Thoughts on Teaching

These tiny mannequins are the newest addition to my arsenal of teaching tools. I realize how inaccurate (and creepy!) they are--the teeny, Barbie Doll waist on the female, the immovable shoulder girdles on both. But I have a brilliant student who is a bit too young for figure drawing courses (she's just 13, and we live in the most Puritan region of the prudish U.S.A.), but who would really benefit from studying foreshortened poses and dynamic angles. Her work is amazing--she fearlessly creates whole worlds in a beautiful graphic novel/Manga style. Her story ideas are rich and complex and delightfully dark. Exploring the figure will really help her to develop her characters and their stories more fully.

While I make occasional references to teaching in my posts, I've never written extensively about it, or even fully outlined that part of my life on this blog. It's always felt a little bit like I'd be going off topic, or that it wouldn't be very interesting (one of those "you had to be there" kind of things). But my teaching life has been evolving lately, and I've been thinking about it a lot. Furthermore, teaching has a huge impact on my own work. It's a way of sharing inspiration and ideas, of getting fresh perspectives. And it pushes me to follow my own advice, which helps me steer clear of all kinds of creatively stifling pitfalls.