Today was the first day with a live model! I got to draw too! Most fun day of TAing ever :)
Sidenote: Mary Ann opened up the class with an introduction to our model, consistently used her name throughout class, and created space for her to participate in the discussion times. I've never seen any other teacher do that with a live model in class. Very cool.
Sidenote: points for a "cultural plunge" experience, to an event of some other subculture in Missoula or the surrounds that students aren't already familiar with--done alone and in full presence of mind. Also cool!
Mary Ann opened class by setting today's emphasis (Students should be looking at spine, shoulders, pelvis--the big physical features. They should be empathizing with the pose of the figure, filling in what they don't know from looking with what they do know from their own bodies.)
Some phrases that made this come to life a bit:
"Hunt the drawing"
"Let it emerge on the page", "Find it", "Locate it on this 2D reality"
She did a quick demo drawing complete with common mistakes to avoid and some basic best practices, and connected today's work with some of our figure/ground study from last class--very explicit connection. We did a few short poses, about the length of one song, and turned all our boards inward for a brief critique. For the first few drawings, Mary Ann talked about specific elements that were working, and what she'd ask the student to do if there were more time. As we worked our way around the circle, she started posing the same questions to students instead--"What do you think is working well? What would I tell you to do next?"
Sometimes she would point out a student strength from a different drawing to emulate and pull in. "You'll learn way more from each other than you ever will from me"--and repeated again that they should be looking around, walking around, "appropriating".
Students picked up on the patterns quickly and made HUGE improvements in the second set of drawings.
Constant switching: "Anytime you're good at something we'll tell you to do something else."
Reflection: "Write down what you learned"...and she explained why, too.
Thursday, September 15, 2016
9/12 Observation
Students started class by tacking their homework drawings to the wall. Some high points of the discussion:
Opening: Are there any cultures that don't set up illusion in the picture frame:
A: Egypt, Classical Greece, some of Japan, Tibet, the Taj Mahal, SE Asia
Q: Where did 3D illusion/atmospheric perspective come from?
A: (students were silent)
Q (clarified): You know it was alive and well in the Renaissance...where was that taking place? ...the idea was to reproduce what the human eye can see...
Conversation follows about the power of the Church commissioning artists to draw humankind according to the Catholic Church's image of God. Protestantism was the beginning of the notion of "everyman"/"common man". Why all this--because religious texts, world history, art history are all different routes to understand context, help understand the whole tool you're learning in this class. Mary Ann very specifically allowed time for students to digest ("Pause and think!").
Q: Where does our sense of design come from? ...Pause, don't answer.
She was clear about the importance of context, how broadening understanding of trends at a global scale, over long periods of time, can broaden understanding not only of this artistic process but of personal process and points of departure. She was also clear about when she did want answers--and when questions were so big or broad or important that now wasn't the time to give any concrete response.
"As you plug away at your art career, plug away at world history."
"This skill is ONE PIECE of a very large pie."
She was also explicit about the fact that students should be--in some form--taking notes during all of this. Seems to be some resistance/different expectations to this coming from students--this has been repeated several times already.
//
Brief wall crit
Q: Which study does a good job with this assignment? (Follow up after brief discussion--"Here's what I would have chosen and why--it's always important to understand why.")
Brief side teaching moment on how to find angle, perspective drawing
Another side note on how to ask for recommendations, as a former student came by.
"Find your artistic kin, those who use a similar language to you, and think about how you're different."
On the skills students will develop in the class, and how they'll change over time-- "You may get rusty but you'll never lose it."
Wednesday, September 14, 2016
9/8 Reflection
Today's topic: atmospheric perspective. Assignment: three studies focusing respectively on emphasizing foreground, middleground, and background.
Mary Ann made a T-chart with headings of "Salient" and "Recessive" to organize thoughts on what comes forward in an image or scene and what doesn't (using examples from students' clothing in class)--with a lesson on using context to determine specific meaning when it's unknown. Memorable quotes from this segment of class:
"I'm going to throw you out into the water and bring you back in" --manages expectations
"This is how to be a student" and "This is how to take tests if you don't study" --referencing the context teaching moment
"Manipulate this axiom"--this is coming up again and again in her class...gets students invested in learning a rule so they can play with it more consciously later.
"You're learning in this class to make a judgement call on strategy" --again something I'm seeing she repeats. Don't set yourself up for failure by always trying something very difficult. Think critically about what will help you accomplish your goal. It's not always the most difficult way.
"Different schools/instructors use different language, ie value vs tone"
"The perimeter represents our time and space, while inside is infinite"
Most of the class was spent drawing, listening to music. At the end of each round of drawings, Mary Ann had students first self-evaluate on the page, then bring them up to her so she could 1) see how their evaluations matched or didn't and 2) get a diagnostic of ability level.
It was followed by a short critique where she was able to quickly identify a comfort with mark-making and material, but a lack of knowledge of perspective and figure/ground relationships--so, in flexible fashion, she made that the next homework assignment. Expectations for the process and how to set up these drawings at the beginning of class were very clear. She also outlined the purpose--not going to pay for a model until you can address the basics of drawing other (free) objects.
Mary Ann made a T-chart with headings of "Salient" and "Recessive" to organize thoughts on what comes forward in an image or scene and what doesn't (using examples from students' clothing in class)--with a lesson on using context to determine specific meaning when it's unknown. Memorable quotes from this segment of class:
"I'm going to throw you out into the water and bring you back in" --manages expectations
"This is how to be a student" and "This is how to take tests if you don't study" --referencing the context teaching moment
"Manipulate this axiom"--this is coming up again and again in her class...gets students invested in learning a rule so they can play with it more consciously later.
"You're learning in this class to make a judgement call on strategy" --again something I'm seeing she repeats. Don't set yourself up for failure by always trying something very difficult. Think critically about what will help you accomplish your goal. It's not always the most difficult way.
"Different schools/instructors use different language, ie value vs tone"
"The perimeter represents our time and space, while inside is infinite"
Most of the class was spent drawing, listening to music. At the end of each round of drawings, Mary Ann had students first self-evaluate on the page, then bring them up to her so she could 1) see how their evaluations matched or didn't and 2) get a diagnostic of ability level.
It was followed by a short critique where she was able to quickly identify a comfort with mark-making and material, but a lack of knowledge of perspective and figure/ground relationships--so, in flexible fashion, she made that the next homework assignment. Expectations for the process and how to set up these drawings at the beginning of class were very clear. She also outlined the purpose--not going to pay for a model until you can address the basics of drawing other (free) objects.
Saturday, September 3, 2016
Day 2 Reflection 9/1/16
Today's class focused mostly on setting the tone for the class as a safe space to build technical skills, especially for students who are less comfortable rendering.
The opening questions for reflection:
1. Something you are good at besides art
2. 2 things you want to experience outside of art before graduating
Follow up questions:
Q: Why did I ask those questions?
A: So we can remember what we're good at when we're having trouble here.
Q: Exactly, rendering the figure realistically is one skill out of millions. So why are we taking the time to study this?
A: Because it's about the act of translating...
and we talked for a while about how that skill of translation can be applied to other forms of art, and outside art.
She talked about figure drawing the way I think about running (and oh, okay, time in the studio too). Sometimes you just have "bad hair days", days when the flow isn't there, things just don't go smoothly. When this happens, she said, remember that in 20 years, or really 20 minutes, no one will remember or care.
We talked later about how in past classes she hadn't always taken this much time to set the tone in her classes, and it ended up costing more time later on when students got bogged down and discouraged. It feels clunky on the front end (I've experienced that before and allowed it to keep me from spending enough time doing it) but Mary Ann made it feel genuine and overall efficient. I'm hoping to learn from that, unlearn some of the rigidity from Teach For America...
She was also flexible--we headed over early to the University Gallery and had a brief talk about the work on display and how (though abstracted) it is relevant to figure drawing. After that she and I looked through the students' responses about strengths outside of art and used them to plan groups for them to present info from the textbook. We also started thinking about how we could use class time to help folks get started on some of the "outside of art" goals...
The opening questions for reflection:
1. Something you are good at besides art
2. 2 things you want to experience outside of art before graduating
Follow up questions:
Q: Why did I ask those questions?
A: So we can remember what we're good at when we're having trouble here.
Q: Exactly, rendering the figure realistically is one skill out of millions. So why are we taking the time to study this?
A: Because it's about the act of translating...
and we talked for a while about how that skill of translation can be applied to other forms of art, and outside art.
She talked about figure drawing the way I think about running (and oh, okay, time in the studio too). Sometimes you just have "bad hair days", days when the flow isn't there, things just don't go smoothly. When this happens, she said, remember that in 20 years, or really 20 minutes, no one will remember or care.
We talked later about how in past classes she hadn't always taken this much time to set the tone in her classes, and it ended up costing more time later on when students got bogged down and discouraged. It feels clunky on the front end (I've experienced that before and allowed it to keep me from spending enough time doing it) but Mary Ann made it feel genuine and overall efficient. I'm hoping to learn from that, unlearn some of the rigidity from Teach For America...
She was also flexible--we headed over early to the University Gallery and had a brief talk about the work on display and how (though abstracted) it is relevant to figure drawing. After that she and I looked through the students' responses about strengths outside of art and used them to plan groups for them to present info from the textbook. We also started thinking about how we could use class time to help folks get started on some of the "outside of art" goals...
Tuesday, August 30, 2016
Day 1 Reflection -- 8/30/16
I found Mary Ann's intro to Drawing 1 to be direct while still funny and a bit self deprecating. Several individual questions came up at the beginning of class, which she addressed informally, often asking students for their experience and input, which already created a sense of a "safe space" before it felt like class had formally, officially begun.
She used her introduction of me as a segue into different teaching and learning styles--students can seek out or listen for different methods and explanations from each of us. She got into this more by explicitly talking about how some students in this class will be renderers and some won't, how that doesn't determine value as a practicing artist, how you might be the worst in the class but by the end you'll be better than you were before. Strong renderers, she said, would be an asset, sharing insight with others. It diffused tension about "talent" and set a tone for individual comparisons only. She followed it up by clearly stating why we were still practicing figure drawing, if it doesn't determine artists' value--and continued to reiterate those reasons throughout the intro.
Talk about academic ethics was funny. "In history, it's called plagiarism; in art it's called appropriation." She encouraged students to openly look, copy, steal, adapt. They liked it. I liked it! I've never heard that in a course intro before. She also consistently offered students choices--about what materials to buy, when and where to work, etc--making a point of treating them as adults. Metaphors added color. Mary Ann talked about figure drawing in terms of jogging (for some people the first two miles just suck) and calisthenics (a practicum, not the end game).
When she needed to get into "real talk"--about evaluation specifics, expectations, anything really serious--she took a step away from the podium, away from the syllabus, and made more eye contact. It was slight but noticeable. Here, there weren't choices, there were expectations, but she also made a point to explain why those policies were fair.
She used her introduction of me as a segue into different teaching and learning styles--students can seek out or listen for different methods and explanations from each of us. She got into this more by explicitly talking about how some students in this class will be renderers and some won't, how that doesn't determine value as a practicing artist, how you might be the worst in the class but by the end you'll be better than you were before. Strong renderers, she said, would be an asset, sharing insight with others. It diffused tension about "talent" and set a tone for individual comparisons only. She followed it up by clearly stating why we were still practicing figure drawing, if it doesn't determine artists' value--and continued to reiterate those reasons throughout the intro.
Talk about academic ethics was funny. "In history, it's called plagiarism; in art it's called appropriation." She encouraged students to openly look, copy, steal, adapt. They liked it. I liked it! I've never heard that in a course intro before. She also consistently offered students choices--about what materials to buy, when and where to work, etc--making a point of treating them as adults. Metaphors added color. Mary Ann talked about figure drawing in terms of jogging (for some people the first two miles just suck) and calisthenics (a practicum, not the end game).
When she needed to get into "real talk"--about evaluation specifics, expectations, anything really serious--she took a step away from the podium, away from the syllabus, and made more eye contact. It was slight but noticeable. Here, there weren't choices, there were expectations, but she also made a point to explain why those policies were fair.
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