Teaching Drawing

Teaching drawing can be daunting, mostly due to our preconceived ideas of what drawing is. My course, ‘Exploring Drawing and Illustration’ has a strong emphasis on the ‘exploring’ part of the title.

Within the sessions learners explore drawing techniques. There is a focus on ensuring that learners understand the techniques, and the processes attached to them. Time is also taken to explore artists, analysing and applying their practices to the learners’ own work and exploring materials to create new, original works (Anderson and Krathwohl, 2001). I believe that it is only through this tri-exploration, which has parallels to Aristotle’s’ ideas around; theoria (thinking), poiesis (making), and praxis (doing) (Smith, 1999, 2011) that learners’ can engage in one unified process which allows them to develop their creative outcomes (Gadamer 1979).

Praxis takes place with the engagement in set drawing activities. Each designed to encourage learners start to explore drawing in new ways. By building on these techniques and using formative assessments, including peer and self-assessment, learners can master skills and develop their drawing (Bloom, 1971).

Drawing Activities:

Quick fire line drawing; creating a drawing of a still life with different line drawing techniques within short time periods of 30seconds, 1minute, 2minutes, 5minutes and 10minutes.

Doodling; inspired by Chris Riddell’s ‘A Doodle A Day’ (Riddell, 2015), learners are asked to complete six doodles without a direct reference point; a house, a crowd of people, flowers, a dog, a cup cake and a fish on a bike.

Drawing without a pencil; using tape or sting to execute line drawings allows learners to become freer in their drawing – and can be particularly beneficial when working with continuous line, as the materiality lends itself to be continuous, unlike a pencil which is easily took off a page.

Grid drawing; allowing learners to concentrate on sections of imagery for 1:1 scale drawing and increased scale drawings.

Large scale group drawing; taking away the hones of being the sole artist of a piece of art.

The engagement in praxis allows the learners to develop a critical awareness of their own art practice, allowing for doing and reflection to take place at the same time. Letting learners to analyses their actions and make alterations in real-time. This results in progress being made. This has clear links to Kolb’s’ experiential learning cycle of; doing, reviewing, learning, planning (1984).

While there are benefits in each of Aristotle’s categories, there is definitely something to be said about just ‘doing’ as a means of research and reflection that I find particularly conductive of learning and that sit alongside pedagogical theories of learning, such as Dale’s Cone of Experience, which in similar terms suggests that doing real things is a far superior way of learning, than say just reading about the subject (Dale, 1969). Creative subjects lend themselves well to this type of learning as so much of the session is taken up with the practical activities which embed this naturally.

To conclude, while teaching drawing can be daunting by drawing on educational pedagogies and finding the value in different types of knowledge the structure to teach the skill begins to fall into place.

References

Anderson, L.W., Krathwohl and Bloom, B.S. (2001) A taxonomy for learning, teaching, and assessing: a revision of Bloom's taxonomy of educational objectives. Longman.

Bloom, B.S. (1971) Mastery Leaning. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.

Dale, E. (1969) Audiovisual Methods in Teaching. 1969, NY: Dryden Press.

Gadamer, H-G. (1979). Truth and Method. London: Sheed and Ward.

Kolb, D. A. (1984) Experiential Learning. Englewood Cliffs, NJ. Prentice Hall.

Riddell, C. (2015) A Doodle a Day. Macmillan Children's Books; Main Market edition.

Smith, M. K. (1999, 2011) What is praxis? Encyclopaedia of Informal Education. [accessed 27/11/19].

The Road Sign Collection

The Road Sign Collection started by chance after an art walk during an art tutor CPD day run by NEAAT (Network of East Anglian Art Teachers). As a group we were instructed to walk around the Fine City of Norwich and document the walk with; photos, drawings, rubbings. During this walk, I photographed road signs. I was drawn to these due to the nature of my art practice, which is concerned with the relationship between text and site.

The choice may have also been influenced by my interest in what Duchamp calls the ‘unchoice’ (O’Doherty, 1986), with so many things to look at in a fine city and I am choosing to focus my attention on road signs. They struck me as ready-mades in a site-specific installation, something chaotic, yet powerful in their ability to direct traffic (Ranciere, 2009).

However, despite my initially drawing my attention, once the day had come to an end I promptly forgot about the signs.

During this time, I was teaching a short course titled, ‘Exploring Drawing and Illustration’, keep your eyes peeled for a future blog post ‘Teaching Drawing’ for more on this, with one of the weeks focusing on line drawing techniques - something that I am usually guilty of neglecting within my practice. However, covering this topic and seeing my learners’ outcomes – particularly their continuous line drawings, made me want to give it ago within my art practice. 

Working with the long-forgotten road sign photographs, I drew mostly continuous line drawing of the photographs using a drawing tablet and digital pen. I found, as my learners had hours earlier that it is much easier to tell someone not to take the pen off the page than it is to not take your pen off the page. However, I found the continuous line drawing outcomes felt more natural and so persevered.

I felt that once the pen was lifted from the page the aura of that piece of work is set (Benjamin, 2015) and that those drawing which contained broken lines lost their authenticity. Having a break in the line looks too considered, shows a pause in the process and takes away from the overall aesthetic of the sign. 

The intention is that each road sign drawing will be an original (Benjamin, 2015), with each only drawn once, in one continuous movement. There is some irony in this conversation about originals, as the signs themselves are of course not original, rather they are multiples of something mass-produced and largely used. What it is that makes them original is the lived experiences the sign has had (Benjamin, 2015), reflected in the condition of each sign. The more these road signs have been interacted with, the more damage they will suffer (Dezeuze, 2007). This is something that I wanted to ensure that I captured within the drawings, to allow each sign to be recognisable as a copy of the original sign, drawing on Judovitz's notion of originals as multiples of sorts (1998). 

Initially, this activity did not have a purpose beyond flexing my continuous line drawing skills. However, as I created the drawings, I started to see the potential for a new project. I started to explore the use of block fill colour to make them more reminiscent of the originals. I was undecided on the outcomes and continued to keep a version in which they remain as continuous line drawings.

The use of colour in the signs felt important to their ability to carry out their function successfully. I had to start to consider the readability of the sign and our temporal relationship with them (Foster, 1996). Without the colouring, there is a sense of unfamiliarity to them (Deleuze and Guattairi, 1987).

The more time that I spend with the road signs the more I start to consider placing them into a new context (Grosenick, 2002). The text is direct and to the point when it is within the original context.

Within my practice, I look to have public-facing outcomes and these signs lend themselves to be repositioned into a new context, away from the road. I look to explore what this does to our relationship with these signs that we encounter every day once they are put into an art context. This starts with turning them into drawings and will perhaps end in a gallery context, allowing this new cultural framework to change the context of the road signs (Kwon, 2002).

Reference

Benjamin, W. (2015) Illuminations. London: Penguin.

Deleuze, G.  and Guattairi, F. (1987) A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. University of Minnesota Press.

Dezeuze, A. (2007) Tate Papers no.8: Blurring the Boundaries between Art and Life (in the Museum?). [online] http://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/tate-papers/08/blurringboundaries-between-art-and-life-in-the-museum. [accessed 23/10/19].

Grosenick, U. (2002) Art Now. Taschen GmbH; 01 edition.

Judovitz, D. (1998) Unpacking Duchamp: Art in Transit. University of California Press

Kwon, M. (2002) One Place After Another: Site Specific Art and Locational Identity. The MIT Press: Cambridge Massachusetts and London, England.

Ranciere, J. (2009) The Future of the Image. London: Verso.

Welcome

In this blog I will be exploring both my art practice and teaching philosophy, with a view to examine how the two co-exist.

A synopsis of my art practice:

My art practice explores the use of text and site. I often use found text within my work and will draw upon the texts original meaning to guide my practice. The use of our shared public language is essential to the works success.

Within my practice I create site specific installations and work with the concept of text/context to create works which resonate with the site. One of the aims of my art practice is to create situations in which dialectical relationships can take place between; the art and the audience/the art and the site.

My practice take a DIY approach and I strive to use materials that are inexpensive; such as electrical tape and ready mixed paint and processes which are easily accessible.

My teaching background:

I am currently teaching unaccredited art courses within an Adult Community Learning setting. Within this role I plan and deliver short art courses, the themes of these include, ‘Exploring Drawing and Illustration’.

As well as this I work part-time as a Study Skills and PASS (peer assisted student success) Adviser in a Higher Educational setting. Within this role I plan and deliver sessions, conduct 1-2-1 tutorials and facilitate PASS Leader Training. Sessions range from presentation skills to leaflet design.

I am also currently running a Creative Practitioner Support Programme at SPACE Colchester, 37 Queen Street. Each month will see two artist feedback sessions open to all creatives; whether they are still studying, graduated, emerging or re-emerging. Offering opportunities for peer-to-peer feedback on work-in-progress.

Previously I have worked within an FE setting teaching Art and Design.