This blog is an extension of a course that I teach at Pima College, in Tucson, Arizona. It's important to artists to have notebooks and sketchbooks; it's how we come up with new ideas, new imagery, and new techniques.
The internet presents a unique challenge to the art instructor; there is so much quality reference material online, an instructor such as myself has to figure out how to stay on top of it all, how to stay "relevant". I can only imagine a scenario where some artist posts a "how to" video online that is far superior than my performance in the classroom. My ego aside, this can only help art students worldwide. But it also presents a challenge for me, the art instructor. This blog is my effort to embrace the democatization of knowledge that the internet represent, and to help add to the knowledge base by posting my experiments, observations, conclusions, and assignments (!) online.
A spirit of play and experimentation is essential for their to be any progress in the arts, and this applies especially to the individual student. This journal is my effort to work alongside my student, to create my own exercises and to post my discoveries online. At regular intervals I will be posting step-by-step descriptions of how I created certain effects, watercolor problems and solutions I've encountered, and well as a links to images that I feel are useful for educational purposes. I'll also be using this blog as a laboratory; I'll creating paintings alongside my students and posting my results. I prefer to work in the "problem, solution" format. This requires us to not only create artwork, and to be aware of what we're doing, but it also requires that we learn how to look at our creations critically, to figure out exactly what's working, what's not working, and how to fix it. Coming up...experients that stem from the topic "Laying Down A Wash"
Saturday, September 5, 2009
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