Residency-Juxtaposition Arts-Drew- 3 Hrs
We’re starting a new project which happens to be Drews favorite project to prepare for. It’s the beginning of gesture drawing with a still life. The still life are an assortment of flowers that Drew curates specifically, and very particularly for this project. We had a couple tables placed in the middle of the room and about 6 vases dispersed on the tables so the students can get a good view on any vase no matter where they sat around the still life.
As student’s started to trickle in and it was time to get ready for class, we went over a couple vocabulary words that they were going to be hearing as apart of this lesson. Drew touched on the definition of what gesture and expression means, in drawing. After going those vocab words, he sat down at the horse and did a demo of the exercise.
For me I try to pay attention those most when one of the teachers I’m working under is doing a demo. It sets the mood for the exercise and it also sets a precedent for how I should be going about demos. In this case Drew would start drawing and talk as he was going. He didn’t talk to much, only when he felt it was necessary to point out certain parts of the exercise that he wanted to put emphasis on. He talked about the quality of the line, how using the graphite in different ways, can get you different line qualities and expressive marks. Once Drew was done with the demo the students grabbed their materials and got started on their still life drawings.
Something I continue to think about when I walk around the classroom, is how my constructive criticism might aid or confuse students. I get a little nervous when explaining things because I’m not the best at articulating my thoughts. I’ve been getting better but I’ve realized that my insecurities when it comes to speaking and giving students constructive criticism, sometimes prohibits me from giving feed back all together.
I’ve also realized that artistic vocabulary isn’t the largest, I’ve always been a little forgetful when it comes to remembering vocabulary from the artistic world. As long as I continue to remember and build my artistic vocabulary I think explaining and articulating myself will become less and less of an insecurity.
