Why I HATED School Art Competitions (ft.  

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bell pepper is like when an artist posts a full on painting that gets maybe two likes , then posts a random doodle they spent three minutes on that gets like a billion likes and a movie deal

if you dont want the bell pepper ill take it!!!! i love it 🥺

bell pepper winning just reminds me of the pumpkin contest where there were tons of intricate designs and the lil smiley face won

Ah yes, the “can’t you draw anything else?” from like, everybody in my classes growing up. The hyperfixation struggles. Especially in a small town that was hardly aware of new or even popular concepts and characters.

THANK YOU FOR HAVING ME BACK!

I honestly started to resent Art class in high school because it seemed to be more "copy this artstyle" than "make art"

i hate art contests because of how unpredictable they are. the only predictable thing about it is that the winner is always the one who nobody thought will be a winner. people make weirdest choices.

This is so sweet I also won an art competition last year and I got many many art supplies as an award, my art was shown in our school along with concert/ vernissage. I felt so special😂

bell pepper is like that one sibling who never does anything around the house yet gets the most praise from parents

There is no crueler insult to a 4th grader than comparing their art to Barney

The dragon story reminds me of when I doodled Reshiram's head in class and my teacher went "Oh look, a billygoat!" Seems to be a weirdly universal experience.

(As a struggling musician/artist) wasn’t expecting to cry at the end. I needed to hear that. Thank you so much for sharing this experience. Thank you.

4:15 I’ve learned that when complementing a child’s art, never guess the object they have drawn. Don’t say “nice dog” or “oh is that supposed to be me?” Say “I love your use of colors, they work really well together” or “wow you drew your lines really good. You know it’s hard to draw good lines, and you drew very good lines” or “oh hey ___ color is my favorite I love that you used it in your art” etc. because unless you are 110% sure you know what they drew, do not guess it. You may think it’s a dog when it’s meant to be a horse. You may think it’s a character you recognize when it’s actually a character you don’t know about. Compliment the approach they took in making their art, never the subject they have drawn.

Art classes were generally a struggle for me all through elemetary and middle school because the art teachers wanted projects done a VERY SPECIFIC WAY and discouraged us from making our projects OURS. We weren't allowed to add unique flair, our own characters, our favorite colors unless the prompt involved using them. It made going to those classes a chore. When I got to my senior year of high school and was put in the art class (because they had no more required classes to give me) I expected more of the same. One of our first projects was to mess with perspective and use a vanishing point to create a street or hall scene. Everyone around me was doing just the buildings or the items in the hall, but I finished early and decided to make a "zombie school" scene by adding the undead and two survivors in the middle of the hall. The art teacher walked up behind me, saw my work and ask if he could see it. I let him, expecting to be scolded for not "following the prompt" but when he took it, he held it up to show the class and said "This is what I want you to do! You should have fun with it!" That class became the first art class that I EVER enjoyed. He encouraged us to do our own thing, to let our personalities and interests come out in our work, to use the prompts as a framework and to not just follow them to the letter. He only scolded us when he thought we were being lazy about an aspect of our work because he knew we could do better. We collected all of our art and kept every project in a student-specific folder as our portfolios. I was sick the last day of our class and when I came to school for the last day, he made sure to hunt me down to give me my portfolio because "I KNOW you don't want to forget this." Some of my art even got put in the display case for him to keep and show to future students. It was genuinely a great experience.

I'm glad to see someone else express the feelings of frustration when something you did with very little passion/as a joke gets a ton of love while the piece you want to bond with people over gets barely any engagement.

This video reminded me of a photography class I took in high school, and specifically the toy photography assignment. I borrowed my brother's Spiderman action figure, and for every few photos I spent a while setting Spiderman on different vertical surfaces, and experimenting with multiple perspectives. My teacher's favorite photo was the one where Spiderman was standing next to a window.

14:40 "why did bell pepper win, but soapstone bunny didnt" she is a philosopher asking questions we desperately need answers for

OHHH MY GOD.... ILLY... the "can't you draw anything else?" snide remark brought me right back to middle school so quickly it hurt; I think I still have the vent art I made when I was 11 or 12 with almost that exact quote on it. The plight of the cat artist.

"A bunch of other teacher's pets like me" Me: 😮 Also me: I'm also one 😂

i honestly realy needed to hear this rn iv been struggleing with seeing my art not get a lot of veiws and forgetting that art is something you do for yourself not for anyone else in the end doing it only for veiws and or comments demotivates and can realy hold some back so i say ty for makeing this video and reminding me of that

This is such a good video

I'm not very fond of art competitions😭 they scare me😔 I stand with you Elsie

I really liked that you explained your feelings about the School Art Competitions. Thanks for sharing!👍

😂🤣 I laughed my ass off !! That Bunny was and still is Awesome. But that "Bell Pepper" well ... 🤣... it JINGLED. Hudson loved throwing curve balls at students just to keep them on/off their toes. Always so serious, it's good to have friends to keep one honest or humble and turn that pepper spicy. Remember Hudson was and still is our friend, not just the teacher. 😂 Nothing like a happy (angry) accident.🙃🐇🫑 ...oh, if you hated that "Pepper" so much why is it in pristine condition ...hmmm?

There is no pain like having crappy art you dont like recieve more praise than the peice you really do like.

When I was in first grade, my class made these books for a statewide illustration contest. I felt like I just threw down what I immediately thought of onto the page. I wrote and illustrated a story about a mouse with a chocolate shop who changed her chocolate recipe because her shop was struggling to make money. She ended up making lots of money with her new exciting chocolates. Apparently the judges were excited to see a first grader write about entrepreneurship, because I got third in the state in my division and got to visit the state capitol. It was really cool. Now I’m an artist with a bachelor of fine arts. 😊

I really like your videos, and I just wanted to mention how much I enjoy the backgrounds you make, they are really spectacular! =)

Time for chaos !

hardest lesson i’ve learned as an artist is that sometimes your least expected creation will get the most praise bc people simply like things that are messy + real + full of mistakes. perfectly captures the human experience

Why does every art teacher have such a smooth voice? Heck, even when they're cranky as hell they sound absolutely chilled!

She has earned all of my tears I saw that king plushy in the background and knowing that she loves our house just makes me Love this channel

As an artist, I have loved my realistic little fan art projects but what people like most from my art was a watercolor of a barn 💀

Never forget: Matt Groening made the Simpson’s on a napkin at the last minute because he found out fox would own his original comic characters if they made them into a show. So he did a last minute swap. Sometimes it’s the stuff you just “throw away” that hit hardest with an audience. So never stop creating. You never know what will hit.

When I was 9 my class had an egg decorating competition. Everyone put effort into theirs, the girl who won only put a dolls skirt onto the egg. I’m still really mad about this.

While I was working out (yes I listen to RU-vidrs instead of music sometimes) a memory popped up just now, and reminded me of a time I’m middle school, 7th grade, and I donated over 100 box tops, and won a $25 gift card to Starbucks, and then bc I helped my English teacher a lot throughout the school year, providing her candy for prizes, untangling, and putting all iPads to charge, helping her decorate, and just being her errand boy throughout the entire school year, she gave me a $50 gift card to use on anything, happier and simpler times

I've always hated competitions myself (I'm unfortunately extremely competitive and think my work is up there with Da Vinci and Don Bluth) but honestly I finally convinced myself to try and make a piece worthy of entering into my own local county fair, so I'm definitely watching this to help ease my mind

Still remember my moment of art glory in primary school (I’m Aussie) when my design for the grade 7 shirt got picked. It’s still used to this day 10 years later and everytime I see a student wearing it I get all proud LOL

I felt that T-shirt story so much. Last year, my shirt won 1st place at national convention, and my group was very excited. Because of this, my friends and teachers kept their expectations very high, so the pressure was on for me to have a repeat win with this year’s shirt. I worked harder than I ever did before, I was even more proud of my work than last year, and yet it didn’t even place. However, my friends were still proud of the shirt even though I didn’t win this year, and we were still able to get some good sales out of it as well. Just goes to show that art competitions really are a fickle thing.

Hi, I just wanted to let you know that I love your channel, it really helps me while going through school. So keep it up, I love you!

I felt this so much, albeit I'm a short-story writer - Some of my most popular works are random ideas I had in college, and they were typed out via a stream-of-consciousness style with little to no editing.

i would wear the shirt you made any day! 🥹

It doesn’t matter if it’s reading, cooking, painting, designing or even running. If an adult tells you to do it. It’s no longer fun. It’s the same reason why many young teens like to defy what adults say. No matter what you do, you’re always a little happy about it because it’s something you did & no one asked you to do it.

6:20 , I saw that king plushie in the background, ngl that made my day ❤

I know that this isn't one of your serious videos but i just wanted to tell you how much you have helped me I saw and felt your relatableness. It gave me motivation and made me feel calm i finally did my pile of homework, clean my room, clean up the pile of mugs in my room, do chores, and go outside more you've helped my mental health so much and i thank u 😌

im 13 and autistic, these videos really hit home for me, keep up the great work 🙏

I loved art up until the 7th grade. I had an art teacher who was so critical of everything I did, and flat out told me to stop trying. So i did. It made my mom so angry, it was such a big part of my life up to that point. I always regretted giving it up and only recently started picking it back up but its hard.

bell pepper is like a fun simple fanart piece with tons of insta likes and soap bunny is a detailed original character portrait with shading and background but 4 likes. i’m not salty you are

The bell pepper story actually reminds me a lot of one of my favorite authors, Harlan Ellison, who was incredibly prolific, writing many short stories and some longer stories, many of which he put a lot of work and intent into, but his most famous work, I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, he wrote in one night at a hotel room kind of as a throwaway.

Art class was always hated by me because of the lack of freedom or expression it seemed you could only draw specific things that i hated and sucked at so i always hated art i just wish it could give us a concept like abstract and then let us go wild

My video was submitted to a State art competition. My teacher ended up sending in the WRONG animation file (unfinished temp file), and my piece wasn’t even considered. Not exactly a fan of competition, but I was absolutely heart broken to know I had zero chance now. Amazing video! Art competitions are so scary. Glad you were able to win with the “Bell Pepper!”😂

I feel your pain, @illymation I used to do only a small handful of art contests growing up. I recall only one of my works ever winning first place-an airbrush themed around the Indy 500 (which got me three tickets to the event in Indianapolis). Whenever I made art I thought was stellar, I often see the reception of it being outweighed by artists who made elementary art that often looked significantly worse than and with less effort to them. I didn’t understand why something that was visually more scuffed and unrefined could gain more praise and attention than what I would make. And it bugged me for years on various accounts. In the end, I realized that art is always subjective for everyone and it hits them differently each time. I had to come to terms that my efforts may not always get the recognition it deserved and that can be okay. As long as I enjoyed creating it, receiving positive reception by friends and strangers was simply a bonus.

5:03 I love the drawing of your room and the stuffed animals/figures they are cute Also I understand how you feel like spending so much time on a masterpiece then something that took like 3 minutes gets more appreciated. That happens to art I make and it sucks.

The bell pepper is relatable in the sense that your funny shitpost art will get more attention than the art you put so much effort in and are genuinely proud of 😭

12:28 calmly petting like a Disney villain. It’s amazing.

This was a nice video. I crafted pre covid, and did well at fairs selling my items. Post covid it all went down hill, and now I'm on a break from craft fairs. So many people wanting things for super cheap despite the time put into it, and just a lot of unwanted thoughts from others. I think if I do any art for the next while it'll be for me.

I feel your pain. Back in Elementary school, I always lose the drawing contests to someone else, because my stuff looked like a much older kid or a teacher did the work, not a 6 to 9 year old.😞

When I was in college one of my professors told us about this "Women in Art" contest the university was having and I was like "well I'm in college to get good at art so I could totally do that." I took the title literally and thought it was about art with women in it, so I made a few pieces and entered. Unfortunately for me it was actually about women in the art community, so I was a straight cisgender male entering a contest to celebrate women artists and looked like a total butthead. Not my proudest moment.

Cdawg and illy was a collab I thought I'd never see

The amazingness of able to put together a bell pepper in such a short amount of time and make it look that good is amazing. Never underestimate speed run jigsaw puzzle to get to what you actually want to do

The fact that you can sell that dad energy that well, with that few dialogue is amazing!

I hope the real Mr. Hudson watches her videos laughing to himself at the memories

12:40 the voie actor for mr hutson is so perfect it weirdly fit too well , and that part gave me the chills

I have so many things to tell you but the main part is, you are amazing i love your vids and thank you for your work :)

Mr. Hudson's voice is so silky! I love it! :D The only art class (not counting acting classes and stagecraft) I took was in Kindergarten. Come to think of it, I don't know how robust the art systems in my schools were...I remember two specific lessons from that Kindergarten class. One was teaching us about primary and secondary colors, and the other was one where we were supposed to take preshaped pieces of paper and glue them onto a larger piece of paper to create abstract art. The teacher liked my piece so much that it was framed in the school's lobby for many years. I don't know what eventually happened to it...

It’s only been 13 minutes and the video already has 1.3k likes, very impressive illy. Also when I was younger I preferred eating paste over paint.

Fellow former ‘Art Kid’ here, I also won an award for a piece I did on a whim when the piece I actually worked on got rejected. It’s such a wild lesson is subjectivity!

I love how you have references my childhood shows like chowder and veggietales😭❤️

I think the coolest art thing my school did and the neighboring schools did was having a collaborative work up on the window for all to see during the local festival. The teacher would of course tell us about this project and we would choose to sign up with permission and then those people would take a trip downtown to paint on windows in theme. Of course we had an idea of what we wanted before we got there via the whiteboard and other stuff. You can really see who did what based on the style of the art

This really showcases the key element when it comes to displaying your art for the world to judge and see. It's not necessarily about how much work you put into it. It's about the emotion it invokes in someone. People can look at that soapstone bunny and just think "Cute" and that's just about it. But when people look at Bell Pepper, it makes them go "Ohhhhhhhhhh" after they hear it ring, and it can make them genuinely smile or laugh. Or even hate it, but even then, that still elicits a strong emotion for it.

4:59 illy:and it broke m- ad:SNICKERS

Hey Melissa I just want to say something because I've been watching your videos for a long time now and I just kind of wanted to tell you I really like your videos it inspires me to keep doing art even though I have Downs or UPS so how it goes you just inspire me to keep going with my art and I hope in the future I can be just like you brave enough to show my heart tattoos

I unironically love your bell pepper. Your art teacher sounds like a hoot!

The life of an artist, the stuff you spent an hour on gets more love then the stuff you spend days on.

I feel you on the bell pepper there's nothing worse than getting rewarded for something you put no effort into when you made something with all your heart and soul

This gave me costume competition flash backs literally the same thing for sewers at every Halloween costume contest 😂😂

4:53 in Illy’s eyes, that was not a dinosaur sensation 😂

Dude I can relate to all this so much!! I actually remember in middle school, the school decided to let students submit designs for the yearbook that year. I was absolutely stoked, and since I just got my drawing tablet a month prior, I decided that this was gonna be my first big art peice. This was back in 2020, and I decided to do a whole digital drawing of stuff like people having to do school digitally, and wearing masks, etc. and I was so proud of myself for that… the results came in and they chose the popular kid that submitted the crayola crayon drawing 🗿

I get you. Last year we were making a Santa for Christmas and the teacher decided to make it a competition. I got to work, trying a new watercolor technique for my shadows and lights, did a whole background, drew Santa while taking his clothes out of the wash and finding that he had put it in with the withes and now it’s pink and it was awesome. A drawing of Santa standing there on a white background won. Not because it was the best, but because everyone decided to vote against me cause “it wasn’t fair to them since I was too good”

This is halarious because is the percfect example to when an artist makes a funny doodle as a 5 min joke and becomes it's most recogniced piece but when they do a project that literaly took months and it's the perfect pice of art and it bearly gets recognized

As a techie, I can’t help but say I LOVEEEEEE the Windows XP reference!! 😆 this is a great video, illy! It must’ve been AWESOME being known at the state fair!

Having the school make you do something you love as a chore just brings all the fun out of it. Everyone hates being told what to do with what they like!!

This video really hit home for me, because I often find that the art or writing assignments that I genuinely cared about would get poor results compared to the ones that I half-assed. It ended up messing with my work ethic once I got to grad school, where I had to unlearn my habit of handing in the bare minimum, since the bare minimum wasn’t enough to give me high grades anymore.

Ok I literally had to hunt down this video- I am on the phone with my partner and their little sister is watching a video, it’s this video. I can’t focus at all but them and I are so invested we are silent and listening lol❤ (earned you a sub)

The crappy quick thing winning/getting more attention than the beautiful, carefully crafted one is such an universal artist experience

This is such a cute video, I love how perfectly it captures being an art kid throughout the years and the struggle of wanting some form of reward for your work while also trying to understand the reward of the work itself.

The Bell Pepper spoke to my soul! I did a crumpled paper project that ended up being a painted bird on a cardboard and plaster rock and people LOVED that one, but the stuff I worked on that I liked got no recognition. It’s such a rough art burn out when that pre-realization sets in…but thank you for continuing to make art and make these videos :)

I love your story telling !

Not reading the prompt before drawing masterpiece that you love and then submitted is an nightmarish experience I'm confident every artist who has drawn for school has been through lmao

14:09 It jingles!!! I love stuff that jingles! I like bells, they're fun, and also puns! Bell Pepper would literally be one of my favourite things if I had it!

I'm on the autism spectrum and I have dyspraxia (for me this means I have a lot of coordination and communication issues especially when I was younger). I loved doing drawing when I was younger but was constantly told that my art and drawings were terrible so in protest to this, the few friends I had, and I photocopied a bunch of my drawings and blue tacked them all over the school. Probably wasn't the best idea, but we had fun.

The soapstone bunny and the bell pepper are a fun pairing: One is a simple concept done to painstaking perfection, and the other is a fun and out there concept haphazardly done. Actually, it is still better made than almost anything I ever got my sorry hands on.

I actually feel this although with both art and writing. I actually did a poetry club in high school, just for fun and enouraged by my freshmnan english teacher who loved my poems in our assignments. The librarian who ran the club told us the university was going to hold a poetry competition at a Book Festival. Top 3 get prize money, and read their poems at the festival. I didn't really think I'd win but joined for the fun of it. After submitting I kind of forgot about it until I came into the library and the librarian told me congrats and handed me an envelope. I won first place in the high school division! I was shocked but amazed, and for the top 3 we had to go to the festival and read our poems aloud. I was the only one from my school to show up but everyone loved my reading. I even got a pic of me with the mayor and the poet who judged the contest and later given a certificate, my band class even let me read my poem to them. I was so happy. I even went to beat poetry and participated bc how much I loved performing my poems. Then in college I took a course on Craft of Creative Writing (this is a course where you learn what makes a piece its genre such as memoirs, gothic horrors, dystopia, and poetry). And the teacher had a Master's in Poetry. So I thought I'd nail it on Poetry sections. But every time I handed in an assignment, he gave me a C and his critique usually turned to, 'sounds like something an angsty teen writes in their journal'. I was so upset, and one assignment I thought, 'hey, wonder what he'll grade an award-winning poem'. So, I sent the poem I won from that contest. He graded it a C. I was so frustrated I gave in to the writing a poem similar to the prompt's style of the classical vague sense. He graded that one an A. I hate that poem. I actually haven't written poetry since that class cause I still question if anyone would care about it. I sometimes wish I had the same sense in fun I did before college but idk.

11:10 VEGGIE TALES BUNNY SONG!!! :O That brought back some nostalgia

one of the things they never tell you about being an artist is that sometimes theres no way to predict what people will like about your art

14:35 NISHINOYA CALENDAR SPOTTED I LOVE YOU❤.

Caterpie 12:17

14:52 i have no idea if that was intentional, but the slow zoom out of your room with all the merchandise and plushies of media that you are passionate about during the existential rant about whether or not creating anything is even worth it because you can never control how or even if people appreciate your work is simply brilliant.

I love how illy drew their friends in middle school by drawing her friends now 😂

12:35 staring at the tugger drawing--