Teaching drawing is frustrating unless your students are willing to work outside of class in a sketchbook every day. If that sketchbook is not filled to the brim, with pages and pages of drawings, your classroom efforts are wasted. One simply cannot understand the concepts until the hours of effort have been put in to the equation.
I just read the most interesting essay by Adam Gopnik in The New Yorker magazine, "Life Studies or What I learned when I learned to draw". (The article is not posted online yet, the link only takes you to a brief description, in the issue dated June 27, 2011.) I would love to quote directly from the essay but I think that would be violating copyright issues. I can only paraphrase about some of the most interesting passages.
Adam Gopnik talks about the internal struggle between what he actually sees and the pre-conceived mental images in his brain. He discovered that drawing is pretty much like everything else you learn to do, discouraging at first, laborious, slowly building up by small sometimes ugly bits. After studying drawing from a live model in the studio of a very serious realist, he began to comprehend the struggle and satisfaction of the vision put on paper.
I enjoyed reading an account of art written by a journalist who is able to put into descriptive words what is going on in my head when I do what I love most to do.
Adam Gopnik talks about the internal struggle between what he actually sees and the pre-conceived mental images in his brain. He discovered that drawing is pretty much like everything else you learn to do, discouraging at first, laborious, slowly building up by small sometimes ugly bits. After studying drawing from a live model in the studio of a very serious realist, he began to comprehend the struggle and satisfaction of the vision put on paper.
I enjoyed reading an account of art written by a journalist who is able to put into descriptive words what is going on in my head when I do what I love most to do.
