Peter Thiel, the founder of PayPal, likes to say that degrees from the nonprestigious schools are just expensive dunce caps. He means that today higher education is close to worthless, except that degrees from the top schools still get you interviews. I think he’s right. Don’t go to college unless you’re in the right STEM field, or right computer science discipline, such as AI or security. However, if you can get into an Ivy League school or another top school, such as Stanford, that’s a different story–do that.
That’s not the way it should be but that’s the way it is. Some of the top tech companies, Google and IBM for example, no longer require degrees. Ask yourself why.
This goes double for art school; you won’t learn anything and it cost real money. But, here again, if you can get into Yale, do so.
What do you do if you really, really want to be an artist? Why not try an internship or apprenticeship? Find an artist that you like and approach him or her. See what happens. I was an apprentice to a painter during my senior year in high school and that experience has paid plenty of dividends.
I’ve had 5-6 sessions with this as-yet-untitled painting. Today, instead of the Utrecht flake white that has been my go-to for a while, I used flake from RGH. Both brands have their pluses and both are affordable (for oils). At first, I was frustrated because the RGH flake didn’t handle like the Utrecht, but the more I worked with it, the more I liked it. By the end of the day, I was really happy with it.
