Lemme tell ya, that shit sounds like high school art class to me... you know, with the teachers being all like "you should use this type of pencil". In fact, back in high school I remember the teacher for drawing class insisted that we go out and get those Ebony pencils for the class. Of course, they were like less than a buck each, and had a nice wide semisoft lead that was just amazingly good for shading, but .... damn that teacher for making me spend a buck on the right tools for the job!


At my university, art classes were serious business though. You take the basic freshman-level art and design class and you just signed up for 10-15 hours of homework a week and about $250 in supplies. Lots of people who take that class end up taking a GPA hit because of it because they think "oh, art classes are easy A's like they were in high school"...