Self-taught vs. having had a teacher

[Natasha]

Adrian, I agree with You, the schools, institutes, teachers are very important, especially, if they are perfect! In Moldova, there is no good school or institute of Arts, I have to go to Moscow or St. Petersburg for getting classical education in Arts, there are true perfect institutes, colleges and schools with very old and very perfect traditions with wonderful teachers! But we should go to Japan for netsuke-shi school, where the true Japanese traditions and philosophy! So, the question is opened! Everyone finds own best way!

[kenneth neaves]

hello to all of you,i am trying to read as many of the posts as i can.as for being self-taught or having a teacher, from what of the work i have seen on this fine forum you folks are very qualified to teach better than most teachers i have seen.in the 70's and 80's i did a lot of gem shows and in traveling around the country i met a lot of people that taught about gemstones,some were good and some didn't know as much as they thought.when i started carving gemstones in 1968 you had to learn how to even make your own tools to cut stones with.very few people knew anything about diamond tools except for diamond laps and saw blades.if we had known about diamond tools then very few of us could afford to buy them.i could find diamond grit at a few places but no paste.i made some wheels and points out of maple wood and used lipstick to hold the grit on them,talk about a lesson in learning.that was.someone once told me they had never seen me make a mistake in carving,he didn't because i throw the mistakes away and start over.best regards to all of you,ken

[lopacki]

I did spend three semesters at Orange County Community College (southern California) in the mid seventies. Studied photography graphics and art. Over the years after I went out on my own to do mainly jewelry/lapidary I found that the art and graphics classes helped me in many ways as far as design and use of color was concerned, but when it came to sitting at the bench things were different.

 

I to am self taught regarding lapidary jewelry and carving. Been at it for over thirty years and learn new things all of the time through not being afraid to experiment, if you don’t follow through on your thoughts and ideas you never find out if they were good or bad.

 

I have never been afraid of sharing all that I know with those that might have an interest, I feel that if your blessed with talent it is your responsibility to share what you know. If you keep everything to yourself perhaps you don’t have confidence in yourself or feel threatened that someone will out do you. I myself desire to see others try and hopefully out do what I am capable of doing, this to me is a true reward for something as simple as sharing.

 

All my best ....... Danny

 

P.S. I attached an image of a piece of my lapidary ............. Only used 4 colors

 

Thomas Edison ... "If we all did the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves."

[Izzy]

I am mostly self taught, with a LOT of help from many people over the years. Yes, I'm only 21 years old, but, as luck will have it, I met many great people, and read a ton of excellent books. I started carving (out of boredom, didn't have a lot of friends, and lived 20 miles from where I went to school) on the farm my parents were renting when I was 13/14. I found a pocket knife in an old shed, sharpened it on a bit of side walk concrete. I worked mostly with red cedar, the landlords had cut a bunch down and left if in a pile. I also took a woodworking class my freshman year of highschool where I cut horses (designs in "Carving horses in wood", by eric zimmerman) out of a 2x4 pine stud.

 

then, when my family moved to Iowa, I fell in with a group of woodcarvers who welcomed me with open arms. From them I learned so much that I will carry with me for the rest of my life (perhaps, most importantly, sharpening different kinds of tools). The "president" of the club convinced me to go on a camping trip with him to minnesota where we took woodcarving classes, he in relief, and myself in chip carving. I took two more classes before moving away, and started to broaden my horizons even more by changing up materials. I carved a fist out of a chunk of limestone from the ditch on the interstate (stolen, I know, but I didn't think they would miss one rock ). Then I branched out to tagua nuts, even trying a little bit of scrimshaw on one.

 

I enjoy carving odd shaped things, something very difficult to teach a new carver. I had so much fun, and so many experiences, and cut fingers (which nobody but myself ever had to know about), and I'm glad I can give all the credit of those experiences to myself. The way to go, is to try and do, and then take specialized classes of your choosing.

[Janel]

Hi Isaiah,

 

Where in Iowa were you? I was in extreme NE Iowa for college way back when. Beautiful area. What classes and where did you go on the "camping" trip to Minnesota? You have been fortunate to find and embrace the wood carving folks early in life. Folks in such groups are an encouraging and helpful lot.

 

One tip, always cut away from your flesh! Think ahead a little bit and learn to sense when a cut might actually skate around the piece to find your finger.

 

Janel

[Izzy]

I used to live in nasha-plainfield, about an hour's drive north of waterloo. As for the camping trip, we went to harmony minnesota, to Slim's woodshed.

[Stephen R]

I'm self taught after reading about it on the internet but the actual learning came from doing and trial and error.

[Maha]

I like what I like and I call it like I see it unfortunately that doesnt work out all the time in team situations

so as not to cause undue stress to others or myself I decided to become more independant to gain total control of my creations I think it worked but on the other hand I am always willing to learn if someone wants to teach me something

thats wuy I joined this site

[Gary G.]

You are my teachers.

[JohnB]

I'm self taught in carving, but spent time with a furniture maker from Austria when I was a boy.

[Rod L.]

so that things can demolish the spirit of a miniature carver and to be a self-taugh was a challenge very difficult to us, but I´m still thinking that above all the knowledge that can come directly from a master and a school is fundamental and clear our way-path very much. I´m happy for the miniature carvers that could study in german, japanese and italians miniature schools, I´m happy for the miniature carvers that could study in former Art Schools, we don´t show envy to that fellows, they had just better luck and I cheer that luck,...but when you see a guy that have the posibility to study in miniature schools and owns a workshop with everything doing mediocry pieces and a self-taugh guy without tools and propper elements doing a marvelous pieces of Art then you realize that this self-taugh miniature carver is awesome, in another words, many of the members here are amazing people showing without any doubt that the self-taugh way is an strong way to learn and understand the Carving Path. The only I want to sentence it´s that to be a self-taugh it doesn´t mean that we reject the academic way in art schools, we must respect the former art schools knowledge, we must to be much better than the people pointed us with their fingers laughing because we are self-taugh and never show contempt-scorn related to the art schools knowledge...

 

Huzzah. Adrian, I couldn't have said it so well, much less any better. I do agree with you wholeheartedly. I will say, that for those that had a Master to study under, I am a little jealous at times, because ther have been times that I have struggled, and become discouraged, and put down my own carvings for several years, but I do always seem to come back to them. at times I have felt like I have had to reinvent the wheel but I am an artist, and when you get an artform in your blood, you just cant seem to stay away, it becomes like breathing. You can only hold your breath so long, before you have to gasp for air. I am glad to have found this forum with so many wonderful carvers, who like myself, want to work big, in a small medium, like this.

 

Peace,

Rod

[Dennis Hoshield]

Self taught. Although it appears most of us are here ... some, obviously, learn much faster than others :-)

Art is like music ... it's a way to get what's 'inside' .. either in your heart, soul or head ... to the 'outside' .. where it can be seen, touched, and admired. Once you learn an instrument well enough to have it become an extension of your voice .. then you've made it. I think the same goes with tools.

 

Dennis

[Tony N]

there is much to say about self taught and be ing taught by class me i'm self taught but i ahve also learnt a lot from both a class and from the people here you never stop learning if you belive in your self and are having fun my work has changed and got a lot better over the 2 years i put that down to both practise and picking up pointer from class and other people it comes down to what works for you you can learn so much from books and then it comes with trail and error if you stop learning you die you keep get getting better

[Jules Delaney]

It looks to me that having a teacher is learning what to do and of course not having a teach is learning what not to do and as there is way more of what not to do than what to do that learning what not to do is far more compleat than learning what to do. and if you can find the poetry in the afore mentioned you can slam me the poeslang and recite it at the coffeeshop this weekend.

[tioga]

Not me! I have to ask how, of friends, craftsmen, carpenters, blacksmiths and other carvers. I have found a never ending supply of training and question answering. About 90% of the tips and examples are on tract, and I suspect that I didn't understand the 10% well enough. Out of college I landed a marketing position with Millers Falls and it was nice to know how most of their tools worked. Ever had to teach how to use a framing square? Lots of scales to learn about.

 

Moving in to carving as I near retirement has been fun. The same techniques work for me now as they did as a youth, ask questions and sit back and listen. Then try the skill and listen to the critique and learn fast. Carving clubs are a wealth of information.

 

Everything I learned has been taught this way. I have improved things but that has been me improving my skills and my carving techniques. Self taught>>> no way.

 

Bill

[TJ Verrett]

Well I guess I fit right in here because I too am self taught in may areas of my creative life.

I first learned how to draw when I was a boy and later on I taught myself how to airbrush, and then i moved onto

sign painting before the advent of vinyl signs. Of course I also taught myself how to do wood carving and now I'm using those same techniques in

wax carving. However I don't do wax carving for jewelry or anything like that I just like carving faces and whatever else I can think of.

This is just my opinion but I feel that those of us who are self taught have had better training than those who went to college.

My reason for saying that is that if we the self taught were to go to college I think we would have the advantage over the other students

because we've had the real world experiences and they haven't. So whatever I've taught myself for what it's worth I wouldn't trade it for anything.

I've never had the financial privileges that others have had so whatever I wanted or needed I usually had to learn on my own or I had to make it myself. Such as tools or equipment, even now I'm making my own tools for my wax carving hobby I just seem to enjoy it more than just buying whatever I need. And sometimes the tool that you need doesn't exist so you have to make it. Now having said all of this if there were something new that I wanted to learn and was given the opportunity to get training on it yes I think I would take it. Because the way I see it is that no matter how you get educated get it without education you're just floundering around and flounders get eaten.

[Baz]

To me, carving is an intensely personal thing unless if you are working on commission.

I once read somewhere that you carve away everything that doesn't look like what you envisage the final product would be.

Two carvers with identical pieces of material, (and given the same brief) whether wood, bone jade or gem stones etc will come up with two totally different products.

Sure education will help refine techniques, but nothing beats the experience of making your own mistakes and breaking things that were not what the material wanted.

That's my 10c worth anyway

Cheers

Baz

[Bonnie D]

well you guys and everyone else are my teachers so...what does that mean? The people who have inspired me was a step father who had a work shop and let me fiddle around with scraps and a biological father that let me use his pocket knife to peel off bark on tree limbs for fire starter and smores and...

Anyways to the person/s who are told they are not gifted enough, I will agree to disagree with them and potty words come to mind with that. I am still learning...and thank you all for being my teachers.

[Robert Y]

I am self taught in most of my crafting abilities . However, I do learn very well watching people and reading how they have done things. I enjoy learning from others as many times they will show you simple tricks / ways of doing things and very often easier then I was doing them .

 

Robert

13 & On Forge

[Garry Dewar]

I am also self taught. When I retired in 1995 my wife purchased a Pat Godin book on Wood Carving Ducks.

From this and the numerous books that I have purchased on the subject, I have progressed quite well

over the past 18 years.

However, I am ever mindful of the many many carvers that I have met at different clubs that have shared with

me the finer "Secrets of carving", many of which are not in any books that I have read and without their sharing

of this information, I would not be the carver that I am today. Forums are one of the many vehicles that provide

the means to progress in this hobby.

[Jesse]

We value our hard-won, and deeply personal, self taught way. That's clear.

So much, that we would pass on a chance to learn the right way from the start? You all strike me as intelligent, but that doesn't.

 

"No, that ivory wont polish, here try this. "

"That stone looks good but it isn't worthy of your time, it crumbles."

"Start the cut from the top of the grain and make the cut FULL depth, once. "

 

I expect a good deal of our earliest hard lessons would have been week 1 at academy. How long have you been learning these things? I still am. Not saying I don't value what and how I've learned, just like to hear from the rest.

 

Since I don't know what's on the tests I defer,

 

May I hear from anyone taught at the academy please?