Art Instruction Schools
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Art Instruction Schools, better known to many as Art Instruction, Inc., is a home study correspondence course providing training in cartooning and illustration. [1] In its early years the school was named Federal School of Applied Cartooning.
The company is located in Minneapolis, Minnesota where it was founded in 1914 as a branch of the Bureau of Engraving, Inc., to train illustrators for both the growing printing industry and the Bureau itself. Artists who received this training through these home study courses entered the fields of newspapers, printing and advertising. [1] Joseph Almars (1884-1948), who was born in Minneapolis in 1884, was the vice president of the Bureau of Engraving and the president of Art Instruction, Inc. [2]
Art Instruction, Inc. was known to many aspiring artists as the Draw Me! School, because of the familiar "Talent Test" advertising campaigns seen in magazine ads, TV commercials and online promotions with the "Draw Me!" ad copy. [1]
As the company grew in popularity, it added instruction in cartooning, color, comics, composition, perspective and graphic design. The Fundamentals of Art course expanded to include all popular art techniques. [1]
One of the school's instructors was Minneapolis native Charles M. Schulz (later of Peanuts fame). When Schulz was in high school, his mother saw an ad for the Art Instruction, Inc. talent test that asked, “Do you like to draw?” Schulz took the $170 course, a huge sum during the Depression, while his father labored to make the payments. After World War II, Schulz worked on Catholic comic magazines and then signed on as an instructor with Art Instruction, Inc. He was still employed there when he began sketching the characters that later were developed into Peanuts. [3]
Textbooks used in the 1940s and 1950s were edited by the cartoonist-illustrator Coulton Waugh, who drew the Dickie Dare comic strip. In addition to its softcover textbooks (one for each subject in the art field), Art Instruction, Inc. also published its own magazine, The Illustrator, mainly devoted to the publication of outstanding student work. [4]
