Where did the "fine" in fine art go...anyone?

The fast track lifestyle of London has in fact derailed me slightly from blogging, but that's what I'm here to do now! :)

I suppose I should go back to where I left off, which was just at the end of Fine Art and at the beginning of Vis. Com. When it came to fine art, I. was. excited. There was nothing else to it other than that. I was expecting technical skills and maybe some life drawing lessons, experimentation with art, but instead, I was intensely shocked; being an artist that admires detail and percision I was horrified to discover that if in fact your drawing resembles the object in front of it in any manner what so ever, it is in fact entirely inadequate. After having my work somewhat laughed at and entitled "anul" (a word I'm sure anyone would love to relate their artwork too) my artisitc self-esteem was low and confusion had settled in pretty deep, accompanied by a certain degree of panic and fear; drawing and painting is what I'm good at and if I couldn't prove that in fine art, I felt pretty sceptical that I was going to be able to do it anywhere else.

I realise that the tutors' aims were to try and make us see differently and rather than drawing everything so exact, we should try and draw things by not just seeing them, but seeing the world around them too, but does that dismiss entirely other ideas of art? I mean i realise that art now-a-days can be something as simple as a close up photograph of a pin in a cushion, but does that automatically dismiss the art of capturing detail too?

Safe to say after a week of drawing from the installations and reaching a level of tediousness that I had never come across while doing art and then having a week to myself to create what I wanted, but not getting any particular feedback on it, I felt quite disappointed.
I did end up liking one of the paintings that I came out with and it wasn't until the rotation had actually finished and we had to moved onto Vis.Com that I talked to a friend of mine that made me understand the reason behind the fine art tutors' ways of thinking that I actually understood fine art, but didn't necesserily agree with it.
John, my friend, had said to me that if we all drew with percision and detail and all from the same installations, then we would all end up with exactly the same artwork. Thanks John, that actually gave me some clarity on what the tutors were on about.

And so it was time to put fine art behind me and bid the likes of scribbling and smudged paint, farewell.

Onto Vis.Com it was.

A.