for teachers !
 Professional artist and veteran instructor, Anne Olwin, gives you seven concrete pointers for workshops and classes that will have your students jumping for joy…
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Secret One for Stellar Art Classes: Study Your Students
How many times have you seen an art class where all of the students paint the same flower arrangement, stroke by stroke following the teacher? How may times have you been that teacher? While that practice is a good occasional exercise, merely training students to paint “just like you” results in an army of your clones flooding the market with their copy work.
Then there is the class with essentially no instruction beyond: “Just express yourself.” I teach more students than I care to mention who come out of those classes without a clue of much more than which end of the brush is used to apply paint. Believe me, these students are not bashful about their frustration with the lack of instruction.
Great teachers understand they are learners first. Be a student of your students. Effective teaching wraps practical information and technical know-how in student-centered instruction. Teaching art should be about teaching your students to express their own personal ideas in their own unique ways using a variety of techniques with the proper tools to achieve the end they desire.
Every person brings their own personal background with a set of sensory experiences and a bevy of ideas into the art classroom. Their special combination of experiences and view of the world enables them to communicate through art in a unique way.
If you do not know your students, how will you truly help them to fulfill their potential? Ask the following questions to get a clearer picture of who your students are so you can help them discover their individual artistic self:
· What are their experiences? Talk with them about their life experiences, their jobs and families, their cultural upbringing, their birthplaces and schools.
· What motivates them? Find out if they love gardening or music, food or shopping, the country or city.
· What do they find meaningful? Are quiet alone times important, family times with their children or grandchildren, walks along the beach with their dog, an exciting vacation with a spouse?
· What are they attempting to express? Do they have particular emotions they want to put into their paintings? Is there a burning message they must get across?
· What is their nature? Are they tight engineering types or the expressive, free spirits?
· What is their anxiety level? Are they so anxious about painting in class they cannot begin? Are they perfectionists by nature?
· What misconceptions do they have?
Ways to paint vary as widely as artists. The art of Degas differs dramatically from Renoir, Sargent, Cassett, Van Gogh and Rembrandt. My engineering types find splashing paint against their natures. The free spirits hate the triple-0 brush. Attempting to fit either one into the other’s shoes frustrates them.
As the instructor, teach your techniques while challenging students to try other techniques as well. Try them yourself and encourage your students to play with tools they would not normally try. Frankly, if I believed my elbow were the best tool to achieve a particular effect, I would use it.
Thanks to modern technology and production, an extraordinary range of techniques and tools exist today. Not only do we no longer have to grind our own pigments and make our own brushes, but the range of colors and types of brushes boggles the mind. The Opera Red that sings to you may not utter a peep to your student. Help them look for their own color preferences.
As you study your students and learn about them, repeat frequently, “There is not one right way to paint.”
On to: Secret Two for Stellar Art Classes
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