>I am hoping that the proposed semi-circular >layout of the class will help, as it will be quite difficult >for students to see anyone's easel except their own.
Difficult with large numbers of students perhaps. >Also, in >ordinary life-drawing classes I have found the flip-chart pad >to be a great comfort to underconfident drawers, as they find >it very easy to flip the page over when they are done, and the >sheer number of pages in a pad seems to help with the "throw >it away, try again" approach. There would be no expectation on >them to share their work with others, so I hope that after a >couple of sessions students would have become comfortable with >the level of privacy afforded to their work and any anxiety >will dissipate somewhat. The problem here I would think is people's natural curiosity about other's work - they will just want to look at what other;s doing. Looka t what happens if you paint outdoors - people lways stop and look at what you are doing. (Which I particularly enjoy, as I am an extremely poor and untalented painter (I just enjoy the activity) and it is most amusing when people look over your shoulder and just don't know what to say because it is such a mess - the best time was when I had decided to paint using entirely wrong colours for everything and had green sky and yellow sea and stuff. People were perplexed) >I believe my first difficulty, however, is going to be in >gathering sufficient support for a pilot course unless I can >cite research (beyond my own observations) which already >suggests that this kind of activity-switching might be >beneficial to the learning process. Surely some of the material on attention span could be used here or are you proposing to have whole periods devoted to drawing? Personally I would just go ahead and do it and not bother asking anyone (in fact I am now definitely thinking about trying it or something like it next year) - if someone complains you just say it was a pedagogical experiment. >Is anyone aware of >anything published specifically on this question? I think the >problem addressed here is perhaps indirectly related to >writers' block. Again I have heard anecdotal evidence from the >patterns community of "random interjections" being used to >free up blocked software-design meetings - where the aim is to >stimulate a burst of creative insight somewhere in the room - >but nothing I could really quote as a reference! It certainly sounds like something that people would have looked at, particularly in realtion to block removal. But I don't know of anything myself. Is there any evidence that making a life class stop drawing and spend sometime writing about what they are looking at improves their performance? (Sauce for the goose etc.) L. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PPIG Discuss List (discuss@ppig.org) Discuss admin: http://limitlessmail.net/mailman/listinfo/discuss Announce admin: http://limitlessmail.net/mailman/listinfo/announce PPIG Discuss archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/discuss%40ppig.org/
