Join me below the fold for more snapshots of classroom demos during the intro to pen + ink portion of my Beginning Drawing classes. Lions and tigers and bears - oh my!
As always, I utilize a disruptive technique in situating classes in real-world scenarios with real time exercises (Practical Applications of Textures 101).
This means leading the little posse of potential artisans around to different venues, specifically in this case to the UAF Museum of the North, and also for early morning classes, down the road to Fish & Game.
Typically I'll have time to bang out a four or five demos done in a students sketchbook while working elbow-to-elbow in front of the respective subjects. I try and use their tools and materials and thus for them to have something to take home and refer to as an example (besides handouts with examples). Some folks respond better to that instructional method - "watch me."
And there's usually a few more folks standing around directly behind me as I talk the process out. I get in trouble for any busking in front of tourists, so now I mostly troll for Instagram followers with a handy QR code to 907nuggets.
This "training" is in-between the ultimate purity of drawing from life (tricky with bears) and copying from reference photos. At this point I'm so trained that it's almost reflexive when out & about to whip out a pad + pencil and start sketching. It also fosters a deeper connection with the time & place, as in here & now.
The most meta of all is the point to have fun, and not take all this artsy-fartsy stuff so serious. Which is a sneaky way to get someone to spend hours and hours making lots and lots of little dots (ie stippling), or obsessive hatching, cross-hatching and scumbling techniques. And the time spent making marks = the better the pieces will look.
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