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Lesson Plans


Re: tracing or copying

[ Thread ][ Subject ][ Author ][ Date ]
Bicyclken
Fri, 22 Jan 1999 00:41:43 EST

Tracing and using images from a book are two different things. I believe that
people are inherently lazy and if you allow them to trace they will not learn
to see the thing you say. However if they use a picture and can change the
shape, form, or structure of the picture then it is truly their own work.
Artists are always going to locations and using photo's to get their work
done. Students in high school cannot go out and use photography like the
people of magazines, who can use the entire world as their canvas.

I believe that to teach some lessons, there is no way that students can draw
from memory or creativity that wouldn't use some photographic influence. This
helps them see the reality in objects but it can also be the spark that makes
them see the world around them. It's not copying if you can change the
photograph to make your own statement of the piece, or composition. I hope
that art teachers do not exclude the use of photographic resources so that
students can see reality. See that students must seek out the real world in
order to show the concepts of their inner world that must have some reference
in order to show what they originally had in mind. So many times people say
that it is not creative to use a resource but it is the successful painter
that use resources, all the time to create the art that sells.

Art is a wonderfully creative field but in school we must allow the student to
learn to draw from life, and from image, in order to teach technique and media
as well. I am sorry that some teachers think that creative art is only that
which is conceived only in the mind, because the true creative person see's
what they know and acts on what they can do. If they have not experienced the
media's and techniques, then the creative side is very narrow and the results
are poor. Let them experience techniques and observations to achieve the
tools of independent creativity.

I'm sorry to go off like this but it is very hard at times to teach the
students the media's and techniques without using some photographic resources,
and I have tried to say how I feel.

Ken Schwab
San Jose CA.