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I Drew Tippy the Turtle and Actually Graduated from the Art Instruction Schools Program.
After 104 years, I’m pretty sure I was their final student.
Whether you remember his name or not, Tippy the Turtle, along with Tiny the Mouse and an entire cast of characters are forever seared in the memories of millions of young people in the United States. For over a century, the correspondence school beckoned us to attempt to copy a simple cartoon character head for a chance at having their abilities recognized and being offered a chance at being a professional artist.
Founded in 1914, Art Instructions Schools created some of the most ubiquitous advertising of the time, recognizable by millions of young people that found the “talent test” in any number of newspapers, comic books, magazines, or even postcards and matchbooks. In the 1990s, TV ads would run in both the after school hours and late at night, selling us on a dream. Anyone who took the program could be a professional artist, and the commercial made such a better case than similar advertisements boasting correspondence courses in TV/VCR repair. It showed work by former students and glowing testimonials by people that had clearly been recorded decades earlier. Like Coca Cola and McDonald’s, the Art Instruction Schools commercials are a big part of media nostalgia for several generations of people.
