interest to a certain extent. When I painted the same thing to a level of boredom, it gave rise to a utilitarian mentality in me. I didn’t feel as passionate about painting as I did at the beginning.”
Disliking the colors and painting styles of the China Academy of Art, Ke was introduced to the art and design management major at the Central Academy of Art. Because it is a more theoretical program that requires higher academic performance and relatively lower technical skills, Ke felt she had a greater likelihood of being accepted.
Although the grueling training only existed for the sake of exams and inhibited many people’s real interests, Ke said the sessions were still helpful because they pooled some of the best painting resources, which were unavailable in her home county in Fujian province.
Her life has improved since she entered the academy, she said. Now, in addition to theoretical courses, Ke has a practice month every term, during which she manages to draw much more.
“Many friends said they hated drawing when they were training but liked it so much after going to universities,” she said.
“My exhaustion was mainly caused by the duration of the training. I still love fine art most of the time. Although I have been through some ups and downs, when I look back I find that fine art is still the thing I love most. I just have this natural special feeling for it.”
The training really suppressed my interest to a certain extent. When I drew the same thing to a level of boredom, it gave rise to a utilitarian mentality in me. I didn’t feel as passionate about painting as I did at the beginning.”
Ke Lin, second year student at the Shanghai campus of the Central Academy of Fine Arts