Are you self taught or did you get lessons/a degree?

[DasIstWunderblyat]

I am the "No idea, somehow I did it" person. It's a reach for me to call myself "self-taught," I am super dumb that it's useless to teach me. Structured learning often stifles and frustrates me, yet learning everything on my own is unreliable due to how scatterbrained I am.

And no, never had any formal art course or education. Not rich enough to pay on my own, not good enough for a scholarship, and was not supported enough to pursue it.

[BlueDragon]

Whelp, much like most people here, it's a combo of both. I got my BA specializing in ceramics, because I couldn't afford/didn't want to learn painting, and there were no illustration courses at my college besides the basics and life drawing (I mean, specifically tailored for comics and book illustration). I loved the history courses and stuff, though. Most of my comics stuff I think is obviously "self taught" or rather "self studied."

My minor was English, but it more English literature over writing (I took some writing courses, but I LOVE studying and my peers never liked my writing. Which is fine. I know my limits and where I stand, and I write for myself, but share with others I'm happy with that).

Now that I live in a city proper, I was thinking of taking a comics course at one of the community colleges, purely to continue improving my craft. I really agree with Mark Crilley that it is a boon to find some sort of art mentor, and if possible in person. I think I could have benefited from that. C'est la vie.

[SoulSean]

I can totally admit myself was a nuisance and totally self thought from the beginning till current, now.
I even got mocked by certain community for using 3d model as a tracing example and some may say, "You learn nothing from tracing the 3d model. To learn to draw you have to learn anatomy." That kind of controversy I get on my social media page when I said "I don't care, because it was my way of improvement."

Apart from drawing, I am not taking any major or excel in any particular English lesson. Despite of that, self thought and with the help of the community of some author and artist who are willing to stand up front and tells me where did I done wrong and asked me to correct/improve it.

In my point of view, I do not really think that it is really matter either you are self thought or did get a lesson of the mentioned topic. Both way lead you to a success road, and the things that only matters was... Your hardwork is the only things that lead you to a fruitful and desired result.

[tarraxahum]

I think I've just replied to you on CF, but for the sake of keeping the discussion up, why not do it twice?

I'm self-taught to the bone. Moreover, I used to hate drawing for like the whole first decade of my life. That's until I got some favorite characters that I was compelled to draw immediately...and then that just continued on. In a way, fandom was my teacher, and I don't mean it as some corny thing. Fandoms motivated me to draw a lot, drawing a lot improved my skill, and I also made friends with a lot of artists who were far more skilled than me, so I learned from them a bit, too. By example, mostly, 'cause I hate following advice unless I asked for it.

My actual degree is in language studies, that's also where I work at x)

[lomcia]

self taught. drawing now for... 20something years.

[Flios]

Self taught for both writing and drawing, which is exactly why I still don't have a good setup for digital art

[Lensing]

I feel that. I have a bunch of apps like clip studio and procreate etc, I know 2% of the functions.
I´m good a Autodesk Sketchbook but that´s really simple

[Kuma]

I have a degree in Film Screenwriting. I also took courses on Comic Book scriptwriting and Videogame scriptwriting. I also went to cooking school and did one year of literature in college.

[KSlinger]

Art in school was very limiting wasn't it. I did graphic design in Sixth Form hoping there would be more freedom but nah, it was all commercial and if you didn't want to design stuff for Apple you weren't going to get anywhere. Same with drawing and painting. My sister did Art in Glasgow and apparently the Uni end isn't any better. I don't think many of us have a choice BUT to be self-directed!

[kyupol]

Combination of both. Took art fundamentals (1 year college certificate course) and a local basic figure drawing class.

Then the rest was practice and a few art books

[AmazementComics]

I’m self taught save for a few art classes throughout grade school. Growing up, I just studied my brother’s art and also the anatomy of different artstyles on YouTube. Always room for improvement, but the key is consistency. Writing is the same story. I’m a huge consumer of TV shows and I like to read comics. Those mediums encouraged me to watch a couple of videos on script writing.

[Bulalakaw]

I took some introductory creative writing classes, but ever since college, I had to focus more on academic writing. Creative writing after that had to be trial and error for me, so there were a lot of misses in the fanfics I wrote before. I had to rely mostly on learning from other media, be it fanfics, original books, video essays, and whatnot. The academic writing side did help out in widening my vocabulary, so there's that!

[JaveCraze]

since I'm a hobbyist, im self taught. youtube videos and googling, since I don't see this art thing going anywhere outside of a hobby

[Caro]

Mostly self taught. I went to an arts high school where we were sort of taught things that only barely ended up being tangentially beneficial to making comics but I did have a couple teachers notice that I was not able to do work at all unless they gave me something to do in a comic format which was incredibly sweet of them. I dropped out at at 16ish because of turbulent home life issues and never continued my education.

But I read a lot and talk to other people in the field after going to cons and in a few years I was able to pay rent and bills with my work which has been great for me because my schooling was so limited there’s probably not much I could’ve done. It definitely became a necessary part of my survival. I’m glad I didn’t go the route I thought I was going (art school in the US) because all of my friends that did go ended up being in so much debt that they were unable to fully pursue their artistic endeavors and I’m the only one of a pretty big group of friends that has no debt and is making a decent living on what they wanted to do in high school.

[eteraart]

I learnt to write poetry on the spot for about 10 years? and graduated with a master's degree in the science of my native language - totes useless for writing prose if I'm honest, a bit helpful when judging others. Basically I taught myself how to write prose. In English I have to correct some things anyway.
When it comes to drawing/comics/illustration.... the last four years I have been training myself very intensively but completely on my own, I don't even buy thematic books. I just practise a lot, experiment with perspective, like to add a lot of detail - and this progress I feel you can see.

[Geklelo]

A mix.
I like to think that I've built on the bases I was taught and started on my own whichever skills I wasn't taught.
I've always doodledd stuff and created sotires and characters, but school definitely allowed me to ground my thoughts and develop a path through which I could convey them in a good and attractive way.

[powerplantanimations]

I learned a lot of stuff on YouTube. It was an annoying process since I had to figure out which people were saying the right stuff and which people were peddling garbage (there's a lot of angry people and a lot of pseudo intellectuals on the web).

For comics, I originally had a book that taught me how to write scripts until I signed up for a DC Milestone contest so I could get a job... but I never did. I did borrow their format though so I can be prepared just in case I do.

I think the only help was with this one dude who kept pushing me to fail and this Australian artist who reads my comics to this day.

Music also taught me. Breaking the lyrics and beats down. I think of stories as songs in a way.

I also like to break down the stuff I read/watch and figure out what works. I remember a book editor friend being shocked that I figured all of this and I didn't go to writing school... or paid attention in writing class.

There are downsides to how I do stuff though. For example; I don't know writing terminology. I remember one time when I was trying to give advice to a person on Discord with this other writer (that I can't remember), the other writer was dropping terms left and right. I tried doing the same, but I ended up sounding like a newbie lol.

It also took me... until I was like 19 or 20 where I use punctuations correctly? And even then I still suck at it a little. I had to study on sites.

[XiuLyn_12]

Definitely self-taught. I've always wanted to take lessons or attend an art uni. I never really got a chance.
My art progress is plodding due to being self-taught, though. I'm sure I can improve faster if I take lessons.

[allisoncandraw]

I was self-taught up until college. I got my BFA in Digital Arts and decided to keep my art personal for now, rather than working in the art industry like I originally planned lol

[Mallory]

I don't have degrees or anything (unfortunately... that would've been a little neater) but I took a boatload of creative writing electives with my BSc in Biology. I was 3 credits away from a minor in creative writing but couldn't stand being in school anymore so I didn't finish it before I graduated.

For art I'm pretty much entirely self-taught. I took 2 art electives in college and they were... eh. In the Art Studio one they taught us nothing, just put us in a studio and told us to paint some pottery. Uh okay, that I can do on my own, without paying $400. My Digital and Modern art course was really neat because it was quite philosophical. I learned a bunch of stuff about Photoshop and video editing too (to make our own ~modern art masterpieces~) which has come in handy for my day job, but it hasn't been super useful to art and comics.