It’s Always a Good Time to Talk About the Arnolfini Portrait
This week’s class was. . ."strange" isn't quite right. Different, I guess. Only two people attended, and they had a bit in common with each other. So there were more off-topic discussions. That sounds. . . harsher than I mean; this isn't a class for a grade. But a slightly different vibe.
Last night's topic was plants. A woman who teaches a painting class earlier in the day brought us the leftover flowers from her class. I okayed it with her that I could take some and it'd be okay if my students, like, used them. So it was nice to have those as an option. One student did try drawing a cut flower; the other did not.
Side note, I have models of plants and animals that I bring to the appropriate class, as well as a box of fossils and cool rocks. Interestingly there's rarely interest in the plants and animals, but people do like drawing the rocks/fossils. Last night, I just sort of gave up and left the fake flowers at home. So I was extra delighted to have the flowers. However, I wish I'd had a larger sample size: 50% of just two people doesn't tell me a whole lot.
Because I had the projector set up anyway, I decided to experiment a bit more with PowerPoints. It was nice for talking about plant anatomy. But I thought they were a hindrance for the second lesson, about image composition and one-point perspective. That is to say, it was helpful to have all of my images organized; usually I'm fumbling a bit. But I felt we spent too long on the slides and not enough time drawing.
On the other hand, the students asked a lot of questions, and we also looked at other examples. Soooo, I don't know. Maybe it was a hindrance because we stopped to talk about paintings in more detail, versus the issue being the PowerPoint itself.
I had a funny moment when I was talking about the Arnolfini Portrait by Jan van Eyck. It's one of my favorite paintings. But it's also a really famous medieval painting, so for me it's like, "Duh, everyone knows this painting." But the students did not know it, so we spent some time talking about it from an art history perspective. Which was really fun! But I had to laugh, because my husband always laughs at me, that I assume everyone knows what I know and I'm probably just boring people by repeating what they already know.
Arnolfini Portrait by Jan van Eyck
At the end, there were only about 10 minutes left for working on perspective. I think I might try the PowerPoints again, but maybe cut down some of the information about perspective, and just let the lesson expand organically if students have questions.
One student had asked to watch me draw. I hadn't set up my pad of paper or anything, so I did some digital art. Next week is "drawing from life." I don't normally draw, but maybe I'll set up an easel so they can watch me, at least for some of it.
Digital roses, based on the ones I’d received from the other teacher. When I drew them, I was like "these are awful!" but now I'm like, "hey these are pretty good." Life sure is a rich tapestry.
Rose and tree, drawn in Krita
Rose drawn in Graphitr
