Creating Masterful Works
Express your creativity and inspire others as a fine artist with training from Hardin-Simmons University. Day-to-day responsibilities might include producing original artwork, developing your unique style, and exhibiting your creations. Contribute to the cultural and aesthetic richness of society with your artistic talents.
What to Expect
$60,560 Median Annual Salary
New job opportunities are less likely in the future.
No Data Found.
What you Should Know
- Design: Knowledge of design techniques, tools, and principles involved in production of precision technical plans, blueprints, drawings, and models.
- Computers and Electronics: Knowledge of circuit boards, processors, chips, electronic equipment, and computer hardware and software, including applications and programming.
- English Language: Knowledge of the structure and content of the English language including the meaning and spelling of words, and rules of composition and grammar.
- Production and Processing: Knowledge of raw materials, production processes, quality control, costs, and other techniques for maximizing the effective manufacture and distribution of goods.
- Fine Arts: Knowledge of the theory and techniques required to compose, produce, and perform works of music, dance, visual arts, drama, and sculpture.
- Education and Training: Knowledge of principles and methods for curriculum and training design, teaching and instruction for individuals and groups, and the measurement of training effects.
- Communications and Media: Knowledge of media production, communication, and dissemination techniques and methods. This includes alternative ways to inform and entertain via written, oral, and visual media.
- Customer and Personal Service: Knowledge of principles and processes for providing customer and personal services. This includes customer needs assessment, meeting quality standards for services, and evaluation of customer satisfaction.
- Mathematics: Knowledge of arithmetic, algebra, geometry, calculus, statistics, and their applications.
- Administration and Management: Knowledge of business and management principles involved in strategic planning, resource allocation, human resources modeling, leadership technique, production methods, and coordination of people and resources.
- Psychology: Knowledge of human behavior and performance; individual differences in ability, personality, and interests; learning and motivation; psychological research methods; and the assessment and treatment of behavioral and affective disorders.
- Administrative: Knowledge of administrative and office procedures and systems such as word processing, managing files and records, stenography and transcription, designing forms, and workplace terminology.
- Geography: Knowledge of principles and methods for describing the features of land, sea, and air masses, including their physical characteristics, locations, interrelationships, and distribution of plant, animal, and human life.
- Engineering and Technology: Knowledge of the practical application of engineering science and technology. This includes applying principles, techniques, procedures, and equipment to the design and production of various goods and services.
- Sales and Marketing: Knowledge of principles and methods for showing, promoting, and selling products or services. This includes marketing strategy and tactics, product demonstration, sales techniques, and sales control systems.
- Public Safety and Security: Knowledge of relevant equipment, policies, procedures, and strategies to promote effective local, state, or national security operations for the protection of people, data, property, and institutions.
- Sociology and Anthropology: Knowledge of group behavior and dynamics, societal trends and influences, human migrations, ethnicity, cultures, and their history and origins.
- Transportation: Knowledge of principles and methods for moving people or goods by air, rail, sea, or road, including the relative costs and benefits.
- Law and Government: Knowledge of laws, legal codes, court procedures, precedents, government regulations, executive orders, agency rules, and the democratic political process.
- Telecommunications: Knowledge of transmission, broadcasting, switching, control, and operation of telecommunications systems.
- Building and Construction: Knowledge of materials, methods, and the tools involved in the construction or repair of houses, buildings, or other structures such as highways and roads.
- Chemistry: Knowledge of the chemical composition, structure, and properties of substances and of the chemical processes and transformations that they undergo. This includes uses of chemicals and their interactions, danger signs, production techniques, and disposal methods.
- Mechanical: Knowledge of machines and tools, including their designs, uses, repair, and maintenance.
- Economics and Accounting: Knowledge of economic and accounting principles and practices, the financial markets, banking, and the analysis and reporting of financial data.
- History and Archeology: Knowledge of historical events and their causes, indicators, and effects on civilizations and cultures.
- Personnel and Human Resources: Knowledge of principles and procedures for personnel recruitment, selection, training, compensation and benefits, labor relations and negotiation, and personnel information systems.
- Philosophy and Theology: Knowledge of different philosophical systems and religions. This includes their basic principles, values, ethics, ways of thinking, customs, practices, and their impact on human culture.
- Physics: Knowledge and prediction of physical principles, laws, their interrelationships, and applications to understanding fluid, material, and atmospheric dynamics, and mechanical, electrical, atomic and sub-atomic structures and processes.
- Biology: Knowledge of plant and animal organisms, their tissues, cells, functions, interdependencies, and interactions with each other and the environment.
- Foreign Language: Knowledge of the structure and content of a foreign (non-English) language including the meaning and spelling of words, rules of composition and grammar, and pronunciation.
- Therapy and Counseling: Knowledge of principles, methods, and procedures for diagnosis, treatment, and rehabilitation of physical and mental dysfunctions, and for career counseling and guidance.
- Food Production: Knowledge of techniques and equipment for planting, growing, and harvesting food products (both plant and animal) for consumption, including storage/handling techniques.
- Medicine and Dentistry: Knowledge of the information and techniques needed to diagnose and treat human injuries, diseases, and deformities. This includes symptoms, treatment alternatives, drug properties and interactions, and preventive health-care measures.
Programs Related to this Career
Your Day to Day
- Use materials such as pens and ink, watercolors, charcoal, oil, or computer software to create artwork.
- Integrate and develop visual elements, such as line, space, mass, color, and perspective, to produce desired effects, such as the illustration of ideas, emotions, or moods.
- Confer with clients, editors, writers, art directors, and other interested parties regarding the nature and content of artwork to be produced.
- Maintain portfolios of artistic work to demonstrate styles, interests, and abilities.
- Market artwork through brochures, mailings, or Web sites.
- Study different techniques to learn how to apply them to artistic endeavors.
- Monitor events, trends, and other circumstances, research specific subject areas, attend art exhibitions, and read art publications to develop ideas and keep current on art world activities.
- Photograph objects, places, or scenes for reference material.
- Model substances such as clay or wax, using fingers and small hand tools to form objects.
- Create sculptures, statues, and other three-dimensional artwork by using abrasives and tools to shape, carve, and fabricate materials such as clay, stone, wood, or metal.
- Set up exhibitions of artwork for display or sale.
- Render drawings, illustrations, and sketches of buildings, manufactured products, or models, working from sketches, blueprints, memory, models, or reference materials.
- Shade and fill in sketch outlines and backgrounds, using a variety of media such as water colors, markers, and transparent washes, labeling designated colors when necessary.
- Frame and mat artwork for display or sale.
- Submit artwork to shows or galleries.
- Submit preliminary or finished artwork or project plans to clients for approval, incorporating changes as necessary.
- Collaborate with engineers, mechanics, and other technical experts as necessary to build and install creations.
- Cut, bend, laminate, arrange, and fasten individual or mixed raw and manufactured materials and products to form works of art.
- Develop project budgets for approval, estimating time lines and material costs.
- Create and prepare sketches and model drawings of cartoon characters, providing details from memory, live models, manufactured products, or reference materials.
- Create finished art work as decoration, or to elucidate or substitute for spoken or written messages.
- Create sketches, profiles, or likenesses of posed subjects or photographs, using any combination of freehand drawing, mechanical assembly kits, and computer imaging.
- Trace drawings onto clear acetate for painting or coloring, or trace them with ink to make final copies.
- Apply solvents and cleaning agents to clean surfaces of paintings, and to remove accretions, discolorations, and deteriorated varnish.
- Collaborate with writers who create ideas, stories, or captions that are combined with artists’ work.
- Brush or spray protective or decorative finishes on completed background panels, informational legends, exhibit accessories, or finished paintings.
- Teach artistic techniques to children or adults.
- Provide entertainment at special events by performing activities such as drawing cartoons.
Helpful Skills & Abilities
- Active Learning: Understanding the implications of new information for both current and future problem-solving and decision-making.
- Critical Thinking: Using logic and reasoning to identify the strengths and weaknesses of alternative solutions, conclusions, or approaches to problems.
- Active Listening: Giving full attention to what other people are saying, taking time to understand the points being made, asking questions as appropriate, and not interrupting at inappropriate times.
- Judgment and Decision Making: Considering the relative costs and benefits of potential actions to choose the most appropriate one.
- Reading Comprehension: Understanding written sentences and paragraphs in work-related documents.
- Speaking: Talking to others to convey information effectively.
- Complex Problem Solving: Identifying complex problems and reviewing related information to develop and evaluate options and implement solutions.
- Social Perceptiveness: Being aware of others’ reactions and understanding why they react as they do.
- Time Management: Managing one’s own time and the time of others.
- Writing: Communicating effectively in writing as appropriate for the needs of the audience.
- Monitoring: Monitoring/Assessing performance of yourself, other individuals, or organizations to make improvements or take corrective action.
- Operations Analysis: Analyzing needs and product requirements to create a design.
- Coordination: Adjusting actions in relation to others’ actions.
- Service Orientation: Actively looking for ways to help people.
- Learning Strategies: Selecting and using training/instructional methods and procedures appropriate for the situation when learning or teaching new things.
- Operations Monitoring: Watching gauges, dials, or other indicators to make sure a machine is working properly.
- Persuasion: Persuading others to change their minds or behavior.
- Quality Control Analysis: Conducting tests and inspections of products, services, or processes to evaluate quality or performance.
- Systems Analysis: Determining how a system should work and how changes in conditions, operations, and the environment will affect outcomes.
- Mathematics: Using mathematics to solve problems.
- Operation and Control: Controlling operations of equipment or systems.
- Systems Evaluation: Identifying measures or indicators of system performance and the actions needed to improve or correct performance, relative to the goals of the system.
- Equipment Selection: Determining the kind of tools and equipment needed to do a job.
- Management of Financial Resources: Determining how money will be spent to get the work done, and accounting for these expenditures.
- Negotiation: Bringing others together and trying to reconcile differences.
- Management of Material Resources: Obtaining and seeing to the appropriate use of equipment, facilities, and materials needed to do certain work.
- Troubleshooting: Determining causes of operating errors and deciding what to do about it.
- Instructing: Teaching others how to do something.
- Management of Personnel Resources: Motivating, developing, and directing people as they work, identifying the best people for the job.
- Programming: Writing computer programs for various purposes.
- Technology Design: Generating or adapting equipment and technology to serve user needs.
- Equipment Maintenance: Performing routine maintenance on equipment and determining when and what kind of maintenance is needed.
- Installation: Installing equipment, machines, wiring, or programs to meet specifications.
- Repairing: Repairing machines or systems using the needed tools.
- Science: Using scientific rules and methods to solve problems.
- Originality: The ability to come up with unusual or clever ideas about a given topic or situation, or to develop creative ways to solve a problem.
- Fluency of Ideas: The ability to come up with a number of ideas about a topic (the number of ideas is important, not their quality, correctness, or creativity).
- Visualization: The ability to imagine how something will look after it is moved around or when its parts are moved or rearranged.
- Arm-Hand Steadiness: The ability to keep your hand and arm steady while moving your arm or while holding your arm and hand in one position.
- Visual Color Discrimination: The ability to match or detect differences between colors, including shades of color and brightness.
- Near Vision: The ability to see details at close range (within a few feet of the observer).
- Finger Dexterity: The ability to make precisely coordinated movements of the fingers of one or both hands to grasp, manipulate, or assemble very small objects.
- Manual Dexterity: The ability to quickly move your hand, your hand together with your arm, or your two hands to grasp, manipulate, or assemble objects.
- Category Flexibility: The ability to generate or use different sets of rules for combining or grouping things in different ways.
- Oral Comprehension: The ability to listen to and understand information and ideas presented through spoken words and sentences.
- Deductive Reasoning: The ability to apply general rules to specific problems to produce answers that make sense.
- Far Vision: The ability to see details at a distance.
- Inductive Reasoning: The ability to combine pieces of information to form general rules or conclusions (includes finding a relationship among seemingly unrelated events).
- Information Ordering: The ability to arrange things or actions in a certain order or pattern according to a specific rule or set of rules (e.g., patterns of numbers, letters, words, pictures, mathematical operations).
- Oral Expression: The ability to communicate information and ideas in speaking so others will understand.
- Problem Sensitivity: The ability to tell when something is wrong or is likely to go wrong. It does not involve solving the problem, only recognizing that there is a problem.
- Speech Clarity: The ability to speak clearly so others can understand you.
- Speech Recognition: The ability to identify and understand the speech of another person.
- Written Comprehension: The ability to read and understand information and ideas presented in writing.
- Control Precision: The ability to quickly and repeatedly adjust the controls of a machine or a vehicle to exact positions.
- Multilimb Coordination: The ability to coordinate two or more limbs (for example, two arms, two legs, or one leg and one arm) while sitting, standing, or lying down. It does not involve performing the activities while the whole body is in motion.
- Selective Attention: The ability to concentrate on a task over a period of time without being distracted.
- Written Expression: The ability to communicate information and ideas in writing so others will understand.
- Flexibility of Closure: The ability to identify or detect a known pattern (a figure, object, word, or sound) that is hidden in other distracting material.
- Static Strength: The ability to exert maximum muscle force to lift, push, pull, or carry objects.
- Perceptual Speed: The ability to quickly and accurately compare similarities and differences among sets of letters, numbers, objects, pictures, or patterns. The things to be compared may be presented at the same time or one after the other. This ability also includes comparing a presented object with a remembered object.
- Trunk Strength: The ability to use your abdominal and lower back muscles to support part of the body repeatedly or continuously over time without “giving out” or fatiguing.
- Dynamic Strength: The ability to exert muscle force repeatedly or continuously over time. This involves muscular endurance and resistance to muscle fatigue.
- Time Sharing: The ability to shift back and forth between two or more activities or sources of information (such as speech, sounds, touch, or other sources).
- Depth Perception: The ability to judge which of several objects is closer or farther away from you, or to judge the distance between you and an object.
- Extent Flexibility: The ability to bend, stretch, twist, or reach with your body, arms, and/or legs.
- Mathematical Reasoning: The ability to choose the right mathematical methods or formulas to solve a problem.
- Number Facility: The ability to add, subtract, multiply, or divide quickly and correctly.
- Speed of Closure: The ability to quickly make sense of, combine, and organize information into meaningful patterns.
- Wrist-Finger Speed: The ability to make fast, simple, repeated movements of the fingers, hands, and wrists.
- Auditory Attention: The ability to focus on a single source of sound in the presence of other distracting sounds.
- Gross Body Coordination: The ability to coordinate the movement of your arms, legs, and torso together when the whole body is in motion.
- Stamina: The ability to exert yourself physically over long periods of time without getting winded or out of breath.
- Gross Body Equilibrium: The ability to keep or regain your body balance or stay upright when in an unstable position.
- Hearing Sensitivity: The ability to detect or tell the differences between sounds that vary in pitch and loudness.
- Memorization: The ability to remember information such as words, numbers, pictures, and procedures.
- Rate Control: The ability to time your movements or the movement of a piece of equipment in anticipation of changes in the speed and/or direction of a moving object or scene.
- Reaction Time: The ability to quickly respond (with the hand, finger, or foot) to a signal (sound, light, picture) when it appears.
- Response Orientation: The ability to choose quickly between two or more movements in response to two or more different signals (lights, sounds, pictures). It includes the speed with which the correct response is started with the hand, foot, or other body part.
- Explosive Strength: The ability to use short bursts of muscle force to propel oneself (as in jumping or sprinting), or to throw an object.
- Dynamic Flexibility: The ability to quickly and repeatedly bend, stretch, twist, or reach out with your body, arms, and/or legs.
- Speed of Limb Movement: The ability to quickly move the arms and legs.
- Glare Sensitivity: The ability to see objects in the presence of a glare or bright lighting.
- Night Vision: The ability to see under low-light conditions.
- Peripheral Vision: The ability to see objects or movement of objects to one’s side when the eyes are looking ahead.
- Sound Localization: The ability to tell the direction from which a sound originated.
- Spatial Orientation: The ability to know your location in relation to the environment or to know where other objects are in relation to you.
Related Careers
Keep Exploring
Writers and Authors
Originate and prepare written material, such as scripts, stories, advertisements, and other material.
View CareerSet and Exhibit Designers
Design special exhibits and sets for film, video, television, and theater productions. May study scripts, confer with directors, and conduct research to determine appropriate architectural styles.
View CareerMusicians and Singers
Play one or more musical instruments or sing. May perform on stage, for broadcasting, or for sound or video recording.
View CareerMusic Directors and Composers
Conduct, direct, plan, and lead instrumental or vocal performances by musical artists or groups, such as orchestras, bands, choirs, and glee clubs; or create original works of music.
View CareerMedia Programming Directors
Direct and coordinate activities of personnel engaged in preparation of radio or television station program schedules and programs, such as sports or news.
View CareerGraphic Designers
Design or create graphics to meet specific commercial or promotional needs, such as packaging, displays, or logos. May use a variety of mediums to achieve artistic or decorative effects.
View CareerFine Artists
Create original artwork using any of a wide variety of media and techniques.
View CareerFilm and Video Editors
Edit moving images on film, video, or other media. May work with a producer or director to organize images for final production. May edit or synchronize soundtracks with images.
View CareerActors
Play parts in stage, television, radio, video, or film productions, or other settings for entertainment, information, or instruction. Interpret serious or comic role by speech, gesture, and body movement to entertain or inform audience. May dance and sing.
View CareerRelated Job Titles
This page includes information from O*NET OnLine by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license.