Blog 53: Patterns and Dull-ture

My second term at university introduced a new module called "Patterns and Culture". Bear in mind that this is a Graphic and Communication Design course when I tell you our first lecture was all about cave paintings.

I'm writing this whilst/instead of a journal I'm meant to be keeping on the lectures as they go. Each week I'm MEANT to write 450/500 words about how the material we studied in the lecture is significant, or relevant, to me. Each week I return home and furiously study the notes (for about 12 seconds) frantically searching for anything which is relevant to me.

Now it's hard enough seeing the relevance of a painting by Michelangelo to Graphic Design, but when someone tries to tell you how important cave paintings are on the world of art today, I'm sorry, but they're just wrong. I'm not denying that they're fascinating to look at, or that it's incredible how they have been preserved all this time and are still in amazing condition and can even tell us something about the culture of the cave dwellers, because they do all those things. HOWEVER, they are basically just some doodles by someone who didn't have some paper and a biro handy. Most of them are pictures of animals, and they're not particularly good ones either. There is basically nothing that a Graphic Designer could learn from them. If I wanted to draw on a wall, I'm pretty sure I could figure it out. If I wanted to draw an animal, I'd ask someone who is good at it rather than a caveman, who, by the way, is dead.

I reckon if a prehistoric neanderthal could figure out how to paint on walls, then give me enough time, I might just be able to do it on my own.

To top if off, in a crit session today, my course tutor decided it was completely ok to keep the session going for an HOUR longer than it's meant to, bringing the grand total to 4 hours, or one sixth of a day. FOUR WHOLE FREAKING HOURS.

Nice to see I'm back to my old grumpy self.