I once failed an art exam for being too creative

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When I was 15 I took art classes at school, and we had to do an art exam. We could basically draw or paint or do a collage or whatever, and had a whole day to focus on it in the classroom.

I decided to buy some paper plates and decorate them with fish, using paint. It was very creative and artistic, and I enjoyed doing it too.

But the next week when we received our grades from the art exam, I was told that they had to fail me because my artwork didn't relate to an artist. I felt let down. The teacher never specifically said that our work had to relate to an artist, and I spent a lot of time drawing out designs and ideas before the exam (which we all had to do), and the paper plates looked very good.

I thought art was supposed to be a creative subject. I know this was a long time ago now but I just wondered if anyone here can relate or had something similar happen at school?

I hate it when things like that happen. If they made the rules clear in the first place it would be so much easier.

I played it safe with my art exam and did a still life in pastels.

Your art sounds awesome btw

Old-ish topic, but

I definitely relate to this. I'm a very good artist, always have been (relative to my age anyways), but I struggled with every art class I attempted to take lol. I guess I didn't get the point of what my instructors were trying to teach, but later on I could teach it to myself much easier because I was actually able to make sense of it? And in highschool classes of course everyone has to do pretty much the same thing, which was frustrating for me. Especially when the instructions weren't clear, so I thought I was free to do what I was inspired to.

I think I came close to failing the two art classes I attempted taking in highschool for that reason. Is it really possible to be too creative? I guess art teachers have the answer.

Your plates sound really cool, no way they should have failed you for that. Art classes can be way too rigid for the subject they try to teach.

I also took an art exam at the age of fifteen, which I failed. Unfortunately, back then I wasn't particularly motivated and felt uninspired a lot of the time. I didn't have much technical skill and had too much work in other subjects to catch up with.

There weren't enough hours in the day to improve upon my technique. Furthermore, due to lows in my overall mood I just couldn't invest myself in the work. So I shut off my mind and did whatever my art teacher wanted me to do, no matter how bland I found it to be. The usual spark that shows in my projects wasn't there, I personally found my artwork boring but I was so worn down that I no longer cared.

There was a certain amount of flexibility allowed for our exam. Except in my case, since my teacher was fairly restrictive on what I could do in particular. He was fairly insistent on only sticking to certain objects and patterns. Most students did work on heavy subjects, such as eating disorders. I drew a shell covered beach with butterflies displayed in tiles, which subtly (perhaps too much so) made up an outline of a woman's face. Sadly it wasn't completely finished, my art teacher had insisted I use colour pencils, but considering the large size of the paper, using such a method just wasn't effective.

I failed my art GCSE, but I continued onto a graphic design / digital media course. Rather amusingly, I barely passed my IT in secondary yet here I am working with both. Granted, I didn't learn much about IT in secondary. I mostly taught myself over the summer before doing a web-design course, did reasonably well in that, and then went onto University.

Admittedly, I only started to have an interest in learning about things after I left secondary. My education before that had left me worn down and apathetic. However, I did enjoy my English lessons for the most part. Although, I had a tendency to go off topic.

I once got into a little trouble with our teacher regarding a poem for not sticking to the subject. The task was to write a poem on the topic of stars. Whilst I did write the poem, I decided to talk about an astronomer looking up at the stars above him. How he admired the constellations, but was saddened yet happily nostalgic because they reminded him of the night he met his wife. It was a little sappy, and it did stray from the stars too much. However, it did stick to the intended format so that's something.

Last edited by Lost_dragon on 10 Sep 2019, 9:48 am, edited 1 time in total.

^^^LOL....that's cute! You took the subject of "stars" literally.

As a teacher, I would have admired the ingenuity in this.

Have you ever heard of Tycho Brahe? He was a guy who had a house with a retractable roof, from which he looked up at the stars. He used to do this before the invention of the telescope.

Now that I think about it, perhaps they didn't actually mean stars in a night sky and meant the celebrity kind. If so, whoops. Or maybe it really was strictly on the former, I don't fully remember. Too late now anyway.



I haven't, or at least I don't think I have.

Last edited by Lost_dragon on 10 Sep 2019, 10:05 am, edited 1 time in total.

He was an interesting character. Astronomy was his "special interest." He spent years looking up at the stars. He lived in the late 16th-early 17th century.