Time to own up: I have been moonlighting as THE art teacher at the French School. And what an enlightening month that was! Having been teaching arts to 4 year olds and adults for a while, I thought I’d be ready for the job. But teaching “art” to classes of 11 to 15 year olds (with up to 27 students in class), was something else.
My first surprise came when I was told that I’d be expected to teach 13 classes (6èmes to 3èmes, which is roughly grade 6 to 9) in a week, one hour each, including any clean-up time!
Since I didn’t know how long I’d be substituting for the art teacher, and not wanting to spend time studying the curriculum for 4 different class levels, I thought I’d teach the whole 13 classes “How to Draw” (at least, the clean-up is fast). Considering that a large number of students already know how to draw (or rather have no fear of it), that another portion likes drawing (but only what they like and view teaching as interfering with their talent), that another portion only likes to draw “war, weapons and anything gory and violent” (I’ll let you guess who those are), and the last portion would rather not draw at all, how was I going to pull that one off?
I decided to first make them talk about what they thought made anything difficult to draw. Here’s their list (not in any order, since not everybody agreed):
- lots of details
- Perspective and foreshortening
- Shading
- Drawing (“copying”) something we know as opposed to, say, a fantasy picture. Since then, ressemblance is not an issue. Therefore, they also thought that abstract drawing would be the easiest to reproduce.
So, I told them we’d draw something we don’t need to recognise, without any shading (to start with), without foreshortening and perspective (since you need to train the eye for that). So, we were left with “lots of details”. I told them that shouldn’t be a problem, since we’d mostly draw lines, curves and such, and I’d be giving them lots of time to draw (which is what beginners usually lack at first).
In the end, I pulled out my own version of Albrecht Dürer’s Rhinoceros, and started drawing it step by step, in the method recommended by Mona Brookes. The result, after on month in the school and a few other projects, as an impressive gallery of over 200 drawings of a rhinoceros. The result of the experiment for me is also, that the classes where there were the most “successful” drawings (in general, the ones with more details, or the more adventurous), were the classes where, surprise, surprise, the students were the most cooperative and quiet.
Anyway, the job has opened my eyes. If I was doing this full-time, I’d be able to get the students’ confidence (maybe), and get them to draw in different styles… but I’d have to learn about the curriculum and make them paint (and clean up, in ONE hour!), learn about famous artists…. altogether too big a task for me – and it wouldn’t leave me with anytime to be creative elsewhere.
I am now planning a large exhibition of all these rhinoceros. I want to show that through drawings, you can see that each student has a very well-defined personality. And I hold these drawings as proof that every student who handed in a drawing (that’s most of them) can draw. I’ll keep you updated.
Filed under: Creativity, Drawing
