When he tells his friends he teaches his drawing classes inside a structured syllabi, they react with disbelief. They think he is a person who does not abide by any structure. They do not understand he is really only a man who does not allow structure to be a constraint for what he might do in a class. They believe a structure must be written down with bullet points. They do not know that the structure of his thoughts are indeed written down with bullet points. But inside his head. And so today, he experiments with the idea of putting it down on paper, for whatever good it will do.
And so follows the bullet points:
To teach young people how to draw, start by explaining that drawing cannot exactly be taught as a lesson in school. What the teacher can do is to teach exercises to help the student teach himself or herself over time how to draw better inside a repeating cycle of learning and practice. Inside repeating cycles: insight, the acquisition of technique, the individual development of unique personal style, a greater clarification of the functional uses of drawing as a method of communication and inquiry; and of course, experience.
The good drawing teacher must work from the premise he or she is not teaching students how to draw. The good teacher teaches exercises. The exercises give the students a viable set of experiences to open their minds to the elements which make drawings a beautiful and effective tool for imparting visions and thoughts. These elements are called the elements of form: line, value, color, texture, shape, space, balance, composition, etc.
People do not see the same way. It takes some special effort to see the forms themselves beyond the whole functional image our brains produce. The good teacher converses with the students to find out how they see the aforementioned elements of form in the drawings they are making.
The good teacher must dispel inside the student’s mind unviable impositions, which unfortunately form part of the wrong mainstream expectations of the drawing craft. Such an imposition, for instance, as getting the likeness and the exact proportions of the model (for often, though not exclusively, a still model is used). Likeness and correct proportions come naturally in the course of learning to draw. It is not a critical primary issue. The suspension of immediate judgement is more important. It is important in all creative activity. The creative person must know how and when to suspend judgement in the creative process. And then, when and how to apply it. This is a critical issue in learning how to draw.
Most of his students come to his classroom with a very linear-oriented style. He explains to them that this linear orientation often makes them blind to values (light and shade). The first exercises he teaches his students have to do with line, of course, but these are merely exercises to put lines into a clear perspective so they help the students understand and see values; and how spaces of values interact to give the drawing the illusion of volume and perspective. The teacher can then use volume and perspective to assess the quality of the drawing. It enters the vocabulary of their conversations between each other. And these conversations are essential in the teaching process.
The teaching of all the other elements of form follow after this method: First teach exercises; then provide many opportunities to practice; then develop a clear vocabulary for assessing the output from the exercises; then converse with the students over their drawings, giving them demonstrations where these are needed; then finally, set them free by telling them they can take these exercises into the future beyond the constraints of the classroom. A note to tell them that they will get amazingly better, especially after they have graduated from the classroom, is necessary.
In most cases, the teacher works by asking the students to draw from a model. At some points in the process, the teacher must teach the student not to allow the “realistic” proportions of the model be a constraint for a more expressive and/or aesthetic drawing. It is important for the good teacher to teach the functional necessity of distortion. The teacher should also make sure to teach drawings made straight from the mind and imagination. Abstract drawings are a necessity because only by this exercise can a teacher make sure the students understand the elements form functionally.
In the next Kinutils: A few exercises in drawing.
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