Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Teacher's Demo

Teacher's Demo
7 (63%)
Teacher's Critique
1 (9%)
Peer Critique
1 (9%)
Lecture
0 (0%)
History
0 (0%)
On Site Work
2 (18%)



The big winner of the polling results for my workshop inquiry is the category "Teacher's Demo". A distant second is on site, or plein air, work.

Now, I want to refine this demo idea. What format should this take? Besides the traditional stand-in-front-of-a-class kind of demo, there are new and more convenient ways to do these things today. I looked on Wet Canvas for demo posts where I see photo series' with Works In Progress, and that also led me to You Tube demos.

What I didn't like about the You Tube vids was the sped up or truncated briefness of them. I valued more the ones where you see the artist and the ground, rather than a time lapse of the WIP.


Angela Fehr said,

I'd love to learn pastel - I've done a couple of portrait drawings with pastel but I'd love to learn a more painterly approach.

When I teach a watercolor class I always lean strongest toward teaching technique. My first watercolor workshop was weak on technique and focused on looseness and creativity and as a new artist, what I needed to was to learn what watercolors were capable of and what my options were to gain the effect I wanted. It totally depends too upon your students' skill levels.

Thanks for visiting my blog BTW - I love meeting other artists online!

August 5, 2008 2:17 PM


I am looking for this type of input, with specifics for what you like in a workshop. Any whiz bang suggestions for getting a complete artist's demo on the Internet? Thanks ahead of time!

2 comments:

vivien said...

I tend to do quick little demos of 'techniques' and colour mixing and ways of expressing texture etc rather than doing a complete work (which takes time they could be working themselves)

I also do quick demos of ways of tackling problems they come across and suggest options, showing how they would work - very quick and sketchy, allowing the student to then work through the ideas themselves.

Don't know it this helps but hope so

My students tend to prefer this individual approach to long demos they've had in other classes - but whether it's the same in the US I don't know.

Casey Klahn said...

This sounds good.

I have to say I must respect my voters who want to see me demo, but I know how attention spans go.

On the plus side I work very fast. Hmm. I took a workshop where the instructor worked through her demo painting over the course of the weekend, a bit at a time. That may be a good middle ground.

Thanks, Vivien!