<p>“The students at these ateliers have real skills that can be transferred elsewhere, or used to work as full-time freelance artists.”</p>
<p>To be frank (regarding the second year students), they only have highly developed representational skills and they all are scarcely indistinguishable from one another. You could pass that off as the work of a single artist and few could tell them apart. The treatment and use of color is fairly consistent between each of those showcased artists. Furthermore (and this comment extends past second year students) the school doesn’t stress form-making, which are the elements of design and composition - invention. However, there are certainly notable exceptions from the alumni (Peter Van Dyck as an example) but in general compositional skills aren’t stressed so much. </p>
<p>Now, I won’t go on to say that this makes the work “good” or “bad” (different’s not deficient, right?). What I am saying, however, is that the development of representational drawing/painting skills appear to be developed quite extensively but at the expense of other skills that are just as fundamental. My stance is that developing one’s abilities in such a specialized way is a valid route, but it is certainly not the ONLY valid route and it doesn’t somehow put you ahead of other artists with who have skills developed in other areas nor does it make your skills somehow more “real”. Yet the first article overtly says otherwise.</p>
<p>developing compositional skills can make all the difference. Here’s an example of a representational painter who can take an assortment of mundane objects and make interesting arrangements of them.</p>
<p>[Interview</a> with Michael Tompkins : Painting Perceptions](<a href=“http://paintingperceptions.com/contemporary-realism/interview-with-michael-tompkins]Interview”>Interview with Michael Tompkins - Painting Perceptions)</p>
<p>By the way, this is a very good website about perceptually based painters (representational and figurative). It provides nice interviews and shows a good range of artists with different varieties of skills.</p>
<p>And as for an example of paintings that are highly technical without being in the slightest bit representational but instead are technical through material alteration and form-making. I’m curious to know if you consider these paintings to be not very technical at all.</p>
<p>[GIAN</a> BERTO VANNI - PAINTINGS](<a href=“http://www.gvanni.com/AvailableOL.html]GIAN”>http://www.gvanni.com/AvailableOL.html)</p>
<p>I almost want to apologize for how long all of this is.</p>