The Importance of Attention and Practice in Creating Art

I've started reading Creativity for Life by Eric Maisel. During the book's Introduction, the author touches upon the importance of attention and practice since they play are such integral pieces of living the creative life. I tell my high school students all the time that without practice they will always be frustrated in their attempts to get better at drawing what they see, mixing the colors that they want, molding the clay into the correct shape and manipulating the pen tool in Adobe Illustrator. Working hand-in-glove with skills practice, the art student must learn how to be mindful of the World around him/her.
Presently, I am teaching my Intro to Painting students some simple drawing skills before we launch into still life. So, we discuss simplifying images into basic shapes before rounding out corners and adding the details. We also address relationships: how does one object relate to another? Is it taller or shorter? Is it fatter or thinner? How can we use negative space to help us record what we see? The questions go on. It is initially overwhelming for them but I want to demonstrate to them the necessary self-talk to help them achieve their goals.
Truth be told, I didn't start reading the book for my students. Rather, I am reading it for myself. When Dr. Maisel talks about attention, he's not meaning a classroom setting per se. I've extrapolated his meaning because I do believe it speaks equally powerfully to students in a high school setting.
In the final analysis, Dr. Maisel wants to remind ME of the many ways I've allowed my art to be put off because of the many facets of my so-called busy life.

If your truth is that your life is out of control and creativity is just one of the many things that you aren't attending to, stand up and admit that to yourself, even if it means that you must change everything. Nor can you do this truth telling just once or twice: you need to do it today, tomorrow, and forever. (pg. xviii)

What I've read so far is just what the doctor ordered (no pun intended).

How do you keep student interest during a demonstration lesson?

In my last blog post, I loosely reviewed a few assignments that I presently do in my painting class, commenting on the great suggestions from some other bloggers on additional exercises to offer. At the end of the post, I included a section under the heading of Demonstration difficulties. There I highlighted a few struggles I have had with my urban high schoolers.

After some reflection I wanted to inquire some more about a few things:

Student interest

I am hoping that next year my classes will provide a little more student interest. This past year gave me more of what I have experienced since coming to this high school: students who did not sign up for my class and resent the amount of effort they have to put into the work for me. Ironically, my classes aren't as difficult as others I've been exposed to through art education conferences. Go figure.

How do you teach skills when you don't have a willing class? Often, the things they want to paint require more skill than they have and that only drives up their potential for discouragement. Thoughts anyone?

Appropriate demo time

Another avenue I have considered playing with centers on in-class demonstration time. Frankly, I only do demos that are 15 (20, at most) minutes long. Often my students talk to one another during the demo leaving the on the outs when it comes to doing the work. The frustration level mounts once deadline for completion gets closer. At that point, I become inundated with "Mr. Phil, I need your help." In the end, I don't get to everybody and that frustrates my students as well.

Consequences

As I stated above, my students will often talk during my demonstrations. As such, I find myself giving one-on-one demos for those students. Otherwise, they won't work and I'm basically stuck in the water needing a means to see what the students have learned. My wife and I implement consequences for our kids at home but my students don't take authority well or the guidelines I provide as goals for them to think about and work through. Actually, I have a very good rapport with them but that becomes tested when dates are looming and they should recieve a gift, not an email or blog member.

I want to serve these kids well. So, any thoughts or recommendations based on what I have introduced would be greatly appreciated.

Using demonstration lessons to pique student interest

My gourd post generated encouraging remarks from my readers while also eliciting helpful suggestions for presenting information for my students. For those of you who don't know, I am a high school art teacher in an urban school district. Generally speaking, most of my students did not ask to be in my class. They were put there out of necessity, namely to fill a slot in their schedule. As such, engaging them can be a challenge.

The consensus seems to be that demonstrations are the way to give students a sense of my expectations and visually illustrate how to go about using the media at hand. Well, no argument here.

Painting exercises

I plan on modifying my assignments for my painting (and, probably, drawing) class to allow for some of the suggestions given by some online friends: Cyndy Carstens, Susan Martin Spar, Liz Holm, Lee Claughton Taylor and Gary Keimig. I normally use white, gray and black geometric shapes. I plan to continue that practice but add other exercises preceding those as suggested from these fine contributors. Eggs, eggs in a bowl on a white cloth and a crumpled up piece of paper will probably make an appearance in some form. I plan to exploit the whole white-on-white composition to drive home the importance of value. It's the most important concept to get across to my students; more important than line or color in my mind.

I'll then move to my normal exposure of black and gray, using cubes and spheres. I next progress to small groupings using colored building blocks. So, while the concept of simple shape is there, the introduction of color with the irregular shape changes things up some. Eventually, I progress to flowers and the other detritus associated with still life compositions.

Demonstration difficulties

My struggle to reach the demographic I am working with poses the following problems:

1. My students see my class as not something meaningful to their future. Despite my efforts to let them know that this could, if nothing else, become a hobby that will provide great satisfaction if they would only give themselves over to the process and practice, they remain fixated on narrowly looking at art as non-essential. I think this will remain a point of tension for them and I'll need to find ways to simply cope with their discomfort and a certain level of frustration on my part.
   
   
2. Many of my students do not have the attention span to sit through a 15 demonstration. Even though I had read about this before I started teaching, I still found it disturbing when it actually manifested itself. Ironically, even though many students comment on the end product of the demo, they still talk to one another instead of paying attention (and then ask me for help leaving me little recourse accept to give them a one-on-one demonstration).
   
   I am hoping to work on streamlining my demos but that poses problems simply because if I go too fast they will miss the application I address while I dialogue during the demo. I coming back to the reality I keep hearing from others--demos are essential to most learners. As such, my students need the exposure and I, in turn, need to press them to pay attention and find a consequence for when they choose not to listen. However, is that going to mean I tell those students I can't help them because the made a choice not to participate in the learning process as I've laid it out? I may need to speak with my administration to get their feedback since I will need their support should more students choose to fail because of their stubborness.
   
   Then again, I have to give these students credit when they draw such a hard line in the sand and then stick to it. It's sad they don't apply that stick-to-it'iveness to actually learning what I'm trying to teach them.
   
   
3. Need to be tested on the bare essentials of the painting process so I know they get certain foundational principles. Presently, I don't test them at all except to verbally check for understanding during class time when I walk from student to student.
   
   I know such a thought will sound sacrilegious to some art educators. Having been to both regional and national art education conferences, I know I'm on the outs on the concept of testing. For the classes I've sat in at those conferences, I've found the concept of testing in art classes--specifically for application-related knowledge--to be frowned upon.
   
   Generally, I haven't tested much at all. My classes consist of project grades and in-class assignments. However, moving into my third year I believe more strongly on the importance of testing certain information. My students need to have some concepts committed to memory so they can begin building bridges with each painting project. I see now how so many remain ignorant as to why they are doing what they are doing. Sadly, they do not see the importance of linking together what they've learned. It's something I'm going to have to attend to.
   

Thanks go out again, to those who've provided me with feedback on the whole demonstration process. Any additional suggestions is always appreciated.

Gourd, Alla Prima oil painting

I'm not sure where my head has been. I should have posted this last week with the other oil painting demonstrations. This gourd elicited great consternation from my students who struggled with getting the undulating surface and transitions between the two colors correct. In some ways like the pumpkin and other ways not, my students failed to appreciate the color variations in the peaks and valleys of the surface. I told them it was not going to be easy but to look for the shapes of the colors and block them in as best they could. A few did well.

We've moved on to a small still life featuring a putty colored vase and a few more simple pieces of fruit. I did not do a demonstration this time around. Instead I did direct instruction and sketched on the whiteboard how they were to proceed, step-by-step. For some of my students this worked well, for others less so. So, I'll probably do a physical demonstration on Monday. A few were determined to do what they wanted while others--focused on getting it "right"--fell behind leaving me to dash back and forth.

Thoughts anyone on how to walk a class through the beginning painting process without doing a demonstration?

Pear, alla prima oil painting

Here is the third in a series of still life demonstrations that I did for my students in Introduction to Painting, my alla prima painting class. Unlike Apple, I was able to complete this painting in the 15-20 minutes I allotted for my demo.

The three students who sat in on this demonstration saw the key point I have been reminding all of my students of from the beginning of this course. Namely, alla prima is meant to be immediate--it's direct painting. Most of my students struggle with over mixing, over blending and, generally, over doing it. That often translates into muddy colors and edges that are too sharp.

This particular fruit example was made particularly challenging for two reasons: there were two green, speckled "stripes" running down either side and two splashes of orangy-red on the other two sides. I showed them that this was merely an opportunity for alla prima to shine. I could have done the green "stripe" a bit more speckled with a broken line effect but I opted to focus more on the blending between the green and yellow underneath. The splashy orangy-red was more easy to achieve and gave my students what they needed seeing the blending happen in front of them.

For those particular students, it was important for them to see the blending happen in front of them. Surprisingly, this wasn't the first time they saw it but it helped two of the three with what they delivered in their own rendering of this composition.