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Lesson Plans


Re: drawing realistically

[ Thread ][ Subject ][ Author ][ Date ]
Fran Marze (fmaiu+@pitt.edu)
Wed, 9 Jul 1997 09:35:53 -0400 (EDT)

To boost their confidence as well as give them a good foundation, students
need to learn to draw realistically. And, yes, many of them do complain,
but amazingly after they have accomplished some true to life drawings, the
complaints ease off. Since I have only returned to teaching high school
art in 1993 after teaching English and journalism for 12 years, I may have
missed some of the debate and went back to how I was taught in the 1950's.
It is probably no different from teaching students to write. The most
difficult area I find,however, is trying to motivate students to find
their own ideas.

This doesn't mean, though, that that is the only drawing lessons or only
realistic drawings would be allowed. I believe that difficult as it is, it
is important for all students.
On Wed, 9 Jul 1997, kprs wrote:

> Numo Jaeger and Michael Miller wrote:
> >
> > Hello All,
> >
> > I was wondering what all of you thought about the value of drawing
> > realistically.
> >
> > Is it important to teach all high school art students to drawing realistically?
> >
> > If so, why? If not, why not?
> >
> > - Numo
>
> This is an ongoing debate, but to put it quite simply, since drawing is
> a hand-eye thing, if we can render the nuances of reality, including
> values, proportion, and perspective in a way that is identifiable as
> "that piece of apple" as compared to just "another" apple, just imagine
> what we could do with the pictures in our minds. That, and all art
> schools want drawings from observation always seals my feelings on
> drawing from reality. Although I always stress the difference between a
> human xerox machine, an artist, and a monkey with a pencil. (excuse the
> philosophy reference)
>
> San D
>