We Learn From Our Children

I am writing today because my daughter, who is a Blogger, told me how much she learned when she took up a challenge to write a blog a day for thirty days. I understood immediately because as a young artist I was challenged to draw everyday for the rest of my life, but thirty days would be a good start.

I bring up that little vignette because I have not mentioned before that I teach art in an academic way. I try to present the many aspects of art in a very serious way, almost reverential, not religion but certainly a lifestyle and if you are doing art just for fun, then I will probably spoil your tea party. But, if there is an ember of love for art glowing deep within you my intent is to give it just enough oxygen to keep it going but not so much to burn it out before it’s time. You see, if I or anyone began thoughtlessly pushing complicated materials (media, plural, medium singular in art-speak) and techniques on you without the slow careful demonstration of the importance of the Elements and Principles of Design, you, or anyone would feel a sense of incapacity as you struggled to handle the media and techniques as masterfully as the instructor. I have watched so many arrogant and insensitive instructors drown that tiny ember of the love of art by overwhelming the student with too much expectation of competency in a new student.

As the student take advantage of this time spent learning the vocabularies of this new form of expression. Go further with the homework than seems necessary, don’t be afraid of what some call failure. There is no such thing as failure, just another opportunity to learn that what you tried was not the path to the place you had hoped to be. In fact many times failing to achieve what you expected serves to show how to reach another goal at another time

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I wonder if you had a chance to study my Pinterest board about the use of line in art? You may have noticed that I pinned images that didn’t seem to have anything to do with line. That was not a mistake, but I will tell you more about that later.