Professional Practices – Assistant Teaching – week 4

This week, we started class with 2-minute gesture drawings. The class did a number of these 2-minute drawings, then 3- and 4-minute sketches. Emphasis was placed on getting the proportions correct and getting the whole figure on the page in the allotted time. For the 4-minute drawings, Ernie alternated between two different approaches to drawing the figure. In the first approach, the students spent the first two minutes focusing on proportions, the third minute adding value, and the fourth minute defining the outside line of the figure. Then in the second approach, the first two minutes were spent blocking in values, the third minute was spent on linework, and the fourth minute focused on the outside line. It was interesting to me that some students vocalized their strong preference for one approach over the other. It was also evident from their drawings which way they favored.
The rest of the class was spent continuing the 3-week drawing that the students began last week. Ernie reinforced key concerns such as proportions, attention to negative space, and building a value system or pattern. While the class worked on this drawing, we took some time to discuss my first “project”.
In Week 3’s post, I explained my assignment of hanging some student work from last semester on a panel in the AMF building. This week, Ernie and I looked through a stack of student drawings and I chose 14 of the best. In the upcoming week, it is my job to arrange these drawings, hang them in an aesthetically pleasing way, and post a brief write-up about the display.

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