To be clear, I can't create art to a middle school passing grade level. Like there's a chance I could've failed a year of middle school if I hadn't started bribing classmates to occasionally help with my drawings for me at some point in 7th or 8th grade. My ability to draw, even by grade 9, just never improved to the level most of my peers had reached by grade 2 or 3 lol

Not for a lack of trying either. 9 years of something like 32 weeks of school per year, 2 art classes of 45 minutes per week on average, adds up to 432 hours of practice that was mostly drawing or painting (if you can call it that, using either watercolors or guache usually), only occasionally stuff like ceramics. Let's say 400 hours of drawing or painting. And I mean this is before you consider that I actually liked drawing up until some point and did it at home too - including before I ever started school. And also at preschool where I went for a year. Of course the only two things I ever drew were tractors and houses - because those had lots of straight lines. I imagine 4 year old me must've been very proud of them.

Starting grade 10 we had art history class instead. I memorized what needed to be memorized and got passing grades every time.

As you can probably tell, this is something I'm really salty about. Between art and music, my average grades in middle school were brought down just enough that I didn't usually make the equivalent of honor roll that we had here. Yes, I also suck at singing and unfortunately we did get graded on our singing too. However, while my singing skill is probably in like the bottom 10% of skill level, my drawing is somewhere in the bottom 0.1%

It's also why I hate the proverb "practice makes perfect" and much prefer the locally sourced alternative that translates to "practice makes you someone that practices a lot". Clearly practice doesn't make you very good if you were never dealt the cards. Practice what you're already naturally good at and you'll be great. Practice what you naturally suck at and maybe you'll be mediocre. Which is sometimes necessary, if we're talking about life skills for an example - better mediocre than nothing