sense of place paintings.

here are the finished sense of place paintings from the oil painting classes. they came out very well and some of them are hanging in the gallery right now. i think the students felt good about the outcomes. they were finally able to see the results of all the hard work they've done over the course of the term.

and although i'm pretty sick of teaching these oil painting classes it makes me realize how very difficult it is to teach a beginner oil painting class in 12 weeks. next year...no beginners, no lunch class, and only one section...period.

surface and texture paintings.

these are the finished surface and texture paintings. i've written about them in the past. i'm excited about how they turned out and i think the kids are too. 

surface and texture still lives.

my oil painting students are working on paintings that force them to grapple with creating the illusion of different textures and surfaces. for this assignment i let them set up their own still lifes. i encourage them to make sure that the set-up allows them to work at their level and that it is interesting to them. here's what they've got going.

finished white objects paintings.

revamping oil painting.

when i told a good friend (and probably the best painter i know)  i was teaching three sections of oil painting this fall he said, "oh that's easy. just tell them to move the paint around until it looks like something." lately, i keep thinking of him saying that and laughing as i look around the studio at all of my students' paintings that look like they will never be finished. 

the first major painting of the course is always a set-up of white objects. they only use two reds, two blues, a yellow and white. no black. they ask me for it...daily. but no, no black.
 

they make thumbnail sketches, using viewfinders to create an interesting composition. they build their paintings from the general to the specific, from thin to thick, with me barking out those phrases over and over again. and most of them do quite well, BUT...in this class more than any other i find it so hard to manage the variety of skill levels in the room. some have barely ever even drawn and some have taken class at the mfa since they were 5. 

most of them need practice. last year's group was very advanced so i created the curriculum for them. and somehow i didn't realize until it was too late that these guys would need something different. less finished paintings and more of them. we should have done 30 paintings by now instead of 3. in the face of challenge they have become precious and uptight...and yes, it's my fault. i've been managing it student by student, but the truth is, i'm exhausted...and part of the reason i'm exhausted is because my curriculum isn't doing enough of the work for me. i flit about the room like a dragonfly managing crises. half the time the crisis is a tipped jar of turpentine or paint on new shoes rather than any deep artistic issue. i kicked these kids off the dock and now i'm saving them one by one.

 
many of the finished paintings look good to the students. they were able to model most of the forms and mix the colors they needed...but it feels like it took and awfully long time and i wonder how helpful it is to do all that learning in only one painting.

how do we decide what speed our students should be working at?

how do we use time as an ally in the fight against preciousness and tightness?

i'm already planning for next year.

should i be allowing this?

like any dutiful painting instructor i always require my students to make 3 thumbnail sketches before they start painting. i make them these cute paper viewfinders like i used to use when i was in high school. my quote, "your first idea is usually not your best idea". 

but today one of my students asked if she could use her camera as the viewfinder. she wanted to take pictures to literally find the painting she would make of the still life she set up. i couldn't think of a reason why this wouldn't be ok. the lcd screen on the back of a digital camera if literally the best viewfinder i could think of. not only that, but they usually fight me on making 3 sketches. these girls, however, took at least 10 pictures slowly and thoughtfully and we were able to cover the screen with a sheet of paper to see how the composition could be different. 

maybe we discovered something new today.

student quotes

in response to the insanity of me not letting my oil painting students (some of whom are "know-it-alls as i've mentioned before) use black for the first two months...

"but i've been living without payne's gray for three weeks."

maybe that's only funny to the painters out there...

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

I ususally have my beginning oil painting students start by making some small studies of fruit. They set the fruit on a background that is the complimentary color of the fruit itself and this helps them to start to see color relationships. It is, however, a case of teaching how I was taught which, as good as that was, I am always skeptical of. So...when I mentioned last week that the first paintings would be of fruit and...my students moaned and groaned..."fruit? so boring..." I went home and thought about it. I thought, well, maybe they're right. Maybe fruit is boring and maybe I can provide a variety of small objects that can be studied in this way. Maybe these different objects will even allow the students to work at their own level...the beginner beginners choosing a wooden block and the more experienced beginners choosing a pine cone let's say. I wrote a whole new lesson plan and made a detailed project sheet. I arranged the various objects in a pleasing way to entice them to "mix it up".

And...

...almost every student has chosen to paint fruit.

Maybe...if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

oh...now i get it. they like working on the computer.

i took my oil painting class to the computer lab today to set up their blogs.

first of all, they were flying ahead of my verbal how-to instructions because accessing things online comes so easily to them.

but here's the thing...at the beginning of every class i give my students a questionnaire to fill out. it serves as a way for me to get to know them better and to pre-assess their knowledge before we get started. they rarely write very much on those things and i never feel like i'm getting the whole picture. but today...they were writing and writing...and good stuff. now i should disclose that, yes, students taking an oil painting class are the cream of the crop...serious, dedicated, creative. but i think there was something else going on here. there was an audience beyond my filing cabinet for what they were writing. typing is quicker for them than writing (especially for kids with any learning issues). and it feels like they're on facebook. what used to look like a test now looks like a story on a cool website. when i showed them how they could comment on each other's posts they were actually ooing and ahhing.

i'm excited. they're excited. i plan to comment on some of their posts this weekend. how fun it would be if some of you (out there in the world) commented too. you can find them on my oil painting class blog by clicking HERE. they're listed on the left side. some of them are still very much in progress.

could a blog replace the sketchbook?

i figure i spend a good 20% of my time either searching for papers my students have given me because they lost track of their sketchbook, harassing kids about work they owe me, or lugging big black sketchbooks from room to room. so i'm considering having my oil painting students each keep a blog this term.

in some courses this just wouldn't do. when i teach mixed media, for instance, they need to be able to feel the materials, make a mess, and build layers of stuff. i love that broken binding, smelly, stuff-falling-out-of-it kind of sketchbook.

but in oil painting they fill their books, or work on separate sheets of paper, to make thumbnail sketches, take notes, and write either reflections on their own progress or responses to famous paintings. if they did this in a blog it would remain forever...present and accessible (as opposed to wrinkled or lost), chronological, and organized. and the students could comment on each others' postings as a way of having a conversation about their work. we could even dump the whole blog into book form using blurb at the end of the course.

what do you think?