Thread: More cat art

My daughter Alexa, who is graduating from high school this year, did a drawing of our girl Bella a while back. Since we have had some other threads on cat art and photography, I thought I would post a small version of it:

Thats brilliant It realy looks like I could stroke her

Thats a really good piece of work, well done to your daughter...

Dave drew this on my Valentine's card this year - it's a pen drawing of the mother of the other litter of kittens (born at the same time as Teddy). He preferred her to Teddy's mum so was hoping we'd want one of her kittens!
Your daughter's drawing it lovely very detailed!

Fantastic she would be big fans with Amber my daughter does she feature her work on Deviant art??

Debbie

Alexia's got quite a talent, ncarver, that's a great pic of bella. I don't think I could my cats to still for long enough (only joking, I've got pleny of parcel tape...). Does she draw as a hobby or is it something she'd like to take into her career?

Love Dave's cat.

Alexa doesn't put her artwork on DeviantArt, though she does sometimes look at what is on that site. Wikipedia says: "DeviantArt allows submissions across a wide variety of media, although the community predominantly focuses on manga and digital art." Alexa is primarily interested in (real) painting, and photos are a poor substitute for the actual paintings (she did one painting in a summer art program last year that is about 5'x10').

Alexa has always been interested in art, and we have encouraged it. though I have always told her that she cannot major in art (alone) in college. She is looking to double major in biology and art starting next year. Luckily, she is good at a range of subjects, from math and science to writing to art. Hopefully she will be able to integrate her various interests in some form. She is currently focused on choosing a college to attend and trying to make it through the last few weeks of high school!

Originally Posted by elismom

That's a lovely drawing. My mother is an artist and she's always said the most difficult thing to capture is the eyes and Alexa did it masterfully.My mom attended the Rhode Island School of Design which I believe offers far more than just art instruction. I think their architecture program is one of some renown if that might be of interest to her given her creative bent...also it is is contiguous with Brown University and I believe they offer joint courses ...

My sister has an MFA from RISD. My father is an architect (Yale) and a photographer, my mother also has an architecture degree and is an artist. We know quite a bit about art and architecture as careers. The architecture field is one of the worst to go into right now. No jobs at all; many unemployed architects. By contrast, students graduate from even middling universities with computer science degrees (my field) and have little trouble landing $60k jobs.

Alexa applied to Brown in part because of the joint art program with RISD, but got waitlisted. For those in the US (and Canada I guess) that do not have children applying for college (and that have not done it in the last few years), the top US schools received record numbers of applications this year and so have record low acceptance rates. You can have perfect GPA, multiple AP classes/exams, high ACT/SAT scores, National Merit Finalist, etc., and still not get into many (or even any) top 25 schools if you are white or asian, middle class, attended a public high school, 2nd+ generation college, etc. As with many things here, I consider the college admissions system in the US to be seriously broken. Students have to apply to a raft of schools they don't really want to attend (paying fees for each application), admissions officers have to look at tens of thousands of applications for a thousand slots, etc. Stupid, wasteful, and causing thousands of the brightest kids in the US to question their value and why they bothered to work so hard in high school. One positive aspect of the system is that the top private schools are generally giving enough financial aid so that middle class kids can afford to attend them. (In fact this is one reason there are so many applicants.) Meanwhile, public universities have become so expensive due to state funding cutbacks that it is nearly as costly to attend them.

Originally Posted by elismom

Well I must admit to feeling a bit sheepish doling out advice given your connections! My mother often waxes nostalgic about her days at RISD so I thought I'd throw it out there. I had no idea that US post-secondary education was such a mess...

My sister definitely loved her time at RISD. You actually can get into top art schools without too much trouble, but that is because they give few scholarships so are very expensive. Alexa attended a summer program at SAIC last year. SAIC is typically rated top five (sometimes as high as 2nd only to RISD). They certainly tried to recruit Alexa, but it would have cost probably $50k/year, and at the end of four years the student may or may not be able to find a job. Not something I would be willing to let her do (in part because she would have ended up with massive student loan debt).

Originally Posted by elismom

I'm very glad to hear that about Comp Sci though as that is my son's field of study. He has US citizenship as well and decided on that field when he heard that DOD is scrambling for grads. He's very interested in security. It's comforting to know that he will not be in my basement forever...

Security is certainly the hot area in CS, so he should have no trouble with a job. Getting some summer work (internship) experience can be a big plus--particularly if he can do something in the security area. Quite a few of our students work for campus IT on networking and network security, so there are often chances to gain experience there. Also, make certain he gets experience with more than just Windoze.