tell me what you think about this, if you have the time, just the way i think about things...
even if your getting a job, become an artist yourself, and youll be more qualified for a more creative position! i always believed in that, and thats what i did... i dont agree with programmers making games. (which are toys, which are functional art for kids at heart) but dont want to get any art skills, because what are you going to do? screw up the look of the game by uncoordinated animation functions? i guess all youd have is some boring dirt shovelling job loading assets, theres no way they ever trust an unartistic guy to make a map editor, im positive, cause you dont know the tools an artist needs to make things look swish!
your scientific knowledge about colours, calculus (functions), tool internals, even the interface, will help you a great deal in even making a picture. and you see it every day, where a company will pick from a set of concepts and base scenes around the coolest concepts what artists supply the team... you can make your game drab and real, but it can be fun with funner colours, and thats what learning making colour pictures can help you understand how to do.
Let's turn it around shall we? Let's take a prop modeler as an example here. According to your logic, this modeler should know how to program, ideally he should be able to create a renderer that shows his props in a way that compliments it in every way. Because what are you going to do? Screw up the look of the game because you don't know how to utilize the engine? There is no way they ever trust an nontechnical guy to make art for the game, because you don't know the underlying implementation of representing models with the given data.
It just doesn't work that way.
In your second paragraph you are getting on the right path. Yes, it is beneficial (sometimes required) to know the theory behind art related stuff if you want to make proper implementations and an understanding of your toolchain is essential, but that does not equal the knowledge of how to make a model. If you're a graphics programmer, you would need to understand the underlying thought of your 3D modeling program, how stuff is represented, exported and whatnot, but that doesn't mean I need to know how to make a model (other than basic test stuff), that's a different aspect.
As a tools programmer making a level editor, I get a list of requirement by the ones who are going to use it. You work in collaboration with the designers/artist that are going to use it. They are the ones who are going to make it look "swish" with the tools you provided that was asked for.
Anyway, back to the subject.
Perhaps you have some friends who are into art? At my college, we have a programming and art course and most students would just poke an artist for some assets in return for credit given on their portfolio. In the end, there was this huge collection of models going around we could use (including non student stuff though, like sponza). If not, well.. most people here already provided some nice links :)
