I had a friend once whose father was an artist. He had a gallery for a bit, and had done a stark, mesmerising painting of a tiger that my friend hung in his living room. I close my eyes and I can still see that tiger, the paint piled up thick on the fur, the frightening energy of a beast frozen in movement, one paw raised, eyes fixed on the rest of us, that bland and deadly tiger confidence purring deep inside. "Did your dad like William Blake?" I asked. "YES!" said my friend. "It's that tiger! How did you know?" How could you not know? That's art I guess.
His dad had gone to art school in the fifties. Back then, I remember my friend explaining, for the first few weeks of art school you learned how to draw a circle. "Just a circle?" I asked, but there was no just about it. You had to learn how to draw a circle freehand. The circle had to be perfect. It took weeks. This was the foundation. Art school, I learned, back in the fifties, seemed whimsical, but when you tried the whimsy out for yourself with a pad and pen, you discovered it was actually a sheer form of rigour.
That's art school, then. But what about Art Sqool, which I have been attending for the last few days? Art Sqool is a game by the artist Julian Glander that has been out on PC and Mac for a few years, but which has just found its perfect home on the Switch. In Art Sqool you go to Art Sqool. Your teacher is a neural network. There are projects. You wander a campus. All that's missing really are those huge folders art students carry around that seem to act like rudders whenever it's windy out.