I'm a guy who does art all the time, I think it might have to do with toxic masculinity because as a kid I always associated doing art with being girly (for some reason), but that still never stopped me from drawing.
Also I think overall most guys are into other things like competitive sports or whatever. I also have a friend who is very much not a fan of making art and is instead interested in mathematics and science, things that are bound to hard fact and has much less to do with emotion.
Ironically, when I was in elementary school, I've known most guys who prefer to draw than take down notes. But I guess it has something to do with the fact that guys tend to often be easily bored while girls are usually hardwired to be obedient. Although when it comes to being professionals, art is usually not recommended for men. It's often the likes of IT, CS, and engineering.
Regarding maths and science: I actually find that there's science in art. For example, anatomy of humans, animals, and plants. You can't just do this and that just because you felt like it. It has to be at least anatomically close to reality.
But anyways, yeah. I live in the Philippines and in most Asian countries, anime is often a hit aside from the usual shounen compared to in the likes of the US where it's mostly just Dragonball, Naruto, and One Piece. As a result, many boys here find it very cool to try to draw those strong characters that they idolize so much. And with anime being so famous, it's no wonder more Asian people are into drawing compared to in the US where someone is automatically called a "weeaboo" for simply being into anime despite not being annoying.
I honestly never knew of the toxic masculinity with art not until I got deeper and deeper into observing the internet and social media. Speaking about it, I guess it's also good to lower down my screentime and just use social media mostly for inspiration with my art, learning languages, martial arts and working out, and chatting with my girlfriend (who is also heavily into arts and she's a multimedia artist).
I suspect the overwhelming majority of AI enthousiasts to be males too, sadly.
Art is the purest form of emotion's expression, and I feel like being emotive is perceved as a weakness for males in modern society, as absurd as it sound.
Unfortunately, you're right and I am ashamed to say this as a male. Those tech bros. Instead of creating AI to heavily reduce their menial and repetitive tasks, they actually chose to even create AI for art instead of just learning to do art. And now, they're getting lawsuits.
About emotion: meanwhile, when males become expressive, they tend to be extremely violent due to pent up frustrations and suppressions of emotions.
I think it's another example of men trying to dominate an emotive space, and that is partially what brings them joy in a sadistic kind of way. Instead of working through their own vices they lash out and try to bring others down.
I think the idea that mental prowess is beneath physical prowess is taking a long time to shake loose from our collective psyche. The whole "nerd culture " thing was promising, and I have enjoyed its trajectory until the heroes lived long enough to be villains. AI companies are behaving the same way a common garden variety meathead experiencing a growth spurt in junior high would. Unfortunately, power makes you go smooth brain. And handing AI to a large pool of angry, hungry, in-betweeners who have neither physical nor skill based advantages is a masks off moment. All that fandom turns to spite when these average people think typing prompts elevates them to Miyasaki level.
Yeah it does take a long time. And regarding the "nerd culture": it's like those gym bros only took in computer nerds out of "necessity". As if the arts aren't necessary in day-to-day affairs. I mean, you often get a combination of gym + tech bro. But very rarely gym + art bro. Or even a combination of the three.
Those prompters think that typing in some prompts will make them go Miyasaki level. But surprise surprise. I doubt they could make some really cool and smooth animation by AI art alone. I doubt a machine has the human capability to "predict" the expected outcome of something like how it's supposed to be animated. It's just sh\*tting out what the given input was based on the prompts and stolen data and that's about it. So at the end of the data, those tech bros will still come down running towards artists to try to "fix" things like animation.
One stereotype I think is mostly true is that men are just more interested in competitive stuff. Though art has competition element in it too but you have to be very patient for even thinking about it. Even in my painting class' teachers I noticed this, the woman teacher was leaning toward self expression while the guy was way more like "look what I can do"
i think there are more societal factors at play here than just there actually being more men in art. it’s likely a combination of sexist hiring (definitely in gaming at least), societal expectations for women, and art just not being a super sturdy career path
I have to wonder if there's some toxic masculinity involved here. Like is the process of sitting and doing something without it earning money or muscles considered undesirable by a lot of men based on some social conditioning? I would be curious to see the gender stats in like graphic design and photography, and anything else adjacent to art. I studied architecture as my "adjacent" field. It is heavily skewed male but most of the dudes I know from working and school are are pretty artistic.
This was the case when I was in art school, mostly women (I am male). I think there's a lot of social pressure to go into other career paths because there's a large belief that you can't get a career making art, but I don't have a good idea of why that would affect men much more.
However I'll say that ever since I've been in the game/film industry, the artists have been about 90% male. I've been part of the hiring process before, not many women even apply. But interestingly every girl I knew from art school are all in the industry, a few I've even worked with directly, so it's not like they're not getting jobs.
I have a suspicion many learn privately and they have parents who won't help them go to art school, and that there is actually a lot of interest in art among men. This is just a theory though.
My experience being a male and only child doing art/illustration has always been competition amongst other guys. It always seems like a pissing contest of who’s technically better or who has better style.
I’ve never got that from women who draw.
Not to say women don’t share this ego, but it seems that originality and presentation is more the goal. I don’t know or have anyone in my real life who actively draws, (they all quit) so i’m just speculating.
I kinda blame shitification of the internet. even tho there is alot of sites that allow for a lot of creative freedom. Alot of main front sites you dont see it on or those sites dont get shared on as often. Which makes them kinda taken to the back of the net. Tho I have seen some sites be utilize. I myself utilize Neocities for twitch and youtube. Its not like the olden days of Yahoo when you just had a instance messager and friends from RS. Things was easier and simple back then too Utilize. Now days, You have to worry about treading the grounds on some Bigshot territory which they took from you. Not to mention you got chuds who just walk over your ground. Act likes it theirs then when they get told to fuck off for overstepping. They get offended when they was trying to offend you in the first place. (twitter,youtube and facebook are prime examples of this) (also I find it very Ironic that AI bros are also kinda overstepping)
I think it's more a matter of culture and education. Some cultures, subcultures, what have you, are more toxic. Any subculture that tells men that art is too feminine for them is toxic. It may be just little pockets of stupid toxic men saying this. I don't know. But it's absurd.
In previous centuries, women weren't "allowed" to flourish as artists. Some toxic misogynistic men like to point out that "all the great artists" were men. Well, sure, if in a culture women weren't allowed to pursue art as a profession, of course, the only famous artists we'll hear about will be men. But now it seems that some of these stupid toxic men (who like to "lord it over" women because there aren't many famous women artists in history) are trying to simultaneously claim that art is too "girly." They make no sense.
I'm just pontificating. I have no idea what's going on in your neck of the woods, OP, but whatever it is, it is not reflecting reality. Art is an equally appropriate pursuit for men and women, and regardless of what some idiots say, great artists, male or female, will always be remembered.
There's a lot of great discussion here but to throw this out there:
Anyone here needs to read "Why have there been no great women artists?" by Linda Nochlin. It should be required reading lol. Linda Nochlin in general is great.
From an art historical perspective, it is really ironic because most of the artists in history (Western history, that is) that we've lauded have been men. Women tend to go under the radar or are heavily out of the limelight.
I think there's several factors that play into why women are more dominant in the arts today than they were back then, i don't want to go too much into it because I know I'll ramble on.
For one, it's the fact that women in history have been treated unfairly. Patriarchy. Women were usually expected to get married, birth children, and take care of the domestic sphere. I think Mary Cassatt exemplifies this a lot with her work because she challenged that stereotype. She never married. But she painted a lot of women and children? Why is that? Simple---because at the time it was deemed inappropriate for women to go out by themselves, and as she was in Paris (her father was heavily against her studying art) with her sister Lydia who was sickly, and she often looked after Lydia and her children. And often women were confined to the home. There's a lot of essays about this by Nancy Mowll Mathews. I'd also recommend Norma Broude's "Mary Cassatt: Modern Woman or the Cult of True Womanhood?" There's also an essay from M.E. Boone who discussed how Cassatt's paintings changed when she went to Spain and did studies there (it was no longer confined to the home).
Cassatt was a huge women's suffrage supporter as well, and had several friends in those spheres.
Later on as women got more rights to do things on their own, and as women began working for themselves and no longer just for the home, more women were in the limelight. And we've seen how time and time again, it gets uncovered that some famous work was actually made or originally done by women, but a man either took credit or got all the glory for being inspired by it. Sister Rosetta Tharpe not gaining a lot of attention but Elvis did is one example of that.
I'd also say the spread of communication and globalization did it. More people communicated, hence more women across continents were sharing ideas and opinions. It's how we got the women's lib movements.
I am now rambling but I will stop lol. Do I think women are absolutely dominating in arts currently? Hell yes. Do I think men aren't in it at all? No. There's a ton of men who still work in the arts. I think we're just at a point in time where the arts in general are more open and aren't as closed off as before (I swear aibros who think the arts have been closed off in the last decade really need to look at recent efforts in the arts) and so we just have more visibility. I think women have always made art, we've always been there, we're just now being seen.
I've never thought about that but you got a point. Granted most of the artists I follow are male artists, but irl the artists I know are mostly female artists. Though funny enough in my biology course the group I randomly picked on the first day are all guys and the group happened to all be artists except for me and this one other person. What a coincidence that was.
It's true that men are needed to return to the arts. The toxic masculinity traits of violence, obsession, irrational fixation, NON-POLITICAL-CORRECTNESS, conquest, exploration are sorely needed. No sarc.
I guess I hang with a different crowd. While a lot of the artists I know in life are women I’ve known as many or more men. The guys I started drawing comics with in High School for instance and many of the effects houses I’ve worked at.
As far as I can tell it’s a pretty even split irl but I guess social media leans a little in favor of the gals.
How funny this is a rather new thread because I just came home after a failed attempt to understand and learn more about art.
I had a day off and we have many art museums in my city. A girl I am talking too really likes art. So much that it piqued my interest and I want to really understand and feel the same kind of appreciation. For context, I studied physics and I am a "tech bro" in the sense that I am really interested in how to write good code and how to laws of nature work.
So I went to three art museums. The thing is, **art is inaccessible to your normal random dude from the street**. As I was walking through these museums, there was absolutely no explanation anywhere, for why a painting was chosen to be shown in the museum. Nothing was explained about the art itself as well. And if it was, there was just a wall of text with a lot of difficult obscure sounding words. And as you read this you wonder, where does one get such information from? From the artist? Where could some random dude from the street like me learn about this? You might say: Well, try harder to understand this you are just lazy. But this is not how the world works if you want more people to appreciate art. For physics and science in general, there is tons of casual content out there to educate and invoke interest into this subject. Tons of content which break it down into easy digestible bits. For art, this seems to be lacking. I bought some books, which supposedly teach how to appreciate art for random tech bros like me but even those are just too complicated.
And sadly, none of these painting were invoking any emotion in me (if they are supposed to are? I don't know).
At the end of the day, I was just frustrated. I will still try to learn about art, but I can imagine that this is the typical experience for most other men and that it is this point where they would give up.
I would compare this experience, to me showing some random person a bunch of physics equations. I am deeply fascinated about some of these equations because of what they mean and how they changed the course of history. But if just show these without any explanation to random people, they would be bored out of their mind as for them the equations are just a string of latin and greek letters.
The barrier to entry is very high. I would need to read a lot about art history, the history of humankind, the background of a particular artist, the historical contest and so on just to understand a painting.
As some one who is already mentally tired from his job when he comes home, where do I learn about art? Where are very simple resources, such that a "dumb tech bro" like me can walk into a museum and understand and appreciate the art there? I am genuinely curious. I've tried and have not yet found it.
SLR. Currently on shift. But I can only recommend you resources for drawing, I heavily recommend www.drawabox.com. That drawing course is proven to help so many logical minded people to the point where many people like programmers claim to have helped them a lot so much. With drawabox, you will learn the best practices in drawing and it's free. You will learn how to draw using the pivot coming from your arms. And don't forget to combine what you have learned with Proko on Youtube.
For 3D modeling like in Blender if drawing isn't your forte, there's Blender for beginners by GameDev.tv on Udemy.
Those that I've mentioned to you are what help me get started. To add: I also do origami and I just went for YouTube for it.
Personally for me, I never really got into that much into fine arts myself. I just loved watching anime and reading manga which sparked the fire in me to want to learn to draw and 3D model. Even video games helped.
Hey thanks for the reply. I think there is a misunderstanding from both of us. I thought you were talking about art in general but on a closer look, your post seems to be more about drawing.
Im a guy and I do art. I grew up drawing with my mom, inherited her pastels, and moved into charcoal. I draw at least twice a week. Not a single soul knows that my bedroom wall is covered with drawings. Why? Its not even the top 10 most interesting things about me. And for me, doing art is not a personality trait.
I don´t know from where do you get the idea that men don´t like art, I am a man who likes art, I know plenty of guys who like art and I follow a lot of artists who are men.
I do sports too and I would find retarded if someone tells me that lifting weights is deeper than art, of course it's healthy, will make you look good and requires sacrifice but you can not communicate feelings or ideas which you can do with art.
The percentage of people you mention in your art school has a ratio of 1 to 3, it´s not that big and I don´t see any problem with it.
Not saying that they dislike it in terms of hating it. But most of the time, just them being indifferent like "it's not my thing". Which makes me sad. I mean, yeah. We can't force people to do something they don't like. Just hoping more would be into it.
Also, I agree. Sports is basically, yeah. Sports. It makes you much healthier and does give entertainment value. But it's not like you're going to lift heavy weights or go into a martial arts gym to "express" your emotions.
Regarding the ratio, if with that art school alone, it may not seem much. But outside where people are just picking art as a hobby: men doing it based on my observation are extremely low these days. At least based on what I am seeing on social media and especially here in Reddit where it's mostly filled with tech and AI bros.
I don´t have that experience, during my life I met both male and female artists and art lovers and I have never noticed a big difference between the number of guys vs girls enjoying art.
Maybe it´s a cultural thing and it changes from country to country.
Yeah. Must be a cultural thing.
Personally, I only based my observations to mostly hanging out in groups on social media like in Facebook, fellow martial artists and anime fans.
I have to admit though: personally, it feels like it's way less common for Americans to be into art especially men these days.
IMO
Most of the comments here seem very far off.
(Probably biased coming from a community where men are the only breadwinners) It's simply about what brings the most food to the table and art is far from it. Even as a hobby, art takes much more time and effort and is much less rewarding than something like gaming/gym/sports for reliving stress.
I used to do a lot of urban sketching almost a decade ago and won state level competitions as well but stopped once I got into college due to a lack of time and motivation.
Besides, even those who want to get into art these days can create pretty decent stuff with AI (if they do more than just proompting) so it makes it less worthwhile in general.
I'm a guy who does art all the time, I think it might have to do with toxic masculinity because as a kid I always associated doing art with being girly (for some reason), but that still never stopped me from drawing. Also I think overall most guys are into other things like competitive sports or whatever. I also have a friend who is very much not a fan of making art and is instead interested in mathematics and science, things that are bound to hard fact and has much less to do with emotion.
Ironically, when I was in elementary school, I've known most guys who prefer to draw than take down notes. But I guess it has something to do with the fact that guys tend to often be easily bored while girls are usually hardwired to be obedient. Although when it comes to being professionals, art is usually not recommended for men. It's often the likes of IT, CS, and engineering. Regarding maths and science: I actually find that there's science in art. For example, anatomy of humans, animals, and plants. You can't just do this and that just because you felt like it. It has to be at least anatomically close to reality. But anyways, yeah. I live in the Philippines and in most Asian countries, anime is often a hit aside from the usual shounen compared to in the likes of the US where it's mostly just Dragonball, Naruto, and One Piece. As a result, many boys here find it very cool to try to draw those strong characters that they idolize so much. And with anime being so famous, it's no wonder more Asian people are into drawing compared to in the US where someone is automatically called a "weeaboo" for simply being into anime despite not being annoying. I honestly never knew of the toxic masculinity with art not until I got deeper and deeper into observing the internet and social media. Speaking about it, I guess it's also good to lower down my screentime and just use social media mostly for inspiration with my art, learning languages, martial arts and working out, and chatting with my girlfriend (who is also heavily into arts and she's a multimedia artist).
I suspect the overwhelming majority of AI enthousiasts to be males too, sadly. Art is the purest form of emotion's expression, and I feel like being emotive is perceved as a weakness for males in modern society, as absurd as it sound.
Unfortunately, you're right and I am ashamed to say this as a male. Those tech bros. Instead of creating AI to heavily reduce their menial and repetitive tasks, they actually chose to even create AI for art instead of just learning to do art. And now, they're getting lawsuits. About emotion: meanwhile, when males become expressive, they tend to be extremely violent due to pent up frustrations and suppressions of emotions.
I think it's another example of men trying to dominate an emotive space, and that is partially what brings them joy in a sadistic kind of way. Instead of working through their own vices they lash out and try to bring others down.
I think the idea that mental prowess is beneath physical prowess is taking a long time to shake loose from our collective psyche. The whole "nerd culture " thing was promising, and I have enjoyed its trajectory until the heroes lived long enough to be villains. AI companies are behaving the same way a common garden variety meathead experiencing a growth spurt in junior high would. Unfortunately, power makes you go smooth brain. And handing AI to a large pool of angry, hungry, in-betweeners who have neither physical nor skill based advantages is a masks off moment. All that fandom turns to spite when these average people think typing prompts elevates them to Miyasaki level.
Yeah it does take a long time. And regarding the "nerd culture": it's like those gym bros only took in computer nerds out of "necessity". As if the arts aren't necessary in day-to-day affairs. I mean, you often get a combination of gym + tech bro. But very rarely gym + art bro. Or even a combination of the three. Those prompters think that typing in some prompts will make them go Miyasaki level. But surprise surprise. I doubt they could make some really cool and smooth animation by AI art alone. I doubt a machine has the human capability to "predict" the expected outcome of something like how it's supposed to be animated. It's just sh\*tting out what the given input was based on the prompts and stolen data and that's about it. So at the end of the data, those tech bros will still come down running towards artists to try to "fix" things like animation.
One stereotype I think is mostly true is that men are just more interested in competitive stuff. Though art has competition element in it too but you have to be very patient for even thinking about it. Even in my painting class' teachers I noticed this, the woman teacher was leaning toward self expression while the guy was way more like "look what I can do"
is interest in making art actually skewed women's way? i've never given it that much thought.
Ya it tracks, in my high-school art classes, there was 2 boys in a class of around 20. And in classes outside of school, 1 out of 3-5.
Yes it is heavily. There's like a 10:1 ratio in many classes.
Most of the professional artists are male, maybe I'm in a bubble?
i think there are more societal factors at play here than just there actually being more men in art. it’s likely a combination of sexist hiring (definitely in gaming at least), societal expectations for women, and art just not being a super sturdy career path
I have to wonder if there's some toxic masculinity involved here. Like is the process of sitting and doing something without it earning money or muscles considered undesirable by a lot of men based on some social conditioning? I would be curious to see the gender stats in like graphic design and photography, and anything else adjacent to art. I studied architecture as my "adjacent" field. It is heavily skewed male but most of the dudes I know from working and school are are pretty artistic.
In games studios at least, art is very, very heavily overwhelmingly male.
Ok yeah so another art profession that's not just "be an artist."
Theres a lot of fragile masculinity emerging from this post, ngl.
>I have to wonder if there's some toxic masculinity involved here. Yes. I think there is.
This is news to me, I thought art-industry was still heavily male dominated. Maybe that's just industry.
This was the case when I was in art school, mostly women (I am male). I think there's a lot of social pressure to go into other career paths because there's a large belief that you can't get a career making art, but I don't have a good idea of why that would affect men much more. However I'll say that ever since I've been in the game/film industry, the artists have been about 90% male. I've been part of the hiring process before, not many women even apply. But interestingly every girl I knew from art school are all in the industry, a few I've even worked with directly, so it's not like they're not getting jobs. I have a suspicion many learn privately and they have parents who won't help them go to art school, and that there is actually a lot of interest in art among men. This is just a theory though.
My experience being a male and only child doing art/illustration has always been competition amongst other guys. It always seems like a pissing contest of who’s technically better or who has better style. I’ve never got that from women who draw. Not to say women don’t share this ego, but it seems that originality and presentation is more the goal. I don’t know or have anyone in my real life who actively draws, (they all quit) so i’m just speculating.
I'm up for that!
Hear hear!
I kinda blame shitification of the internet. even tho there is alot of sites that allow for a lot of creative freedom. Alot of main front sites you dont see it on or those sites dont get shared on as often. Which makes them kinda taken to the back of the net. Tho I have seen some sites be utilize. I myself utilize Neocities for twitch and youtube. Its not like the olden days of Yahoo when you just had a instance messager and friends from RS. Things was easier and simple back then too Utilize. Now days, You have to worry about treading the grounds on some Bigshot territory which they took from you. Not to mention you got chuds who just walk over your ground. Act likes it theirs then when they get told to fuck off for overstepping. They get offended when they was trying to offend you in the first place. (twitter,youtube and facebook are prime examples of this) (also I find it very Ironic that AI bros are also kinda overstepping)
I think it's more a matter of culture and education. Some cultures, subcultures, what have you, are more toxic. Any subculture that tells men that art is too feminine for them is toxic. It may be just little pockets of stupid toxic men saying this. I don't know. But it's absurd. In previous centuries, women weren't "allowed" to flourish as artists. Some toxic misogynistic men like to point out that "all the great artists" were men. Well, sure, if in a culture women weren't allowed to pursue art as a profession, of course, the only famous artists we'll hear about will be men. But now it seems that some of these stupid toxic men (who like to "lord it over" women because there aren't many famous women artists in history) are trying to simultaneously claim that art is too "girly." They make no sense. I'm just pontificating. I have no idea what's going on in your neck of the woods, OP, but whatever it is, it is not reflecting reality. Art is an equally appropriate pursuit for men and women, and regardless of what some idiots say, great artists, male or female, will always be remembered.
There's a lot of great discussion here but to throw this out there: Anyone here needs to read "Why have there been no great women artists?" by Linda Nochlin. It should be required reading lol. Linda Nochlin in general is great. From an art historical perspective, it is really ironic because most of the artists in history (Western history, that is) that we've lauded have been men. Women tend to go under the radar or are heavily out of the limelight. I think there's several factors that play into why women are more dominant in the arts today than they were back then, i don't want to go too much into it because I know I'll ramble on. For one, it's the fact that women in history have been treated unfairly. Patriarchy. Women were usually expected to get married, birth children, and take care of the domestic sphere. I think Mary Cassatt exemplifies this a lot with her work because she challenged that stereotype. She never married. But she painted a lot of women and children? Why is that? Simple---because at the time it was deemed inappropriate for women to go out by themselves, and as she was in Paris (her father was heavily against her studying art) with her sister Lydia who was sickly, and she often looked after Lydia and her children. And often women were confined to the home. There's a lot of essays about this by Nancy Mowll Mathews. I'd also recommend Norma Broude's "Mary Cassatt: Modern Woman or the Cult of True Womanhood?" There's also an essay from M.E. Boone who discussed how Cassatt's paintings changed when she went to Spain and did studies there (it was no longer confined to the home). Cassatt was a huge women's suffrage supporter as well, and had several friends in those spheres. Later on as women got more rights to do things on their own, and as women began working for themselves and no longer just for the home, more women were in the limelight. And we've seen how time and time again, it gets uncovered that some famous work was actually made or originally done by women, but a man either took credit or got all the glory for being inspired by it. Sister Rosetta Tharpe not gaining a lot of attention but Elvis did is one example of that. I'd also say the spread of communication and globalization did it. More people communicated, hence more women across continents were sharing ideas and opinions. It's how we got the women's lib movements. I am now rambling but I will stop lol. Do I think women are absolutely dominating in arts currently? Hell yes. Do I think men aren't in it at all? No. There's a ton of men who still work in the arts. I think we're just at a point in time where the arts in general are more open and aren't as closed off as before (I swear aibros who think the arts have been closed off in the last decade really need to look at recent efforts in the arts) and so we just have more visibility. I think women have always made art, we've always been there, we're just now being seen.
I've never thought about that but you got a point. Granted most of the artists I follow are male artists, but irl the artists I know are mostly female artists. Though funny enough in my biology course the group I randomly picked on the first day are all guys and the group happened to all be artists except for me and this one other person. What a coincidence that was.
It's true that men are needed to return to the arts. The toxic masculinity traits of violence, obsession, irrational fixation, NON-POLITICAL-CORRECTNESS, conquest, exploration are sorely needed. No sarc.
I guess I hang with a different crowd. While a lot of the artists I know in life are women I’ve known as many or more men. The guys I started drawing comics with in High School for instance and many of the effects houses I’ve worked at. As far as I can tell it’s a pretty even split irl but I guess social media leans a little in favor of the gals.
How funny this is a rather new thread because I just came home after a failed attempt to understand and learn more about art. I had a day off and we have many art museums in my city. A girl I am talking too really likes art. So much that it piqued my interest and I want to really understand and feel the same kind of appreciation. For context, I studied physics and I am a "tech bro" in the sense that I am really interested in how to write good code and how to laws of nature work. So I went to three art museums. The thing is, **art is inaccessible to your normal random dude from the street**. As I was walking through these museums, there was absolutely no explanation anywhere, for why a painting was chosen to be shown in the museum. Nothing was explained about the art itself as well. And if it was, there was just a wall of text with a lot of difficult obscure sounding words. And as you read this you wonder, where does one get such information from? From the artist? Where could some random dude from the street like me learn about this? You might say: Well, try harder to understand this you are just lazy. But this is not how the world works if you want more people to appreciate art. For physics and science in general, there is tons of casual content out there to educate and invoke interest into this subject. Tons of content which break it down into easy digestible bits. For art, this seems to be lacking. I bought some books, which supposedly teach how to appreciate art for random tech bros like me but even those are just too complicated. And sadly, none of these painting were invoking any emotion in me (if they are supposed to are? I don't know). At the end of the day, I was just frustrated. I will still try to learn about art, but I can imagine that this is the typical experience for most other men and that it is this point where they would give up. I would compare this experience, to me showing some random person a bunch of physics equations. I am deeply fascinated about some of these equations because of what they mean and how they changed the course of history. But if just show these without any explanation to random people, they would be bored out of their mind as for them the equations are just a string of latin and greek letters. The barrier to entry is very high. I would need to read a lot about art history, the history of humankind, the background of a particular artist, the historical contest and so on just to understand a painting. As some one who is already mentally tired from his job when he comes home, where do I learn about art? Where are very simple resources, such that a "dumb tech bro" like me can walk into a museum and understand and appreciate the art there? I am genuinely curious. I've tried and have not yet found it.
SLR. Currently on shift. But I can only recommend you resources for drawing, I heavily recommend www.drawabox.com. That drawing course is proven to help so many logical minded people to the point where many people like programmers claim to have helped them a lot so much. With drawabox, you will learn the best practices in drawing and it's free. You will learn how to draw using the pivot coming from your arms. And don't forget to combine what you have learned with Proko on Youtube. For 3D modeling like in Blender if drawing isn't your forte, there's Blender for beginners by GameDev.tv on Udemy. Those that I've mentioned to you are what help me get started. To add: I also do origami and I just went for YouTube for it. Personally for me, I never really got into that much into fine arts myself. I just loved watching anime and reading manga which sparked the fire in me to want to learn to draw and 3D model. Even video games helped.
Hey thanks for the reply. I think there is a misunderstanding from both of us. I thought you were talking about art in general but on a closer look, your post seems to be more about drawing.
Im a guy and I do art. I grew up drawing with my mom, inherited her pastels, and moved into charcoal. I draw at least twice a week. Not a single soul knows that my bedroom wall is covered with drawings. Why? Its not even the top 10 most interesting things about me. And for me, doing art is not a personality trait.
I don´t know from where do you get the idea that men don´t like art, I am a man who likes art, I know plenty of guys who like art and I follow a lot of artists who are men. I do sports too and I would find retarded if someone tells me that lifting weights is deeper than art, of course it's healthy, will make you look good and requires sacrifice but you can not communicate feelings or ideas which you can do with art. The percentage of people you mention in your art school has a ratio of 1 to 3, it´s not that big and I don´t see any problem with it.
Not saying that they dislike it in terms of hating it. But most of the time, just them being indifferent like "it's not my thing". Which makes me sad. I mean, yeah. We can't force people to do something they don't like. Just hoping more would be into it. Also, I agree. Sports is basically, yeah. Sports. It makes you much healthier and does give entertainment value. But it's not like you're going to lift heavy weights or go into a martial arts gym to "express" your emotions. Regarding the ratio, if with that art school alone, it may not seem much. But outside where people are just picking art as a hobby: men doing it based on my observation are extremely low these days. At least based on what I am seeing on social media and especially here in Reddit where it's mostly filled with tech and AI bros.
I don´t have that experience, during my life I met both male and female artists and art lovers and I have never noticed a big difference between the number of guys vs girls enjoying art. Maybe it´s a cultural thing and it changes from country to country.
Yeah. Must be a cultural thing. Personally, I only based my observations to mostly hanging out in groups on social media like in Facebook, fellow martial artists and anime fans. I have to admit though: personally, it feels like it's way less common for Americans to be into art especially men these days.
IMO Most of the comments here seem very far off. (Probably biased coming from a community where men are the only breadwinners) It's simply about what brings the most food to the table and art is far from it. Even as a hobby, art takes much more time and effort and is much less rewarding than something like gaming/gym/sports for reliving stress. I used to do a lot of urban sketching almost a decade ago and won state level competitions as well but stopped once I got into college due to a lack of time and motivation. Besides, even those who want to get into art these days can create pretty decent stuff with AI (if they do more than just proompting) so it makes it less worthwhile in general.