General Arts Degree Overview

Obtaining a degree in Art will open the door to an amazing variety of courses and career options. The art degree is designed to be general in nature in order to give the maximum amount of flexibility to students, while still providing a well-rounded education that is necessary for many areas of the business world. Career paths with an art degree include design, advertising, business, sales and marketing, education, art history, and more. Although artists in some areas will not necessarily require a degree, it can be an invaluable platform for students to enhance and cultivate their raw, natural talents. In other areas of the art world, a degree is essential. There are generally four categories of artists. The first is an art director, who formulates design concepts and presentation approaches for visual communications media. The second is a craft artist who creates or reproduces handmade objects for exhibition or sale. The third category is a fine artist, which includes painters, sculptors, and illustrators, who create original artwork using a variety of media techniques. Finally, multi-media artists and animators create animation, special effects, or other visual images on video, film, or computers.

General Arts Curriculum

Students who are obtaining an art degree can select from a variety of general and focus-specific courses. Course options can include: art appreciation, drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, art history, music, visual arts, art education, animation, digital art, ceramics, printmaking, and more. Many colleges and universities offer programs leading to the bachelor's or master's degree in arts, while independent schools of art and design tend to offer more direct training and studio work in a specific craft. Most formal education in art will also provide training in computer techniques as computers are widely used in many areas of the art community. For those who want to teach arts at an elementary or secondary school, they must obtain a teaching certificate as well; and for those who want to teach at a college or university, they will need an advanced degree in fine arts or arts administration.

Careers with an Art Degree

As with everything in the art field, there is a wide selection of career paths that one can choose with an art degree. Some artists may choose to be self-employed painters or photographers, while others may choose a career as an art history teacher, gallery owner, museum tour guide, graphic designer, film maker, actor, theatre set designer, architect, floral designer, cartoonist, media illustrator, painting restorer, or museum curator. According to the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), there were 208,000 artists in 2004 and about 63% of them were self-employed. The BLS forecasts that the industry will grow at an average rate through 2014; however, the competition is high. Since the number of available openings in each category is fairly low, the employers have the opportunity to pick the most qualified and uniquely talented individuals for the job. The demand for multimedia artists and animators is especially high with the increasing demand of realistic video games, movie and television special effects, and animated movies.

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