NSFW: Do you think my art professor is too sensitive for criticizing me for drawing a male nude model with an erection?

Provoke him next time, by drawing an even bigger cock.

The professor is out of line. I’m assuming you were in a figure drawing class, and as such, you were drawing what you saw. It isn’t your issue if the guy was half hard.

Your professor is the problem – he/she seems to have difficulty understanding the difference between art and porn.

I’m pretty sure if it were that important to the professor, he could have hired a clothed model.

Well, what was the purpose of the exercise? And I hope the model wasn’t too embarrassed.

I think this is my new favorite question

You drew what you saw. Surely that was the point of the exercise. If the professor didn’t want you to draw the model with an erection, they should have made that clear. I don’t see an erection as being pornographic.

I agree with the others that your art teacher is out of line. You drew what you saw and what was real.

Boners is as boners does. Tell the teach “It’s natural.”

I fail to see why an erect penis is somehow offensive. I think your prof is out of line.

Entitle it Morning Glory. (Yes, I think the professor went too far in using it as an opportunity to give a morals lecture.)

And yeah. I’m having a hard time grasping how a professor teaching this class could be in anyway offended. It isn’t like it is a bible study class where you are asked to draw Jesus and you tack on a raging boner ejaculating loafs of bread.

It’s the age-old question of what is art, and what is just offensive exhibitionism
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Anyway, my neighbor Chuck wants to know where this school might be….

“draw Jesus and you tack on a raging boner ejaculating loafs of bread.”
Now that would be art.

No. That would be crude imagination @ARE_you_kidding_me.

AKA…ART!

If hackfraud bullshit like this is considered “art”, then even the crudest form of pornography must be seen as art, also.

Maybe you should have gone all Dali on him and sketched the model with 3 erections. LOL
I think your art professor is in the wrong line of work if he can’t handle a student drawing thier subject as is. haha

Tell him you thought it was a woodworking class.

I’m just curious, though. What was the nature of his subtle commentary?

The whole point of drawing from observation is to train your eyes to talk to your hands and get your brain to shut up for a bit. If you see an erect penis, you draw an erect penis.

Actually, @Coloma I don’t think that going “Dali” on him is the right terminology.

Didn’t Dali draw all those limp, melty things, all hanging down and runny like?

Can’t see Dali drawing an erection, more like Mister Softie or a Posterectionpocolypse.

@rojo Well, Dali was a surrealist so 3 penises would fit that theme. LOL

I’m surprised by your professor’s reaction. First of all, I never would have guessed that simply drawing a man’s penis erect makes a picture pornographic, but if it’s flaccid it’s not pornographic. It’s a naked man. I would think either a person is comfortable looking at the human body or not. Either the human body is porn or not in my opinion. What makes a naked woman pornographic? Erect nipples? Seeing her vulva?

I think it’s fine that for some people they view nudity as porn, I wouldn’t argue with them, except to say I would be very careful about laws or censoring, but if we don’t think about legality, and just the question of art or not, then each person has their own threshold regarding porn. I find it very odd that the threshold is an erect penis or not. I do think a piece of artwork can be art and porn at the same time though.

What’s someone like that doing being an art teacher who hires nudes? That’s hilariously silly of him, and unfair to you and others, unless the class subject is how to pointlessly repress and censor sexual reality.

Maybe you can paint a giant fig leaf being lifted by the erection.

And/or paint your teacher either scoffing or secretly staring at the erection but pretending not to.

Eh. Not a very good professor. Ignore the criticism. If your grade was affected, I would take the issue to the dean…

You did as instructed, drew the assigned subject as it appeared. You are NOT in any part responsible for what the assigned subject was and/or how it appeared, therefore, you are NOT in the wrong.

This instructor is clearly assessing with personal conservatism which in turn is hypocrisy.
If he’s uncomfortable with any form of the penis being displayed in his students’ work he shouldn’t be using nude models.

The aforementioned is inappropriate/unprofessional conduct and should be reported, particularly if your grade suffered as a result but regardless he should be removed from the position.

On another note, I hope this wasn’t an embarrassing experience for the model.

I think it’s funny that I’m also taking a human sexuality course and the professor is also conservative. We had a class yesterday with her ranting for 30 minutes of how sexist modern advertising is. I agree that modern advertising can be overly sexual (girls in bikinis eating a hamburger) but my professor was unfairly shaming women, which in my opinion is actually worse.

@CWOTUS

He looked at my drawing and kind of shook his head and said “Pornhub much?”

I actually laughed out loud (not with him, but at him). After thinking about it, I think he was just trying to be funny, but completely failed. I’m more experienced than most of the other students, so he was probably surprised to see a realistic drawing of an erection. Most students were just drawing simple squiggles lol

I believe your “professor” was flat-out wrong—and wrong for exactly the same reason my kindergarten teacher was almost 70 years ago when she told me my little drawing of a man with arms and legs coming out of his head wasn’t the “right” way to draw a person. Both your teacher and mine were stifling natural creativity.

Thank God neither was Picaso’s instructor!

@Pachy As you know, many teachers feel that stamping-out creative thinking and keeping everyone in the ‘slow lane’ is best for the security of the planet (or something).

P.S. You just reminded me of that old SNL skit where Picaso is at a restaurant, and just leaves little doodle-sketches as a tip…..

“I am PICASO….!!”

Picasso.

And that reminds me of a cartoon with little Pablo coming home from kindergarten with a picture of a family looking like “The Demoiselles d“avignons” and a big red F on it. And his family is looking at it and all their faces look like the Demoiselles – typical Picasso distorted faces.

So @rockfan – draw the penis the way you see it! Are you at a conservative college by any chance? This is the second conservative teacher you’ve talked about.

@janbb I love the cartoon analogy. That painting is one of my favorites of Picasso’s.

@PullMyFinger,

PullMyFinger, I know that now, at 73, but not then, at 5. I was upset then, and clearly, all these years later I still am. Never drew again. &$;?@ teacher

@janbb

I live in the Bible Belt, but the college itself isn’t particularly conservative

@Pachy That reminds me of a story told by a professor in my psychology class many years ago…

One morning, a teacher told a class of young grade-school children to take the art materials in front of them and draw a tree. The kids each began to draw trees in wild colors, and leaves shaped like stars, or animals.

“No, NO, kids !!” the teacher said….“Trees have brown trunks, and green leaves !!”

So the kids started over, doing as they were told.

On the following Monday, the teacher said, “OK kids, today we’re going to create trees again, but you can make yours look aaaaany wayyyyy you want !!”

The kids picked up their crayons, and every one of them made trees with…...brown trunks, and green leaves….

Was your human sexuality teacher actually shaming women, or shaming the culture that feeds on making women into sexual object @rockfan?

@PullMyFinger, I believe it! Sad.

There’s a great dream scene in the movie “Six Degrees of Separation” on this subject.

And on the flip side there are kids who need to be nudged into creativity. When my granddaughter was 4, hadn’t started school yet, I bought her one of those felt coloring pages. It was a horse. As she was coloring along, she made the horse brown, then asked what color the mane should be.
I said, “It’s your horse, make it any color you want to! Make it…blue.”
She looked at me and said, “Horses don’t have blue hair!”
I said, “It’s your horse. It can have any color hair you want it to have!”
....She went to town! The rest of the picture was a burst of kaleidoscopic colors! Blue mane, purple tail, orange leaves…it was great.

I have another grandson who also struggles with creativity. He takes things so literally. He has a very difficult time understanding humor. I can count on one hand the number of times he caught one of my jokes and laughed involuntarily immediately, without me having to explain it. But he’s getting much, much better.

@PullMyFinger let’s assume that story is true because I just thought of something. If the teacher originally insisted that the students color the trees the “right” color on a Friday, then turned them loose to color it their own way on Monday…that means the teacher had to have thought about it over the weekend. Maybe talked to other people about it. Everyone has to learn things in different ways and different times.

There are many examples of artwork that is incomplete. You could have left that part out, as being distasteful. You don’t HAVE TO included EVERY detail for it to be art. You want exactness in detail? Become a photographer.

@kritiper

Who are you replying to?

@rockfan You.

I am curious…he had an erection for 5he ”...first few minutes….” It takes longer than a few minutes to sketch some one. So did you start with the erection and build the rest around it before it went away?

@Dutchess_III In art classes, particularly life drawing, younare often given times assisgnments such as do a 5 minute sketch or even a 30 second sketch.

OK. Well, in that case I guess you focus on the most important thing.

the cawk

I’d probably focus on the arms and shoulders and hands more than anything, the face 3rd. Then everything else in the time I had, with the cawk, last, because it does not interest me.

^But shoulders are interesting?

Far more interesting than dicks! Shoulders and forearms tell me a lot about a man. A penis I could draw from memory because they’re pretty much all the same.

I guess…

I can give a different side to this question from the model’s perspective, and help bring some sense here on your end.

I modeled once for a life drawing class at a local community college while I was in college my first time around. I was wearing a leotard, and sandals as I stood on the desk in the front of the class. I was given a pose, and held it for hour-long intervals.

My mother was with me, and she was allowed to draw me as well. What was cool was she was allowed to take one of the better sketches home from one of the students who had drawn more than one picture of me.

What I was appalled by was I was allowed to take a break and walk around to see the drawings done of me, and this older male student drew me naked, and in what he believed was full detail. My mother was shocked he had drawn me naked. Sure, my perfect, young, female figure must have inspired him to draw in such a manner, but I felt THAT would have been considered pornographic. However, he was not told to re-draw the picture, he was actually praised, which creeped me out.

Now, if I was the model, male, and nervously erect, yeah, I would let that slide, because well, it’s a natural reaction, especially if the guy is shy and doesn’t do those sorts of things for a living. Colleges tend to put out feelers on campuses, or word of mouth, which is how I found out about it-through my mother.

So, I would agree that your teacher is just a bit too uncomfortable with his sexuality if he’s worried about his student drawing an erection when there actually was one there. If need be, you could present your case to the dean if the teacher presses you.

@catlover1221 how uncomfortable would that be. That sucks.

My Mom was an artist and loved other artist’s work. She once had a small, original painting of a nude hanging in their bedroom. It wasn’t done by her. All my friends who saw it wanted to know if it was me. That creeped me out. Of course it wasn’t me. I would have never modeled for a nude picture.

@Dutchess_III Truly! I might have been gorgeous back then, but i was a bit of a prude, lol! So there’s no way i would have ever modeled nude, especially not in front of my mom, lol!

Right? And so weird that my friends thought it was me and it my dad could see it. I once asked mom to please take it down and she just dismissed me.

@Dutchess_III Oh, wow… That’s unreal…

Uncomfortable to say the least. The model was at least 20 years older than me, too. I guess I never saw the resemblance.

Wow, i only saw my resemblance in one picture, i have my great grandmother’s face, which is uncanny. Other than that, needless to say, i’m glad the woman the guy drew looked like a picasso so that no one could look at it and say, “I think I know her from somewhere…” lol! But that still didn’t make it any less disturbing…

This was an oil painting she picked up from somewhere. No idea who did it or who the model was. I don’t think it looked like me but….I guess others did. It was pretty awful.

@Dutchess_III Wow, that is freaky… Maybe your evil twin was quite the racey one?

She wasn’t my twin. The model was probably 10 or 15 years older than me. It was a full grown woman. I don’t KNOW what others saw.

@Dutchess_III Wow, i can’t imagine what that was like.

Awful.