Teaching Painting and Drawing at Florida State University

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Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School

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Teaching Painting and Drawing at FloridaState University: A Case StudyLiu Nan

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FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY

COLLEGE OF VISUAL ARTS, THEATRE, AND DANCE

TEACHING PAINTING AND DRAWING AT FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY: A CASE

STUDY

By

LIU NAN

A Dissertation submitted to the

Department of Art Education

in partial fulfillment of the

requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Awarded:

Spring Semester, 2009

Copyright © 2009

Liu Nan

All Rights Reserved  

The members of the Committee approve the dissertation of Liu Nan defended on November 17,

2008.

______________________________

Tom Anderson

Professor Directing Dissertation

______________________________

Jeff Milligan

Outside Committee Member

__________________________________

Pat Villeneuve

Committee Member

______________________________

David Gussak

Committee Member

Approved:

_____________________________________________

David Gussak, Chair, Department of Art Education

_____________________________________________

Sally McRorie, Dean, College of Visual Arts, Theatre, and Dance  

The Office of Graduate Studies has verified and approved the above named committee members.

ii

This dissertation is dedicated to my parents Li Guang Zhi, and Liu Xiao Liang, my grandmother

Li Qing Shen, my aunt Liu Xiao Yan, my wife Deng Hai Qiong and my son Ethan Jiu Ming Liu.

And in memory of Liu Hui Ying and Ma Ping Gong, to whom I didn’t say proper goodbyes.

iii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A great deal of support and encouragement has been contributed throughout the entire

process of this dissertation and I feel that my gratitude extends far beyond what this mere

acknowledgements page permits.

I would first like to thanks my advisor, Dr. Tom Anderson, who is always patient with

my writing and has given me many thoughtful suggestions. Additionally, I also want to express

my appreciation towards all of my committee members. Dr. Pat Villeneuve provided me with

guidance on using APA format and Dr. Roald Nassargard offered insightful, tough critique and

pushed me to become more critical in thinking and writing processes. Later on, when he was on

sabbatical, Dr. Jeff Milligan stepped in to take his place and I have gratitude to Dr. Milligan for

his support throughout this journey. I would also like to thank Dr. Marcia Rosal who gave me

suggestions in the early stages of literature review and taught me how to search for relevant

articles using the computer. In her absence during sabbatical, Dr. David Gussak has been

instrumental in aiding this dissertation process in her absence.

I would also like to thank my first advisor, Dr. Bonnie Black, who was with me when I

began my first American graduate program in art education in University of Arkansas at Little

Rock for both her professional mentor and life supporting. Dr. Michael Day, who first introduced

the rationale of American art education especially Discipline-Based Art Education to me when I

was in Beijing and Dr. Sally McRorie who allowed me to pursue a dual degree both in Fine Art

and Art Education during the past six years both academically and financially.

A more general round of sincere thanks go to all of the painting and drawing faculty

members, undergraduate students, and the chair in the art department at Florida State University.

I have no doubt that without their cooperation and assistance, this dissertation would not been

possible.

Finally, thanks all of my family members, my parents--Li Guang Zhi, and Liu Xiao Liang;

they always give me the support both financially and emotionally, my grandmother, Li Qing

Shen, who taught me be perseverance, my aunt Liu Xiao Yan, who supported me so that I can

come to this country realize my dream, my wife Haiqiong and my son Ethan, they are the

sunshine of my life.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Figures ix

Abstract xii

1. INTRODUCTION 1

State of the Problem 2

Research Question 2

Supporting Questions 2

Rationale 2

Scope of the Study 4

Limitation of the Study 6

Research Design 7

Definition of Terms 9

Summary 10

2. LITERATURE REVIEW 11

Painting and Drawing Instruction in Higher Education in the United States: Historical

Overview of Trends from 1776 until 2006 11

The Academic System 11

The Modernist Tradition and Bauhaus Influence on American Artists Training 17

Visual Arts Instruction in College and University Art Departments 22

Current Issues and Ideas in Teaching Painting and Drawing in Higher Education 26

Contextualism and Essentialism 27

Creativity and Skills and Concept Development as Issues in Teaching Painting

and Drawing 28

Using the Nude Model and Academic Tradition 30

Teaching Studio Art 31

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Previous Research of Teaching Studio Art in American Higher Education 34

Summary 38

3. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 40

Overview of the Study 41

Phenomenological Foundations of This Study 42

Pragmatism 44

Methodology: Qualitative Case Study 46

Educational Criticism and Qualitative Research 48

Research Strategies 49

Literature Review 49

Sample 50

Triangulation 52

Data Collection Devices 53

Data Gathering and Coding 54

Confidentiality 55

Reporting 56

Summary 56

4. A PILOT STUDY 57

Patterns 57

Trends 58

Themes 59

Findings from Interviews 60

Finding from the Pilot Study 61

Summary 62

5. THEMATIC PRESENTATION OF THE DATA 63

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Data from Department of Art Written Sources 64

Data from Interview of Art Department Chair 65

Data from Department of Art Faculty Participants 67

If You Can See, You Can Draw: Professional/Thematic Instructional Data for

Professor A 68

Listen to The Painting. The Painting Tells You What’s Going on:

Professional/Thematic Instructional Data for Professor B 91

Dare to Be Stupid. Egg on Your Face: Professional/Thematic Instructional Data

for Professor C 108

Failure Is Part of the Success: Professional/Thematic Instructional Data for

Professor D 126

Summary 151

6. ANALYSIS, INTERPRETATION AND CONCLUSIONS 153

Findings about Professor A 153

Findings about Professor B 155

Findings about Professor C 158

Findings about Professor D 159

Generalized Synthesis of Four Faculty Participants Responses and Observations 162

Supporting Question One 163

Supporting Question Two 164

Supporting Question Three 171

Supporting Question Four 173

Supporting Question Five 175

Answers to the Major Research Question 178

Conclusions 181

Connections and Implications for Teaching Practice and Further Research 183

APPENDIX A: Field Notes from the Pilot Study-Observation Two Professors’ Classes at

Florida State University: Professor A: Color Theory Course 186

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APPENDIX B: Interview with Professor A from the Pilot Study 198

APPENDIX C: Field Notes from the Pilot Study-Professor B: Figure Painting 200

APPENDIX D: Interview with Professor B from the Pilot Study 207

APPENDIX E: Interview Questions for Instructors 209

APPENDIX F: Informed Consent Form for Instructors 210

Informed Consent Form for Focus Group 211

Human Subjects Approval from Florida State University 212

APPENDIX G: Interview with Professor A 215

APPENDIX H: Interview with Professor B 225

APPENDIX I: Interview with Professor C 231

APPENDIX J: Interview with Professor D 239

APPENDIX K: Field Notes-Professor A’s Life Drawing 249

APPENDIX L: Field Notes-Professor B’s Painting I 269

APPNDIX M: Field Notes-Professor C’s Drawing II 282

APPENDIX N: Field Notes Professor D’s Painting II 295

APPENDIX O: Interview Chair of Art Department, Florida State University 310

APPENDIX P: Coded Themes 316

APPENDIX Q: Syllabus of Four Painting and Drawing Classes 319

REFERENCES 349

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 355

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LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1. Drawing Studio in “The Church” 78

Figure 2. Study of the Figure-a 84

Figure 3. Study of the Figure-b 84

Figure 4. Self Portrait-a 84

Figure 5. Self Portrait-b 84

Figure 6. Figure Ground Ambiguity-a 85

Figure 7. Figure Ground Ambiguity-b 85

Figure 8. Study of Skeleton and Self Portrait-a 85

Figure 9. Study of Skeleton and Self Portraits-b 85

Figure 10. Experiment Drawing with Skeleton-a 86

Figure 11. Experiment Drawing with Skeleton-b 86

Figure 12. Study of Skeleton-a 86

Figure 13. Study of Skeleton-b 86

Figure 14. Study of Figure-c 87

Figure 15. Study of Figure-d 87

Figure 16. Study of Figure-e 87

Figure 17. Study of Figure-f 87

Figure 18. Gesture Drawing-a 88

Figure 19. Gesture Drawing-b 88

Figure 20. Blind Contour Drawing-a 88

Figure 21. Blind Contour Drawing-b 88

Figure 22. Painting Studio in “The Church” 98

Figure 23. Demonstration of Self Portrait by Professor B 100

Figure 24. Self Portrait-c 102

Figure 25. Self Portrait-d 102

Figure 26. Self Portrait-e 102

Figure 27. Self Portrait-f 103

Figure 28. Landscape-a 103

Figure 29. Landscape-b 103

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Figure 30. Landscape-c 104

Figure 31. Landscape-d 104

Figure 32. Randomly Selected Images Painting-a 104

Figure 33. Randomly Selected Images Painting-b 104

Figure 34. Randomly Selected Images Painting-c 105

Figure 35. Randomly Selected Images Painting-d 105

Figure 36. Persona-a 120

Figure 37. Persona-b 120

Figure 38. Persona-c 120

Figure 39. Persona-d 120

Figure 40. Persona-e 121

Figure 41. Persona-f 121

Figure 42. Persona-g 121

Figure 43. Persona-h 121

Figure 44. Book of Drawing-a 122

Figure 45. Book of Drawing-b 122

Figure 46 Book of Drawing-c 122

Figure 47. Book of Drawing-d 122

Figure 48. Book of Drawing-e 122

Figure 49. Book of Drawing-f 122

Figure 50. Book of Drawing-g 123

Figure 51. Book of Drawing-h 123

Figure 52. Book of Drawing- I 123

Figure 53. Book of Drawing-j 123

Figure 54. Book of Drawing-k 123 

Figure 55. Book of Drawing-l 123 

Figure 56. Book of Drawing-m 124  

Figure 57. Book of Drawing-n 124 

Figure 58. Book of Drawing-o 124

Figure 59. Book of Drawing-p 124

Figure 60. Book of Drawing-q 124

x

Figure 61. Book of Drawing-r 124

Figure 62. Provocative Painting-a 145

Figure 63. Provocative Painting-b 145

Figure 64. Provocative Painting-c 145

Figure 65. Window Painting-a 145

Figure 66. Provocative Painting-d 146

Figure 67. Window Painting-b 146

Figure 68. Window Painting-c 146

Figure 69. Window Painting-d 146

Figure 70. Homage to Van Gogh-a 147

Figure 71. Homage to Van Gogh-b 147

Figure 72. Homage to Van Gogh-c 147

Figure 73. Homage to Van Gogh-d 147

Figure 74. Viewfinder Painting-a 148

Figure 75. Viewfinder Painting-b 148  

Figure 76. Viewfinder Painting-c 148

Figure 77. Self Portrait-g 148

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ABSTRACT

The purpose of this case study is to examine the nature of the teaching in the painting and

drawing program at Florida State University. Aspects to be considered in this case study will

include the philosophy of the program as represented in its written materials, the program’s

stated and practical educational goals, and the program’s teaching strategies and envisioned

outcomes for undergraduate students as articulated and modeled by the permanent faculty. To

best achieve its goals, this study has drawn profiles of the teaching of painting and drawing

studio classes at one American university with particular emphasis on the context of the

rationales and methods of instruction practiced by the permanent faculty. To further

contextualize the findings and assumptions appropriate pertinent literature is integrated into the

discussion. In that context, this study aimed to add to the currently limited body of qualitative

research on teaching painting and drawing in higher education in Florida.

Using a method of in-depth interviews, document analysis, and participant observation,

within FSU’s painting and drawing program during one semester, individual instructors were

interviewed and four studio courses were observed. Each course’s objectives, subject matter,

structures, techniques/media taught, teacher’s teaching philosophy, instructional techniques,

motivation, issues and concerns, grading strategies, and students’ artwork were examined. In

addition, contextual material also consisted of official departmental documents and website

information to set a context for the examination. Data were analyzed and coded qualitatively, and

interpretations and an evaluation were presented thematically in narrative fashion. Furthermore, a

synthesis/interpretation helped readers to understand the character of the case. Finally

conclusions were drawn, and implications from those conclusions were discussed.

The literature suggests that in Western research, there is a professional distance existing

between practicing artists who teach in art departments and scholars who teach within art

education departments. There is a gap in the literature on teaching painting and drawing in higher

education, representing a need for this study and the findings of the study provide some key

ideas to help better understand the state of these subjects in higher education. 

A general conclusion based on the cited interviews and observations of the professors

who took part in this study reveals several positive aspects of the drawing and painting program

at Florida State University, particularly in the sense that the ideologies that support the teaching

xii

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methodologies and practices are in clear alignment with the stated goals of the department.

Despite some fluctuations in terms of the actual methods used to present, analyze, and critique

material produced by students, there is almost a sense of unanimous agreement that the goals

stated as core principles by the Department of Art are correct and acceptable. The following are

seen as the most salient aspects of the Department of Art with all of the material and resources

considered: 1) Foundational skills development: building a solid foundation for the beginning-

level students which refers to the fundamental skills and techniques in drawing and painting 2)

An emphasis on personal creativity versus rigorous adherence to particular artistic styles,

practices, or ideologies. 3) Directions of courses are more based on the students as opposed to a

rigid lesson plan on the part of the professor; thus further emphasizing creativity while at the

time leaving the course(s) open to further areas of exploration. 4) A stated goal of allowing

students to make mistakes in order to best teach them through example and 5) A diverse

integration of elements of art history and new technology (as opposed to textbooks) to teach

conceptual ideas. From the findings of this study, two weak areas need to be addressed for the

program which include a lack of full preparation on the part of the student body for the

foundational skills/techniques and a lack of updated and/or adequate studio space for faculty to

best practice.

From this case study, implications for researching teaching practice in higher education

in United States emerge. Several questions might be considered as research topics for future

study, including the perceived role that a foundation program plays in the teaching and learning

at a college art department studio, the role of studying old master’s materials and techniques in

teaching painting and drawing in a contemporary studio classroom, the methods and techniques

adopted by college instructors for cultivating students’ creativity in studio art learning, the

relationship between drawing and painting in contemporary college studio teaching.

Aside from this, a cross-cultural comparative study of teaching painting and drawing in

higher education between China and the U.S.A could be investigated to see what parallels and

differences emerge and if they are culturally based or rather influenced by disconnected artistic

traditions.

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

I have loved painting and drawing since I was nine years old and had the dream of

becoming an artist and painter. As my dream has become a reality through my studies in

China and then in the United States, I strive to close the circle, to bring the world of art,

especially painting and drawing, to my future students in China.

I was trained in an art school in a comprehensive university that was oriented

toward studying traditional Chinese painting. The teaching method that was emphasized

focused on painting and drawing styles from the past and on technical proficiency.

Students in this tradition study various methods of holding the brush to achieve a variety

of visual effects. From the single stroke, dots, and lines to the study of composition and

styles, students follow their teachers’ demonstrations, or copy and imitate the

masterpieces from the past or from the teachers’ own works.

In addition, from my experience, in most drawing and oil painting classes in the

art academies of China, the teaching methods have amalgamated the practices of the

nineteenth century French Academy and early twentieth century Soviet schools of

Socialist Realism, taught by generations of Chinese artist-teachers who studied in France

and the Soviet Union. In drawing classes in China, students start with drawing from

classic European plaster statuary, then move on to arranged still life, and finally to live

models. Oil painting classes focus on realist or naturalist styles using the subject of still

life and live models. I feel this teaching method fosters the development of skills, but

fails to encourage the cultivation of creativity because of its overwhelming focus on skill

and technical training. I always asked my teachers how to draw and paint, but I seldom

asked myself why I drew or painted in this way.

Trained within this Chinese cultural tradition, I came to the United States to study

art and art education methods. I wanted to study how artists were trained in the United

States, what teaching philosophy and methodologies were being used in universities to

cultivate artists, how the artist-teacher teaches techniques/skills and creativity, and to find

the meaning in the teaching of painting and drawing through my own eyes and my own

experience. Like an artist producing a landscape painting on site, as a researcher I am

1

eager to create a picture of the teaching realities found within the college and university

painting and drawing studios.

Statement of the Problem

The purpose of this study is to examine the nature of the teaching in the painting

and drawing program at Florida State University, including the philosophy of the

program as represented in its written materials, the program’s educational goals, and the

program’s teaching strategies and envisioned outcomes for undergraduate students as

articulated and modeled by the permanent faculty. The study draws profiles of the

teaching of painting and drawing studio classes at the university particularly in the

context of the rationales and methods of painting and drawing instruction engaged in by

the permanent faculty, and when it is appropriate, in the context of a review of salient

literature. In that context, this study aims to add to the currently limited body of

qualitative research on teaching painting and drawing in higher education in Florida.

Research Question

The research question is:

What is the character of the painting and drawing program at Florida State

University? In particular, what are the goals, strategies, and outcomes envisioned for

undergraduate student learning as articulated and modeled by the permanent faculty?

Supporting Questions

1. What is the philosophy of the department, and what are the goals of the

painting and drawing program in the visual arts department at Florida State

University (FSU) as represented by official documents and websites?

2. What are the pedagogical rationales and methodologies of the faculty as they

represent them through interviews, documents, and in practice?

3. What are the faculty’s issues and concerns as represented in interviews?

4. What are the faculty’s influences as they present them?

5. What is the extent of agreement or disagreement across the faculty regarding

the teaching of painting and drawing courses required of all undergraduate art

majors as presented in practice and through interviews?

Rationale

2

A search of the literature reveals that not much research has been conducted as to

how painting and drawing is taught to college level students either in China or in the

United States. Because the majority of faculty who have taught and continue to teach

studio art courses in college are made up of practicing artists, and because the faculty is

seldom staffed with researchers or pedagogues, not much research of the kind envisioned

here has been done. This research then helps scholarly and pedagogical audiences which

include art teachers and art students both in the United States and in China, to have a

general understanding of teaching painting and drawing as a cultural phenomenon. Along

with this general intention for the research is a more specific intention of understanding

the pedagogical methodologies of one particular American university. My practical

purpose is that I want to bring current ideas of teaching painting and drawing in the

United States back to China when I return to train future artists. I am interested in

teaching college art because, personally, as an art major student in China, I witnessed

many highly talented students who failed to make sufficient progress after four years of

college training in the art major. I could not help asking myself why. As a result, I

planned to do research on college art teaching, especially on teaching painting and

drawing, to see if I could facilitate student success. I hope this is an avenue for attaining

that success.

The literature suggests, that even in Western research, there is a professional

distance existing between practicing artists who teach in art departments and scholars

who teach within art education departments (Spicanovic, 2000). From reviewing the

readings (1960-2006) from the Art Journal published by The College Art Association,

the largest professional organization of college art teaching in the United States, I found

that there is a lack of research in the field of studio teaching at the university level. Most

papers published in the Art Journal are various kinds of non-data-based writings such as

lectures or essays about teaching painting and drawing by faculty members who have

taught at different universities and colleges. In one of the few extent studies, Spicanovic

(2000) addressed the current issues in teaching painting in a postmodern era which was

derived from both his own experience of teaching and review of previous related studies.

As a Ph.D. candidate in art education and a five-year art teacher in a college art

3

department, Spicanovic felt the practice of studio teaching was segregated from art

education. As he (2000) remarked:

There was little discussion among my teaching colleagues on the topic of a

pedagogical rationale for teaching art, and I wish to generate ideas and questions

that could be of assistance to other practitioners in the reflection upon and

development of their pedagogies. I hoped to encourage more research that deals

with the education of artists, and that draws upon qualitative, field-based

methodology. (p. 18)

On the art education side, there are, however, a few field-based research studies

conducted by Ph.D. and masters graduate students in art education (Sevigny, 1977;

Stokrocki, 1981; James, 1996; Spicanovic, 2000; Walker, 2004), but this literature is

scanty and incomplete. Nevertheless, the literature I have found addressing teaching

strategies in painting and drawing is drawn primarily from art education journals, such as

Studies in Art Education, Art Education, and Visual Art Research. Unfortunately most of

the scholarship in these sources focuses on research addressed to K-12 school teaching

and learning instead of studio art education at the college level. Spicanovic pointed out

the need for more field research on teaching studio art. He suggested qualitative research

methodology (as defined in chapter three of this study) for further research in the field. In

this study, I attempt to address that need. Therefore, there is a gap in the literature on

teaching painting and drawing in higher education, representing a need for this study.

Scope of the Study

This is a case study of the painting and drawing program in the art department at

Florida State University. My choice of FSU is a sample of convenience (Fraenkel &

Wallen, 2003), which fits my needs in that it shows one example of American higher

education instruction in art. While this case may not be seen as a sample representative

of all American universities, it does adequately reflect a comprehensive university

program. The purpose of qualitative research is to examine one thing in its depth, by

means of describing, analyzing, interpreting, and evaluating its character and what it

means and how it is valued by those involved (Anderson, 2000; Eisner, 1998). In this

sense, this focus on the FSU painting and drawing program fits my desire to understand

4

an American university art program, as a single representative-a case of an American art

program in a large comprehensive university.

The reason I chose all of the permanent painting and drawing faculty is threefold:

First, choosing the full set of permanent faculty of the department helped me to

understand as a whole the department’s philosophy and goals in relation to the character

of the painting and drawing program. Studying these faculty members as the designated

departmental representatives helped me gain a more in-depth understanding of the

phenomena of teaching painting and drawing in one American university program, in

order to understand the character of the whole through the parts.

Second, FSU is a national comprehensive graduate research university which fits

my research interest, in that I studied art in a comprehensive graduate research university

in China, and have some previous understanding of a university-level program. My own

learning experiences and the problems I encountered in learning as an art student in a

university art department became the impetus for this research.

Third, this is a sample of convenience. My time and access for fieldwork were

limited. I needed to pick a case that was accessible and willing to accommodate my

research. Since I studied my MFA in painting for two years at FSU, it was relatively easy

for me to access all of the painting and drawing faculty members for interviews and

observations. So the choice was made to study the program at FSU due both to its

appropriateness and it accessibility to me.

Using a method of interviews, document analysis, and participant observation,

(Anderson, 2000; Eisner, 1998) within FSU’s painting and drawing program during one

semester, individual instructors were interviewed and observed. Each course’s objectives,

subject matter, structures, techniques/media taught, teacher’s instructional techniques,

motivation, and students’ artwork were examined. In addition, contextual material also

consisted of official departmental documents and website information to set a context for

my examination. Data were analyzed and coded qualitatively, and interpretations and an

evaluation were presented thematically in narrative fashion (Eisner, 1998; Anderson,

2000; Goodall, 2000; Patton, 2002; Bogdan & Biklen, 2003).

Five objectives or operative procedures were adopted in the study to achieve its

successful completion. First, both the etic issues (Stake, 1995) of teaching painting and

5

drawing raised from the salient literature review and the emic issues that emerge from

initial interviews and field observations from a pilot study helped me pose substantive

research questions. Second, the field based examination of the program was conducted.

Third, through document analysis, both the philosophy of the art department and the

goals of the painting and drawing program were examined in conjunction with the

pedagogical rationales and methodologies employed by all permanent painting and

drawing faculty members. Fourth, a synthesis/interpretation helped readers to understand

the character of the case. Finally conclusions were drawn, and implications from those

conclusions were discussed.

From this case study, I will conduct a comparative study of teaching painting and

drawing in higher education between China and the United States. That will be my next

study.

Limitations of the Study

This research is only conducted in one university which only represents one case,

and it is not possible to generalize the results to other schools or situations. However,

generalization is not the purpose of this study. The purpose is to understand this case in

depth (Eisner, 1998; Stake, 1995), focusing on the character of the painting and drawing

program in terms of what the faculty teaches, how they teach, what they believe, and

what they value, as well as the problems they face in teaching painting and drawing. The

primary goal of this study is to give art teachers and art students both in the United States

and China a realistic picture of teaching painting and drawing for undergraduate students

in a national graduate research university in the United States, and hopefully to inspire

them to think about the possibilities of meaning of teaching painting and drawing in

higher education. In this sense, as Eisner (1998) suggested, naturalistic generalization is

possible. That is, one can ascertain from an intelligent analysis and interpretation of a

given situation what might be useful to his/her own situation. As Eisner (1998) stated:

What one learns about one school can raise one’s consciousness to features that

might be found in other schools; the study does not claim that other schools will

share identical or even similar features but rather that these are features one might

look for in other schools. (p. 103)

6

My role of researchers as being the primary instrument is another limitation of

this study, but my sensibility and perceptivity also is unique and bears my own signature,

and in that way is also an asset. As Eisner (1998) said:

Each person’s history, and hence world, is unlike anyone else’s. This means that

the way in which we see and respond to a situation, and how we interpret what we

see, will bear our own signature. This unique signature is not a liability but a way

of providing individual insight into a situation. (p. 34) Detachment and distance

are no virtues when one wants to improve complex social organizations or so

delicate a performance as teaching. It is important to know the scene. (p. 2)

I received my M.F.A in painting from the Art Department here at Florida State University

two years ago, and it could be another limitation for this study because my perceptions

about the program.

Research Design

I used qualitative case study techniques as my principle research methodology

(Anderson, 2000; Creswell, 2002; Eisner, 1998; Stake, 1995), which was grounded in

phenomenological premises (Bogdan & Biklen, 2003). Researchers in the

phenomenological mode attempt to understand the meaning of events and interactions of

ordinary people in particular situations (Bogdan & Biklen, 2003). What I want to

understand is what is the meaning of teaching painting and drawing for the painting and

drawing faculty at the art department at FSU? What are their instructional goals? What

are their teaching methods and how do they teach? What are the problems they face when

they teach, and how do they deal with these problems? How do these teachers interact

with their students in painting and drawing studio classrooms? What are the outcomes for

students taught by these faculty members? In essence I tried to understand and report

their essential understandings of what it means to teach painting and drawing at FSU.

As part of the participant observation process, in-depth interviews (Seidman,

1998) was a primary research tool of qualitative research that allowed me to discover the

participants’ reality of teaching in a college painting and drawing program. The purpose

of the in-depth interviews is to try to understand the experience of other people and the

meaning they make of that experience (Seidman, 1998). According to Seidman, the best

way to get at the events and meanings of people’s lives is to ask them. Through

7

interviewing the permanent drawing and painting faculty in the FSU Art Department, I

gained more information about individual instructors’ training backgrounds, life

experiences, instructional goals, and strategies of instruction and the meaning of their

teaching experiences. In addition, the interviews gave additional insight into what had

been observed by allowing for clarification of events and activities.

Field observation was another primary tool and helped to verify the information

acquired from interviews (Anderson, 2000; Patton, 2002; Bogdan & Biklen, 2003). “The

only way for us to really know what another person experiences is to experience the

phenomenon as directly as possible for ourselves,” (Patton, 2002, p. 106). What faculty

members say may or may not be manifested in what they do. I want to see if they walk

their talk. Through observing classes, writing field notes, and interpreting what I see, I

constructed patterns, trends, and themes to interpret the meaning behind the phenomena

(Bogdan & Biklen, 2003), in conjunction with the interviews, which were the primary

research instrument.

The prefigured foci for this examination came from the supporting questions

which were drawn from the review of the literature and the pilot study, but there were

emergent foci too, that rose from the research process (Eisner, 1998). These were

addressed thematically in the narrative report.

Practical strategies I used in this research include:

a. A literature review of previous salient studies through manual and

computer searches of college art journals, journals in art education, and

art textbooks,

b. Development of a purposeful convenience sampling strategy for

choosing a program to be studied,

c. A document analysis of the Art Department’s goals and the teaching

philosophy of individual faculty (Bogdan & Biklen, 2003),

d. Development of a pilot study of the research method in which I

observed in two classes at FSU (one color theory class and one figure

painting class),

e. Taping interviews of participants (Seidman, 1998),

f. Participant observation, (Anderson, 2000; Eisner, 1998),

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g. Taking field notes (Emerson, Fretz & Shaw, 1995),

h. Taking digital photography of teaching environments and students’

artworks (Bogdan & Biklen, 2003),

i. Implementing educational criticism strategy (Eisner, 1998; Anderson,

2000) for coding and interpretation.

Definitions of Terms

For purposes of this study the following definition of terms are in effect.

Painting- “the representing of a subject on a surface by the application of paint or

colors; the practice of applying paint to a canvas, etc., for any artistic purpose” (Oxford

English Dictionary, 2005).

Western Tradition of Painting- the traditional painting methods, techniques and

styles derived from European painting styles.

Drawing- “A division of the fine arts in which artists make a descriptive graphic

mark of line, tone, texture, or value, by pulling or dragging a tool across a receptive

surface or background – usually a piece of fine-quality grained or toothed paper”

(Mendelowitz, Wakeham, Faber, 2003, p. 361).

Method- “A special form of procedure or characteristic set of procedures

employed (more or less systematically) in an intellectual discipline or field of study as a

mode of investigation and inquiry, or of teaching and exposition” (Oxford English

Dictionary, 2001).

Teaching Method of Painting and Drawing- The way an artist teacher teaches

students to paint or to draw.

Motives- “The reason or cause behind something. An impression or apprehension

that prompts a person to action”; (Oxford English Dictionary, 2002). “An emotion,

desire, physiological need, or similar impulse that acts as an incitement to action”

(American Heritage Dictionary, 2006).

Meaning- Something that is conveyed or signified; sense or significance.

(Dictionary.com) “Meaning is that which one seeks to know, through interpretation.

Meaning implies significance, importance, mood” (Stokrocki, 1981, p. xi).

Strategy- “A plan, method, or series of maneuvers or stratagems for obtaining a

specific goal or result” (Dictionary.com, 2006). “An elaborate and systematic plan of

9

action” (Wordnet, 2006). “A plan of action resulting from strategy or intended to

accomplish a specific goal” (American Heritage Dictionary, 2006).

Outcome- “A final product or end result; consequence; issue” (Dictionary.com,

2006). A phenomenon that follows and is caused by some previous phenomenon

(Wordnet, 2006).

Etic issues- “Etic issues are the researcher’s issues, sometime the issues of a

larger research community, colleagues and writers” (Stake, 1995, p. 20).

Emic issues- “Emic issues are the issues of the actors, the people who belong to

the case. These are issues from the inside” (Stake, 1995, p. 20).

Thick description- “Thick description is an effort aimed at interpretation, at

getting below the surface to that most enigmatic aspect of the human condition: the

construction of meaning” (Eisner, 1991, p. 15).

Summary

In this study, I examined the character of the painting and drawing program at

Florida State University. Using qualitative research methods that included interviewing

with teachers, document analysis, and careful field observation. The narrative format as

known “thick description” (Geertz, 1973; Eisner, 1991) was my primary method of

report. A synthesis of interpretation and evaluation based on coding my data qualitatively

and was developed based on the interviewing and field observation.

10

CHAPTER 2

LITERATURE REVIEW

Painting and Drawing Instruction in Higher Education in the United States:

Historical Overview of Trends from 1776 until 2006

In this section, I drew three salient historical lines or tendencies in painting and

drawing instruction in higher education in the United States. The first line of influence

was the so-called academy from the late eighteenth century to the late nineteenth century

which was primarily influenced by traditional European academies, and its instructional

programs which emphasized the study of the past (Efland, 1990). Under the academy

system, the imitation of the appearance of the real world or verisimilitude was the

standard for teaching and learning. This resulted in cultivating students’ skill and

technical proficiency in both theory and practice. Second was the influence of European

modernism and Bauhaus from the late nineteenth century to today which put more

emphasis on individuality and creativity and placed greater emphasis on newness or new

‘ism’ (Gombrich, 1972). Experimentation and innovation substituted for the Academy’s

focus on technical dexterity and became the central tenet for teaching and learning. Third

was the development of art schools in colleges and universities where they have become

the major force for post-secondary artist training since World War II (Efland, 1990).

The Academic System

Throughout the eighteenth century, for the most part American art students went

abroad to Europe to pursue their professional training (Efland, 1990). In Matthew Pratt’s

(1765) painting The American School, he showed the expatriate American artist

Benjamin West who lived from 1738 to 1820 in his London home studio, teaching a

small group of art students (Brown, 1967). As Byrd (1964) described: “Hopeful young

artists from this country came to his studio to work and study over a period of fifty

years.” (p. 130). In Pratt’s painting, students in West’s studio were surrounded by

classical casts and statues while drawing or painting from life models. West’s teaching

reflected the method of the Royal Academy of London which gravitated toward portrait

and historical painting. Moreover, West’s personal taste for antiquity of Greek and

Roman statuary shaped his teaching in a classically-influenced, rigid method. Many of

11

West’s students became the precursors of the earlier academy in this country and they

adopted both the rationales of European academic administration and the instructional

methods. Among West’s disciples were prominent figures like Charles Wilson Peale,

who was the founder of the American Academy of Art in Philadelphia in 1794, and a

board member of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, as well as John Trumbull who

was the president of the New York Academy of Fine Arts in 1820. Another was Samuel

Morse, the president of the National Academy of Design in 1826 (Byrd, 1964;

MacDonald, 1970). Through the efforts of these men and others like them, the

opportunities of professional training for young artists were expanded in the United

States, and more art academies were founded in the principle cities.

Most of the early art academies were founded in metropolitan areas of the

northeastern United States (Naeve, 1978). For instance, in New York City there was

established the Columbian Academy (1792), the American Academy of the Fine Arts

(1802), the National Academy of Design (1826), the American Art Union (1850), the

Cooper Union (1857), the Art Students League (1870), and the New York School of Art

(1896) founded by William Merritt Chase (Gardner, 1967; Brown, 1967; Efland, 1990).

In Philadelphia, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (1807) remains the nation’s

oldest continuing art organization (Naeve, 1978; Lehmann, 1995; Efland, 1990; Elkins,

2001). Unlike Philadelphia and New York, Boston did not have an academy of art until

the last third of the nineteenth century (Davis, 1995).

Throughout the eighteenth century the French Academy was used as the prototype

for art schools throughout the continent (Efland, 1990), derived from the Middle-Age

model of apprenticeship training in master artists’ studios and Renaissance European

academy traditions. In the Middle Ages, when the artist was viewed primarily as a

craftsman, painting and drawing instruction throughout most of Europe was part of the

apprenticeship system organized by local and regional guilds (Goldstein, 1996). Under

this system, a young artist who was eager to study art was required to enter the workshop

of a master to learn his craft and to acquire complete technical skills. In this system, there

was not a fixed canon of instruction, and the training continued to be based entirely on

actual practice and focused on the particular tasks to be fulfilled by the master. The

12

individuality of the young artist was subordinate to the rigid guild rules, and the tradition-

bound thinking permitted only limited room for aesthetic innovations (Wick, 2000).

Starting from the fifteenth century in Italy, and about a century later in other

European countries, the art academies gradually broke free from the medieval guild

system practice and teaching in artists’ training (Wick, 2000). During the Renaissance in

Italy, Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) perfected the view of drawing and painting as a

subject of science. His new concept of art resulted in a change in art instruction. He

advocated the study of mathematics, geometry, and medical science, through which he

recorded the anatomy of the human body, and the principles of proportion of the human

body. Combining rational theories with the practice of art, he placed great emphasis on

drawing and painting from nature, copying from established masterpieces, and drawing

from ancient sculptural relieves, which gave material and structure to the academies.

The term "academy" was used here in a different sense from its original, Platonic

meaning. The academy was originally a school for philosophers founded by Plato in 385

B.C. and its goal was to transmit a comprehensive intellectual education to prepare the

youth for service to the state (Wick, 2000). The later academy, as I used the term here,

refers to a professional school focusing on cultivating personnel in special disciplines,

such as, art, music, or architecture. Such academies abandoned the goal of general

education of the Platonic academy and emphasized professional specialization.

Academies for the visual arts came into existence in Italy in the sixteenth century

and proliferated in the seventeenth century (Goldstein, 1996). In 1563, Cosimo de’

Medici founded the first art academy in Europe, the Accademia del Disegno (Brown &

McLean, 2004), also called the Florentine Academy of Design (Elkins, 2001). Students of

the Florentine Academy studied not only statues, mathematics including perspective,

proportion, and harmony, geometry, anatomy, but also learned to make intricate,

“learned” composition. The idea was to get away from the empirical, haphazard kind of

learning that artists had faced in workshops, and to substitute theory-based instruction

instead (Elkins, 2001). This was the fundamental pedagogical rationale of the

Renaissance art academy: seeking the balance between practice and theory (Elkins,

2001).

13

From Italy, the concept of the academy as an organized institution for the training

of artists spread to other countries, such as Holland, France and England (Goldstein,

1996). By 1729 there were over five hundred Academies in Italy alone (Elkins, 2001).

In 1648, the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture was founded in France

(Efland, 1990; Goldstein, 1996). It was the largest, most influential, and best-organized

of the seventeenth-century academies (Elkins, 2001). Life drawing was among the most

powerful courses. A formalized curriculum was provided. First, was drawing from two-

dimensional works following either the instructor’s own or engravings after the old

masters. Then came drawing from sculpture, usually plaster casts of antique statuary.

And finally there was drawing from life (Efland, 1990; Goldstein, 1996). The sequence of

this drawing curriculum was viewed as the heart and core of the academic instructional

method from the latter years of the seventeenth century to the latter years of the

nineteenth century (Efland, 1990). It was based on the premise that nature was filled with

imperfections so that one must select from and improve upon it in the way the ancients

did. The ancient sculptures or casts of them were offered as models or standards of

perfect form. After drawing from them, the student was expected in the life class to

discern so-called defects in the live model and to correct them (Goldstein, 1975).

Creativity and individuality was not valued in this stage of the French academy

instruction, and the students were required to conform to decorum, to be moderate in all

things (Elkins, 2001).

The academies maintained collections of life-size plaster casts of the famous

antique sculptures and casts of body parts, and students from all over Europe learned

from the same array of plaster figures, such as the Apollo Belvedere, the Discobolus

(discus thrower), the Laocoon, and so on (Elkins, 2001). Students drew from these casts,

and their shapes, forms, and contrasts were ingrained into their daily lives. The aim of

this instruction was to cultivate students’ taste of ancient ideal beauty; also it was a

preliminary study for life drawing. The drawings were required to have perfect

proportions, and had to be represented in the proportions in which they appeared, or in

slightly idealized versions of their natural proportion (Elkins, 2001). The likeness was the

standard for teaching and learning.

14

Students were required to prove their academic proficiency in life drawing before

being admitted to the painting studio. Today, we can still see an example of this process

in the drawing Admitted to Life, Admitted to Painting by American artist Abraham

Walkowiz done while he was studying painting in Paris at the Beaux-Arts in the 1890s

(Brown & McLean, 2004).

In the nineteenth century, more and more artists from the United States went to

Europe to study painting and drawing both in academies and private ateliers (Byrd,

1964). In France alone, based on the archives of Beaux-Arts, between 1807-1894, there

were about 100 American matriculants who were born before 1880 and active as painters

registered at Ecole the Beaux-Arts in Paris, and there were about 200 American pupils

registered in three major ateliers (Alexandre Cabanel, Jean-Leon Gerome, and Isadore

Pils’s ateliers) between 1863-1900 in Paris (Weinberg, 1981).

Among these students who pursued their art training in Europe during this period

were William Morris Hunt, John Singer Sargent, Thomas Ekins, William Merritt Chase,

Frank Duveneck, Childe Hassam, and Mary Casatt (Weinberg, 2003). Their European

training had been better, much broader, and sounder than the earlier tight and timid

scholasticism of Benjamin West’s London studio (Logan, 1955). After they finished their

study in Europe, they returned to the United States and taught at academies or gave

private art lessons, and they most often adopted the teaching method of the French,

British, Italian and German academies which they had attended. For example, William

Morris Hunt returned to America in 1855 after twelve years of study in Europe, where he

stayed in Rome, Düsseldorf, and Paris (Byrd, 1964) and studied with French-

Academicians and Salon Painters Thomas Couture and Jean-Francois Millet. When he

settled in Boston, he opened his own studio to teach painting and he introduced the

methods of the Barbizon school to his American students. He taught a large group of

female students, and he taught the value of expressive realism and a broad, direct

painterly style (Wygant, 1983).

Thomas Eakins was one of the most important Academic teachers in nineteenth-

century American higher education (Byrd, 1964). He studied painting and drawing from

Jean-Leon Gerome in Paris with an exact control and finished style (Wygant, 1983). He

also studied figure painting with Leon Bonnat, another master of French academic figure

15

painting (Weinberg, 2003). He traveled to Spain to study the masterpieces of Velasquez

and Ribera and returned to Philadelphia in 1870 to teach at the Pennsylvania Academy of

Fine Arts. He applied an uncompromising realism into his teaching at Pennsylvania

Academy of Fine Arts. His teaching emphasized human anatomy and figure drawing and

painting. He invited medical doctors to give lectures on anatomy, and stressed drawing

and painting nudes with a painstaking method. Most of the students in the Academy went

so far as to study dissected corpses.

William Merritt Chase studied at Royal Academy in Munich from 1872 to 1877

with Karl von Piloty (Weinberg, 2003). He was also influenced by Wilhelm Leibl who

was friendly with Courbet and admired the works of Manet. Under Leibl’s influence,

Chase developed a lively style featuring commonplace models, flashy brushwork, dark

palette, and dramatic chiaroscuro, traits inspired by contemporary French Realists and

certain old masters of Spanish and northern Baroque painting like Velazquez, Murillo,

Ribera, Zurbaran, Rubens, Hals, and Rembrandt (Weinberg, 2003). Chase was an

eclectic. He told his students: “Be in an absorbent frame of mind. Take the best from

everything. Originality is found in the greatest composite which you can bring

together.”(Weinberg, 2003, p. 280). Chase taught at the Art Students League in 1878. His

figure drawing class was directed in the Munich manner toward an understanding of mass

and light and shade, as well as line quality and muscle structure. Also, he introduced to

his students a style of freely and heavily loaded brush work in figure painting (Logan,

1955).

Early in second decade of the twentieth century, American painting and drawing

instruction faced a transition from the Western European academic tradition to the

modernist tradition. The origins of modernism have been variously located between the

late eighteenth century and the early twentieth (Harrison, 1997). But in America, a

significant change occurred around 1910, and especially following the Armory Show in

New York City in 1913 (Lehmann, 1995). This show, considered the watershed between

classic academic art and new contemporary styles, affected methods of art instruction as

well as altering museum collection patterns. The old practices of copying masterpieces

and drawing from plaster casts were gradually replaced by art instruction emphasizing

creativity and individuality (Lehmann, 1995).

16

As a member of the last generation of traditional academic students, Will Barnet

recalled in an interview conducted by Ed Colker in 1982 the beginning of the transition in

teaching method from so-called old-fashioned academic traditions to “vogue” modern

methods in art school when he was an art student: “When I left the Boston Museum

School in 1929-30, that was the end of the Academy. Up until 1929 you were taught all

the principles of the French Academy” (Colker, 1982, p. 27).

From 1930 to the 1960s, the transition occurred gradually spreading from one

location to another (Barnet, 1982). Most of the art schools changed their curriculum, and

drawing from plaster casts was removed from the foundation courses. Will Barnet (1982),

who had fifty years teaching experience at different art schools and universities which

included the Art Student League, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Cooper Union,

Penn State, Yale, and Cornell, recalled when he began to teach at the Pennsylvania

Academy of Fine Arts in the early 1960s: “When I came to the Academy I was surprised

at the school. It wasn’t academic. During the sixties schools were changing their

programs and throwing out plaster casts in elementary courses, getting rid of ‘old-

fashioned’ traditions” (Colker, 1982, p. 26).

As time passes, today, we only can find a few academies following the old-

fashioned academic teaching method. In most of the painting and drawing studios in

America and Europe today, it is rare to see professors who teach drawing class using

plaster casts, but in China, most of the drawing classes in both the academies and

university art departments still employ this European academic tradition. However, life

drawing and figure painting continue to be dominant in the curricula of most American

schools today. But likeness, correctness, and the realistic representation of nature are not

the only standards in teaching and learning in contemporary art schools. There are other

influences, rising from modernism, for example.

The Modernist Tradition and Bauhaus influence on American Artists Training

Since the advent of modernism between the late eighteenth century and early

twentieth century, there has been a break from the authority of classical tradition. Among

other things, modernism is a breakdown of the traditional decorum in Western culture

that previously connected the appearance of works of art to the appearance of the natural

world (Harrison, 1997). For modernists, the imitation of the appearance of the real world

17

was no longer the most important function for art, and newness became the prevailing

standard. Avant-garde artists resisted traditional academic painting and drawing methods

and they strove to break through the veil of appearances to a higher truth (Gombrich,

1972). As a result, they often abjured the traditional approaches of representation which

not only included the principles of chiaroscuro and linear perspective, but also the

traditional artist's subject matter pertaining to literary content and everyday life

(Greenberg, 1963). As Harrison (1997) proclaimed:

If modernism was unacademic in its origins and in its development, then, as it

generally was, … it was because the entire mode of existence within which

modernist critical intuitions were realized was incompatible with the world of

values that the Academics were there to represent. (p. 18)

In the modernist tradition, individual expression is highly valued (Anderson,

1999), and the academic tradition appeared as repressive and hindered the individual

striving toward spontaneous or individual forms of expression. The notion of selfhood, or

self-control became a key thrust in contemporary art education in the United States. Since

the advent of modernism, from Arthur Wesley Dow and Hans Hofmann to Josef Albers,

from the Bauhaus to Black Mountain College to today’s studio art education, the self

became the center of learning.

In the modernist tradition, the most important American artist-teacher of the early

twentieth century was Arthur Wesley Dow (Singerman, 2000). After studying the

academic theory of art for five years at the Academy Julian in France, Dow was

“thoroughly dissatisfied” (Efland, 1990). He discarded the traditional academic teaching

method and emphasized the construction of the work of art, especially principles of

design, line, notan (light and dark), color, opposition, transition, repetition, symmetry,

and subordination (Efland, 1990). The difference in Dow’s method from the academy

was his radical departure from realism. Instead of copying reality, he asked his students

to simplify and abstract reality. When Dow taught painting, he said: “painting is merely

the cutting up of space by line, and then adding color…” (Singerman, 2000, p. 109).

Smith (1996) evaluated Dow as the first important American teacher to propose a theory

suited to formalist practice …. “and formalism as a dominant theory was the most

influential theoretical underpinning for modernism” (Singerman, 2000, p. 37). Dow’s

18

teaching influenced the first generation of American modernists including Max Weber

and Georgia O’Keeffe.

If Dow was the first American teacher who proposed a theory for modernist

teaching in the United States, it was Hans Hofmann who first brought European

modernist teaching methods of painting to America in the early 1930s, and his teaching

influenced the next generation of artist training in America (Brown, 1967). Before

arriving in the United States, Hofmann taught in his painting studio in Munich for many

years and accumulated considerable first-hand experience in teaching modern painting.

After arriving in America, Hans Hofmann taught at the University of California in

Berkeley in the summers of 1930 and 1931. He then moved to New York City in the fall

of 1931 where he taught at the Art Students League for two years. After that he opened

his own school in Provincetown in 1935 where Robert Motherwell, Ad Reinhardt, and

other artists of the New York School would regularly spend their summers through the

1940s (Fineberg, 2000). Unlike Dow’s rationally oriented emphasis on principles of

design, Hofmann emphasized pictorial structure with emotional dimension, and put more

weight in his teaching on paint handling, intuitive expression through materials, and

visual tension. For instance, his theory of push-and-pull was a new way of creating visual

tensions within the pictorial plane. As Hofmann claimed:

Depth, in a pictorial, plastic sense, is not created by the arrangement of objects

one after another toward a vanishing point, in the sense of Renaissance

perspective, but on the contrary (and in absolute denial of this doctrine), by the

creation of forces in the sense of push and pull. (Fineberg, 2000, p. 54)

This theory emphasized the space of a picture which must be a coherent volume

equally penetrable in all its parts (Kahn, 1990). Hofmann also urged his students to find

significance within themselves and to express an inner world of intuition or the

“spirituality” of the work.

Phelan (1981) believed that the basic influence on studio art education in this

country in the last fifty years was derived primarily from a single source: the German

Institute called the Bauhaus. Contemporaries of Hofmann, a group of German Bauhaus

teachers, came to the United States in the late 1930s, and their firsthand experience of

European modern art also influenced the teaching methods used in many American art

19

schools (Singerman, 1999). For instance, Walter Gropius taught at Harvard in 1937,

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy taught at the New Bauhaus in Chicago in 1939, and Josef Albers

taught at Black Mountain College and Yale from the 1930s to the 1950s.

The Bauhaus system emphasized the craftsman model for cultivating artists. The

students explored variable materials as much as possible through personal experience.

Creativity and individuality were highly valued at the Bauhaus. The Bauhaus system

sought to combine the theoretical curriculum of an art academy with the practical

curriculum of an arts-and-crafts school in its attempt to unify all training in art and design

(Efland, 1990). It was a new kind of academicism, as Wick (2000) called it, an “art

school of modernism” (p. 56).

The teaching plan at the Bauhaus in Germany was divided into three programs:

the apprentices, the journeyman, and the junior masters (Wick, 2000). The preliminary

curriculum was divided into three stages. The initial stage, the foundation course, was a

six-week course which provided students with a common ground of experience. Students

experienced variable materials and liberated themselves in order to develop the sense of

touch and a subjective feeling for materials (Efland, 1990). The second stage, the

tentative workshop, was a six-week workshop in which students worked with one

material only. After this stage, successful students were admitted to the apprentice

workshop where they studied for a three-year period as an apprentice before they were

eligible to take the journeyman’s examination. This kind of curriculum was thought to be

more democratic than the academies’ and it offered more opportunities for students to

choose before they made a decision to focus on one medium.

Thus, at the Bauhaus, students became acquainted with common and unique

qualities of the materials, such as wood, paper, metal, glass, stone, textiles, plastics, and

rubber. The inherent qualities and characteristics of the materials were explored, such as

flexibility, brittleness, response to heat and cold, tools appropriate to each, forms which

could be created, combination of materials, as well as many other possible qualities for

analysis (Logan, 1955). Interaction and free exploitation of materials became the primary

method in student learning. At present, most art schools in colleges and universities in the

United States use some variation of this curriculum design, and students can try different

media before they choose certain media or foci in which they may specialize (Efland,

20

1990). The Bauhaus rationale of teaching and learning was initially manifested at Black

Mountain College (BMC) in the United States. During 1933 to 1956, this progressive

school in North Carolina played a vital role in the history of cultivating modern painters,

and it became, as Mary Emma Harris described, “a symbol of academic freedom and the

experimental spirit” (Wick, 2000). If the old academic tradition emphasized studying

examples from the past and following dogmatic theories, the teaching at BMC was quite

the opposite, and it stressed students’ self-experimentation with materials and creativity.

Josef Albers, Anni Albers, Lyonel Feininger, Fannie Hillsmith, Ilya Bolotowsky,

Robert Motherwell, Willem De Kooning, Franz Kline, and Jack Tworkov, among others

taught painting and drawing classes at BMC (Katz, 2002). And many students who

graduated from BMC became famous in their later career as modern painters, for

example, David Bailey, Kenneth Noland, Robert Rauschenberg, Susan Weil, and Cy

Twombly. As Vincent Katz (2002) remarked:

What was encouraged, what was engaged in at Black Mountain – both by students

and by artist/teacher – was experimentation. People felt free there to undertake

activities geared toward finding new ways of doing, rather than studying and

repeating the past. (p. 15)

Josef Albers, a former Bauhaus instructor who taught at BMC and Yale

University, influenced many students over twenty years of teaching, and they, in turn,

communicated his innovations to the next generation of pupils. His pedagogy of painting

and drawing emphasized improvisatory exercises in self-expression, and exercises in

body moving, and breathing. Through free experiment, students explored multiple

mediums in their art creation and chose their own media.

Albers taught drawing, design, and color painting classes during the beginning

period of the Black Mountain School. He adapted his teaching methods acquired at

Bauhaus into the BMC curriculum and he believed that the process of learning, or the

experiment in training, was more important than final product. According to Albers:

To experiment is at first more valuable than to produce; free play in the beginning

develops courage. Therefore, we do not begin with a theoretical introduction; we

start directly with the material…Our aim is not so much to work differently as to

21

work without copying or repeating others. We try to experiment, to train ourselves

in ‘constructive thinking.’ (Katz, 2002, p. 22)

Albers’s teaching method emphasized the students’ self-exploration of materials instead

of merely learning skills or techniques from the past. He emphasized a “pedagogy of

learning” rather than a “pedagogy of teaching” (Wick, 2000, p. 174). The teacher’s role

was that of a facilitator who gave heuristic suggestions based on students’ experiments.

For example, in one class, Albers encouraged his students to develop constructive

thinking by using the edges of a piece of blank paper in their creation as an experiment

with materials, (Rather than drawing on the blank surface of the paper). Furthermore, he

encouraged students to use paper as a building material through complicated folding or

through trying to tie it, pin it, sew it, or rivet it instead of laying it flat as a writing

material (Katz, 2002).

Albers left Black Mountain College in 1949 and taught at Yale’s art school where

he oriented the art department toward modern art in the 1950s. Unlike Dow and

Hofmann, Albers’s teaching was not based on any aesthetic principle, system, theory, or

dogma. Instead, he posed problems in perception which his students were required to

solve on the basis of their own individual experiences. The focus was on learning by trial

and error, not on the application of theories (Sandler, 1982).

Visual Arts Instruction in College and University Art Departments

Today, college and university art departments have become the major force in

studio art teaching, and more and more students choose universities as the contexts for

their art educations. In fact some university programs, such as Yale, are leading

programs in graduating prominent contemporary artists (Efland, 1990; Singerman, 1999).

In 1863, Augustus Russell Street donated $200,000 to Yale in support of a school

of fine arts (Efland, 1990). Yale is the oldest incorporated art school within a university

in the western world (Sandler, 1982). Street’s effort began to change the pattern of visual

arts instruction in the United States from an earlier art academy setting to a new direction,

the university and college setting.

Efland (1990) compared three early art programs established in universities in the

United States which provided models for other institutions to emulate. The art programs

at Harvard, Yale and Princeton represented three different approaches to instruction. Yale

22

emphasized studio studies which were identical to those of professional art schools.

Harvard combined practice art with art history. Princeton focused on art history and

archeology.

Charles Eliot Norton, in 1874, began to teach fine arts at Harvard (Logan, 1955).

Norton’s program of fine arts was a combination of art history and practice of art. He

taught art history to undergraduate students and believed that the study of art history

should be balanced with instruction in the practice of art as well. Norton was essentially

literary and historical in his views of the arts (Logan, 1955). Also at Harvard, Charles H.

Moore was hired as an instructor in freehand drawing and watercolor, and under his

direction studio courses began to take shape. Painting and drawing instruction at Harvard

functioned as the annexation of another large area of educational territory rather than an

independent academic discipline for cultivating practical artists.

While at Yale, John Ferguson Weir, the first director of Yale’s art school,

emphasized the practical aspect of art instruction, including the education of practical

artists (Efland, 1990). The first object of the school was to provide a school for the

technical training of those wishing to follow art professionally as painters, sculptors or

architects. The art history course did not have the impact that Norton’s lectures had at

Harvard.

The department of fine arts at Princeton was established in 1882. Marquand

guided the department as part of the humanities and leaned more toward art history and

archeology. As Duffus (1928) described:

The Princeton student does not learn to draw or paint unless he teaches himself to

do so, or unless he takes some of the professional courses in architecture. What he

learns is the drawing, painting, carving, and building that has been done by

others – the cultural hand-me-downs of the past. (p. 62)

Unlike Norton, who was able to appeal directly to undergraduates, Marquand’s teaching

was directed to graduate students (Efland, 1990). His students carried this type of

teaching and scholarship to other universities.

By the turn of the century, larger universities and small liberal arts colleges had

begun to establish small departments of one or two persons to offer courses in art

appreciation, with some possibility for the pursuit of studio studies (Efland, 1990). In

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1900, a survey of the 422 colleges and universities in the United States showed that only

47 offered courses in art (Wygant, 1983). In the decade following the First World War,

there was a dramatic increase in the teaching of visual art in colleges and universities

(Efland, 1990). In 1925 half of the colleges and universities in the country were teaching

art. By 1941, the percentage was closer to two-thirds (Efland, 1990).

Since World War II, studio arts have found a place in the curricula of most

colleges and universities (Byrd, 1964). Art departments in colleges and universities have

become a major force of artist education. First, the incorporation of multidisciplined

curricula in comprehensive universities or colleges facilitated a broad environment for art

students. The idea is that students not only concentrate within art disciplines in terms of

art skills and art history, but also learn from other disciplines such as philosophy,

anthropology, literature, music, sociology, science, and so forth. Second, in the

meantime, the GI bill brought millions of veterans and returning servicemen and women

to colleges and universities, which resulted in an expansion of university art departments

as well. Third, many progressive public schools offered art instruction on a more

advanced level than in the past (Byrd, 1964). Teaching these courses were men and

women not only concentrated in the large cities like their predecessors, but scattered

throughout the entire country. Fourth, traditionally, the university acts as an arena where

science and research are the most important goals and functions. Under this tradition, the

art department of a university allows a freer teaching and learning atmosphere than an art

academy which acts as the “custodian of traditions” (Matter, 1963). University art

departments open up their doors to all kinds of arts: traditional, modern and postmodern.

Most universities invite visiting artists on campus, have artists-in-residence, or pay artists

to lecture or exhibit their works which might not be salable in the commercial galleries

(Singerman, 1999).

In this context, the meaning of the idea of painting was changing and continues to

change. Harold Rosenberg’s (1952) term action painting redefined the meaning of

painting which emphasized the experience of pure action, the creative act of self-

discovery. For abstract expressionists, the canvas became the arena in which to act.

Painting for them is an act instead of an object. Painting was a process rather than a

product. Clement Greenberg’s (1955) formalist view established the theoretical

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foundation of color field painting, in which the post-painterly abstractionists painted their

huge canvas with large areas of solid pure color. Since then, Rauschenberg’s combined

painting (Fineberg, 2000) has developed along another avenue which added the three

dimensional sculptural elements onto the two-dimensional surface. From the 1970s to

1990s, pluralistic forms and manners were adopted by artists who created ‘painting,’ such

as collage, appropriation, color field, minimal, language, and Op.

From the 60s to 70s, universities became a place where postmodernism found a

fertile milieu in which to grow (Singerman, 1999). Postmodernism was derived from

opposition to modernism and the questioning of traditional beliefs. Poststructuralists

deconstruct all systems theories, including modernism (Anderson, 1999). Postmodernism

calls for interdisciplinary study and the emergence of eclectic and pluralistic art practices,

and postmodern artists turn to mixed media, video, computer, or other formats instead of

insisting on two-dimensional painting and drawing mediums (Spicanovic, 2000). One of

the effects of postmodernism has been an emergence of interdisciplinary and multi-media

art programs in university art departments. Saul Ostrow (2007), chair of visual arts at the

Cleveland Institute of Art, deemed that the cultural environments that inform students’

vision of the role of artists and art have significantly changed during the last 15 years.

Compared to Ostrow’s time of study in the 1970s as an MFA graduate student when

painters, photographers, sculptors, printmakers were nominally and often physically

segregated, today the boundaries between disciplines are being redefined, both

technically and conceptually.

The method of postmodernism is centered on critique (Anderson & Milbrandt,

2005). In the 1960s postmodernism began to influence teaching in art schools. Such

critical theory and language-based art still exists among young artists today. As Thomas

Lawson (2007) believed: “the primary skills needed for an artist today are analytic and

critical: how to understand images and texts, how to think through personal decision-

making” (p. 105).

In today’s university art department, traditional academism, modernism, and

postmodernism typically exist side-by-side. The technical proficiency of the traditional

academy, the individual creativity of modernism, and the critical method of

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postmodernism are combined together in teaching and learning by the faculties. As Leslie

King-Hammond (2007) said:

All art students still need a foundation of conceptual, technical and critical

training that reflects both tradition and innovation. We should keep adding to our

curricula. Students need access to so much more information today because the

way artists work now is so open-ended, using so many new techniques and

technologies and mediums. (p. 102)

From my own experience as an MFA student in the art department at Florida State

University over the last two years, I witnessed this pedagogical synthesis in the way FSU

fosters its graduate students. However, in cultivating its undergraduate art major students,

I lack firsthand experience, and so I began to do in-depth research on this topic.

Current Issues and Ideas in Teaching Painting and Drawing in Higher Education

Commentary on art schools had occurred for a long time. In Mercedes Matter’s

article “What’s Wrong with U.S. Art Schools?” (1963), she presented this issue: “Today,

it is possible for a student to go through art schools and gain an acute perception of ‘what

is going on,’ a fairly intelligent grasp of the situation and yet… in old fashioned language,

he will never have learned to draw.” (p. 41). For Matter, a devaluing of artists’ traditional

skills was a problem in teaching and learning. This “deskilling” was defined by Benjamin

Buchloh (2004) as a term used by modernists who intentionally banished traditional

manual virtuosity and the competence of draftsmanship. For Buchloh, deskilling is a

concept of considerable importance in describing numerous artistic endeavors throughout

the twentieth century with relative precision (p. 531).

Singerman (1999) recalled that although he holds a Master of Fine Arts degree in

sculpture from the 1970’s, he did not at the time have the traditional skills of the sculptor;

he couldn’t carve or cast or weld or model in clay. He admitted that his inability was not

his program’s fault because at that time the craft practices of a particular métier were no

longer central to his training; he learned to think, not inside a material tradition, but rather

about it, along its frame. The problem was not how to sculpt or to paint, but what to do as

an artist, and how to work. The curricula in Singerman’s graduate school was perhaps the

one that Bruce Ferguson (2007) called a “need to know” (p. 104) curricula. This means

that rather than a body of knowledge to be handed down by gatekeepers, advanced

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schools teach students material that is in relation to the individual students’ needs. Based

on the personal needs of the individual students, teachers provide specific knowledge and

skills to help students learn.

Issues like what to teach and how to teach always exist in teaching painting and

drawing in higher education. The subjects of traditional painting and drawing include the

subjects of still life, landscape, and figures. From other domains there are issues such as

contextualism versus essentialism, realism versus abstraction, representative versus

nonrepresentative, traditional high arts versus modern and postmodern arts, copying and

imitation versus innovation and creativity, techniques and skills versus idea and concepts,

using nude models or not, and so forth. I explored these issues in the following sections.

Contextualism and Essentialism

Contextualists advocate the communicative function of art in social and cultural

contexts (Anderson & Milbrandt, 2005). They believe that any artwork should be

examined under its larger social, cultural, and historical environment. Some of the most

influencial contextualists in art education are June King McFee, Laura Chapman and

Graham Chalmers. McFee (1977) believed that people are influenced in their choices in

art by their culture. Creative artists never escape their own culture. Contextualists or

instrumentalists believe painting should convey meaning to others. No painting ideally is

created with pure aesthetic purpose; rather it reflects its circumstances and does

something beyond being merely aesthetic in the world.

In teaching painting and drawing, contextualists attempt to express the meaning of

a painting or draw in its social, political, or cultural context (Anderson & Milbrandt,

2005). For instance, Robert Henry asked his students to observe and record their own

daily life around them in their painting; he encouraged his students to express

contemporary American life with a fresh American eye. He took a social point of view as

a contextualist in his teaching.

On the other hand essentialists believe painting and drawing is for its own sake

(Anderson & Milbrandt, 2005). Painting and drawing is for the sake of pure aesthetic

purpose, rendered through line, color, space, and composition. Painting and drawing is a

process of artists’ self-exploration in its forms, to express aesthetic meanings. Painting

and drawing is not for politics, history, culture, society, and community, but for its

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intrinsic qualities. Essentialism or formalism is supported by such aestheticians as Clive

Bell (1906), and R.G. Collingwood (1938). Essentialism emphasized pure aesthetic forms

and compositional qualities rather than social and cultural meanings of artworks. Clive

Bell (1906) defined art as significant form. Creation of forms or combination of lines and

of colors to create significant form is the only motive for the painter to create a painting.

In teaching painting and drawing, essentialists ask how the line is arranged, what

is the color relationship, how do the elements and principles of design work together, and

so on (Anderson & Milbrandt, 2005). For example, Kandinsky and Klee taught their

students in the Bauhaus by applying pure abstract forms such as point, line, and

geometric shapes to explore the compositional problems. Albers did the same thing,

urging his students at Black Mountain College and Yale to use color theory in their

painting practice, by experimenting with color stripes, color squares, and abstract color

strokes in their composition.

Creativity and Skills and Concept Development as Issues in Teaching Painting and

Drawing

To teach students to create a painting or a drawing is to cultivate students to

express an idea or concept with a painting or drawing medium (McFee, 1977; Chapman,

1978; Walker, 1996; Dobbs, 1998; Anderson & Milbrandt, 2005). According to Dobbs

(1998), art making in the Western tradition is the imposition of form upon matter, rooted

in concepts of art such as ancient Greek philosophy. The artist begins with an idea and

expresses it in a medium through skill and mastery of technique. In this sense, skill

development and the techniques adopted in art making are for the purpose of expressing

ideas and concepts. On the one hand, some students have many ideas and concepts but

they lack skills to execute them. On the other hand, only having skills without an idea is

not enough in creating a painting or drawing (Anderson & Milbrandt, 2005). The

techniques of how to use a graphite pencil, a piece of charcoal, or a brush to mix colors to

achieve certain effects, are teachable and belong to the techniques and skills domain.

Only having the skills will produce a craftsman instead of an artist/painter (Chapman,

1978). The distinction between a craftsman and a painter is that a painter can realize his

ideas by applying the craftsman’s techniques and skills into creation, but a craftsman only

uses his skills to imitate previous works, and does not create original works.

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When a teacher teaches certain types of skills to students he/she must teach the

concept behind it simultaneously (Anderson, 2005) for a complete artistic experience. An

example may be found in the glazing techniques of oil painting. The traditional

Renaissance painter Caravaggio adopted glazing techniques to create large transparent

shadows contrasting with high light areas in order to create the so-called light of divine

(Gombrich, 1972). On the contrary, Impressionists such as Monet abandoned glazing

techniques and adopted wet on wet techniques in order to express the instant fleeting

natural light effect. If Monet used the same techniques as Caravaggio, he would have had

to have waited for the under-paint to completely dry and the spontaneous effect of

impressionism would have been lost. Jackson Pollock adopted techniques of dripping and

splattering paint on a horizontally positioned canvas. This was the most convenient

technique for him to express his needs. As he stated: “new needs need new techniques….

The modern painter cannot express this age… in the old forms of the Renaissance or of

any other past culture.” (Gardner, 1996, p. 1098).

In art making, skills should be adopted and adapted for the purpose of creation.

Cultivating creativity means cultivating originality. Students need to understand the past

and then undertake an intentional break from that past in their artistic work. Teachers

need to encourage students to synthesize existing schemes, or break the established

patterns. McFee (1961) defined creative activity as follows: first, invent a new pattern,

form or idea; second, rearrange already established objects, patterns or ideas; and third,

integrate a new or borrowed factor into an already established organization. Eisner (1997)

defined four types of creativity: boundary pushing, inventing, boundary breaking, and

aesthetic organizing. Gardner (1989) noted that creativity was a massive dislocation or

radical reconceptualization, or a modest alteration of existing schemes or practices.

Anderson and Milbrandt (2005) described creativity thusly: “Creativity is a new or

unique way of seeing, understanding or doing something in relation to what already

exists, the way things have been seen or understood or done until now” (p. 66). Picasso

studied traditional representational art when he was a teenager at Academia del Natural in

Barcelona (Brown & McLean, 2004) in preparation for his own creative expression.

Willem de Kooning studied at Rotterdam Academy of Fine Arts where he achieved a

high level of skill at rendering photographic realism by the age of seventeen (Fineberg,

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2000). Gerhard Richter had already mastered socialist realism before he left Dusseldorf

of East Germany when he was 29 years old (Fineberg, 2000). The early training of these

artists served as a foundation for the innovative and exploratory work seen in their later

careers.

Using the Nude Model and Academic Tradition

The purpose of using nude models for teaching painting and drawing varies by

different art schools and artist-teachers. The use of the nude as subject matter is prevalent

in the European and American Academic tradition.

The nude as a form of art was first used by the Greeks in the fifth century (Clark,

1956). In Greece, the nude represented idealized natural beauty. In the classical

sculptures, such as, Apollo and Venus of Melos, Greek artists found a balance of ideal and

real beauty. During the Renaissance, Leonardo da Vinci studied the human body for the

purpose of anatomy and proportion as a means of scientific research.

Cultivating a taste of ideal beauty through painting and drawing from nude

models was one of the earliest traditions of the European academies (Goldstein, 1996). In

1563, the first art academy in Europe, the Accademia del Disegno, offered the

opportunity to study drawing from live models (Brown & Mclean, 2004). In Johann

Zoffany’s 1772 drawing The Life Class at the Royal Academy, he illustrated the adoption

of male nude models as the subject at the Royal Academy’s painting class. Two male

nude models were arranged in different poses by a group of official academicians. In the

nineteenth-century French academy, life drawing was dictated by a taste for the graceful

and elegant (Goldstein, 1996).

Between 1876 and 1886, At Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, Tomas Eakins’s

painting class adopted nude models with a focus on anatomical study and most of his

students went so far as to study dissected corpses (Byrd, 1964). Eakins’ drawing Seated

Woman Wearing a Mask challenged the social taboo of using the female nude model in

painting classes. He resigned his teaching position because he insisted on using two

models, one male and one female in same class, for anatomical comparison which

challenged the authorities at Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art (Byrd, 1964).

The Hofmann school, in 1938 used nude models to study positive and negative

space. Hofmann told his students to “draw not merely the model but the ‘space’” (Kahn,

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1990, p. 190). When he taught his students to enjoy Vermeer, Velazquez, and Rembrandt,

Hofmann said, “The beauty is in the empty spaces” (Kahn, 1990, p. 190).

Teaching Studio Art

In the field of art education in the twentieth century, there are many scholars who

have presented unique rationales that also influenced studio art education enormously. In

1947, Viktor Lowenfeld published the first edition of Creative and Mental Growth. His

rationale of creative art education was based on a most basic human need, sound mental

and emotional growth. In the book he affirmed a direct connection between spontaneous

creativity and mental health. Based on his heuristic theory, in the 1950s art classes placed

more emphasis on students’ self-expression, personal idea, concept and instant mood

(Efland, 1990). The teacher designed the curriculum based on students’ interests rather

than on systematic instruction.

In the late 1950s, reacting to the successful launching of a space satellite by the

Soviet Union, American education experienced a pendulum swing toward academic

subjects (Efland, 1990). In 1959, during the Woods Hole conference, Jerome Bruner’s

(1960) structure-of-the-discipline theory in general education was the theoretical

foundation of the reform leading to discipline-based art education (DBAE) in art

education. Bruner (1960) believed that “the teaching and learning of structure, rather than

simply the mastery of facts and techniques, is at the center of the classic problem of

transfer” (p. 12). Any discipline must have its own intrinsic structures from which the

curriculum and instruction should be generated. Visual arts, like any other discipline,

should have its own intrinsic structures for teaching and learning, he believed.

In 1965 a seminar on discipline centered art education was held at Pennsylvania

State University. A pervasive theme of the Penn State Conference was that art possessed

a structure like that of any other academic discipline. In addition to studio art, art history,

art criticism, and aesthetic education were the rubrics often used to refer to this new

thinking about art education (Efland, 1990).

In the 1970s, Wachowiak and Clements (1970) presented the theory of qualitative

instruction in art education which required the teacher to go beyond initial stimulation in

art instruction. They believed that more time and more thought are needed for qualitative

instruction. Qualitative instruction not only entails consistent formative and ongoing

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evaluation in the form of feedback from instructor to student, but also entails continual

reflection by students about their own work and the work of others (Anderson, 2005).

Contemporaries of Wachowiak and Clements, June King McFee (1977), and

Laura Chapman (1978) contributed to the developing contextual theory in art education,

which held that teaching art is to cultivate students to express meaning through their

creation, and communicate ideas to others about things that count in the world. Chapman

(1978) emphasized the difference between teaching art and creating art. She deemed that

students must experience the process of creating art, and the teacher must become

familiar with ways of thinking about art that extends beyond personal preferences and

experiences. In other words, in order to create painting, the teacher should teach the

student not only the single style that he or she liked, but many different styles of

paintings. From the inception of an idea, through the elaboration and refinement of that

initial idea, through to the execution in a medium, the student will create a piece of

artwork.

McFee (1977) believed that people are influenced in their choices of art by their

culture. There are two purposes for creating art. One is to express the person’s own

feelings, ideas, understandings, perceptions, and relationships. Another is to

communicate to others, to stress ideas, to clarify issues, to illustrate meanings and

relationships, to intensify other people’s perceptions of things, and to enhance the quality

of their experience. She concluded that there are five needs for students in order to create

art: first, ideas to express; second, symbols, visual images, and designs or compositions

that express these ideas; third, materials that are appropriate for the message; fourth,

skills to manipulate the media so their ideas can be brought out; and fifth, skills to

criticize what they have done so that they can continue to develop. Moreover, the teacher

should move beyond personal preference to a certain style and medium, and open up

more avenues for creating art.

Throughout the 1980s, discipline-based art education (DBAE) gradually earned

teachers’ approval which combined four art disciplines into teaching and learning

through art. In DBAE, students not only create art, but also study art history, art criticism,

and aesthetics. W. Dwaine Greer (1984) first used the term discipline-based art education

and he set forth the principles of DBAE. The DBAE art program was designed to teach

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art by means of a formal, continuous curriculum in the same way as other academic

subjects. In DBAE, the four art disciplines are taught interactively to build an

increasingly developed understanding and enlightened appreciation for works of art.

Another influential view of teaching and learning in the twenty-first century is

comprehensive art education, advocated by Anderson and Milbrandt (2005). The

comprehensive model extends DBAE to include visual culture, creativity and new

technologies as foci. The continuing focus on studio instruction in this context builds on

the tradition of qualitative instruction in making art. Based on Wachowiak and

Clements’(1970) theory, Anderson & Milbrandt (2005) emphasized the component of

qualitative instruction in making art. Anderson & Milbrandt (2005) believed that making

art is to create meaning based on students’ life experiences, and they advocated what they

called art for life. Anderson & Milbrandt first asked why students make art, and what

kind of meaning do artists make in their art? They answered the questions from

essentialists’ (personal) and contextualists’ (social) points of view. They suggested: “ In

art for life, a good program will combine the intrinsic, essentialist, personal,

psychological aspects of making art and the aspects that are social, community based,

extrinsic, and instrumentalist” (Anderson & Milbrandt, 2005, p. 141).

Anderson & Milbrandt (2005) also emphasized facilitating skills, problem

solving, the connection between process and meaning, the growth of artistic intelligence,

and overcoming the fear of making art. From a visual meaning perspective, in the process

of making art, the teacher facilitates the connections between ideas and skills, as students

create their unique art works.

In the field of general education, stimulus-response theorists believe that learning

is a change in observable behavior, which occurs through stimuli and responses (Bigge &

Shermis, 1992). It includes trial and error; readiness, exercise and effect; stamping in; and

stimulus substitution. Stimuli are environmental agents that act upon an organism so as

either to cause it to respond or to increase the probability of a response of a certain kind.

Responses are physical reactions of an organism to either external or internal stimulation.

For example, stimulus-response theorists interpret learning in terms of changes in

strength of: stimulus-response connection, associations, habits, or behavioral tendencies

(Bigge & Shermis, 1992). In painting instruction the teacher would introduce the

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information of the medium and demonstrate the basic techniques to students. These are

considered processes of stimuli. The teacher also arranges for students to practice the

techniques and overcome the inherent technical obstacles. By repetitive practice, students

become familiar with the media and techniques so that they can change their behavior

and apply the techniques to their art production. It is a stimuli-response procedure as the

teacher assigns different projects with increasingly advanced technical tasks. As the

students finish one task, they move onto a higher-level set of tasks and skills. Once a

series of tasks are finished, students may achieve a masterful level of technical

proficiency.

For cognitive interaction theory, learning is a process of gaining or changing

insights, outlooks, expectations, or predictable thought patterns. Cognitive interactionists

defined learning in terms of reorganization of perceptual or cognitive fields so as to gain

understandings (Bigge & Shermis, 1992). This reorganization comes about in the process

of testing out actions in the world as noted by stimulus-response advocates. Living

spaces, experiences, environments, and subjective insights are very important

components to cultivating students’ ideas. Each student has his or her own life space and

experiences: they grew up in different environments and cultures. Based on individuality,

the art teacher should encourage each student to develop his or her own ideas, concepts,

insights, and thinking patterns. In art creation, there is no single answer, but many

possible explanations. Both stimulus-response theory and cognitive interaction, then is

appropriate in teaching painting and drawing.

Previous Research of Teaching Studio Art in American Higher Education

A few original data-based research projects of teaching studio art in higher

education conducted by doctoral and master students of art education have provided a

range of models for this study. The review included case studies conducted by Sevigny

(1977), Janesick (1982), Petsch (1998); ethnographic research conducted by James

(1996), and Walker (2004); microethnographic research by Stokrocki (1981); and field-

based qualitative research by Spicanovic (2000).

A small number of historical studies of studio instruction based on works of

college artist-teachers, art educators and art historians also presented comprehensive

social, cultural, and pedagogical contexts to guide me in my literature review. Examples

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include Logan (1955); Byrd (1964); Macdonald (1970); Wygant (1983); Efland (1990);

Smith (1996); Goldstein (1996); Singerman (1999); and Elkins (2001).

Sevigny (1977) conducted a case study investigation at a beginning level studio

classroom of one midwestern university. His study focused on the qualitative dimension

of student and teacher interaction. He adopted triangulated approach for case study

investigation which included a variety of descriptive operations, observation

perspectives, and analysis procedures. The purpose of his study was to seek for a greater

understanding of the learning dynamic that operates in a university studio classroom

setting. The research question was: “What are the characteristics of the appraisal events

and the instructional methods that accomplish the evaluation of student artistic

performance in the context of a university studio art classroom?”(Sevigny, 1977, p. 15).

An Ohio State University beginning life drawing class of the summer quarter of

1976 was selected for this study. A tenured assistant professor with nine years of studio

instruction experience was chosen as the instructor subject and the student subjects

included 19 students – both fine art and non art major students. Field notation was the

basic data-recording device of the participant observation that involved the keeping of a

daily log. The final analysis was based on 80 hours of field observation during a ten-week

period. This case study emphasized students’ learning perspective. The case study

method and triangulated approach are adopted in my study.

Janesick (1982) also adopted case study method to study two college level

architectural design classes for third-year college students taught by a professor during 16

months in a west-coast polytechnic institution. The professor was chosen through

randomly questioning students about who was the best teacher in the architecture

department. The research questions that guided the study were: “What elements are

involved in the enterprise of teaching architectural design at the university level by a

professional architect-turned-teacher? How does an individual implement a design

curriculum?” (Janesick, 1982, p. 22).

The research questions emerged from symbolic interactionism and rested upon a

phenomenology paradigm (Janesick, 1982). Symbolic interactionists view human

experience as an interpretive process. Phenomenology stresses understanding that focuses

on the meaning of human behavior within a given social context, including understanding

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the thoughts as well as actions of a given person. In this context, the methodology of

participant observation is well suited to discovering how people interpret their social

reality. From participant observation classes, and in-depth interviewing of the instructor

to analysis data, Janesick attempted to generalize grounded theory for ethnographic

research. The analysis of data was divided into two categories: the (1) statements and the

(2) actions which derived from field notes and interview materials. The statements

included goal statements, attitude statements, statements about students, belief

statements, references to other architects, statements on teaching (rewards and

frustrations), and statements on professionalism. The actions included in-class activities,

field trips, on-campus activities outside of teaching, critique sessions, work sessions in

studio, contents of lectures, planning, and actions of a professional nature. These

categorizes will be adopted for my data analysis strategies. Janesick’s case study provides

for me a good example in a very detailed research design procedure.

Petsch (1998) conducted an ethnographic study which focused on case studies of

three painters. Their artmaking processes and their artworks were examined to gain

understanding about the creative and expressive experience. Implications for teaching

studio art were draw from the case studies. The research question was: “What creative

and expressive qualities are involved in painting, and how are they made manifest in the

painting process?” (Petsch, 1998, p. 2). The means of data collection were recording, note

taking, and photography. The results of this study help frame issues related to student-

centered approaches to teaching studio art where fostering creative and expressive growth

is of primary importance.

Stokrocki (1981) adopted microethnographic procedures and phenomenological

description to study a college pottery class to describe qualitatively a student learning

environment. As she defined, microethnography is the study of a smaller experience or a

slice of everyday reality, such as instruction. Stokrocki presented the major research

question: “What is the nature of an art learning environment?”(Stokrocki, 1981, p. 18)

She considered this pottery class and its meaningful action as a text. Through a

hermeneutical explanation and interpretation, she sought the meaning in an art learning

environment. I adopt the phenomenological theoretical position into my study.

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James (1996), applied qualitative ethnographic methodological research into a

studio context conducted in a midwestern university sculpture studio class over an

academic quarter. The research focused on the perspectives of teaching and learning in

order to present a holistic overview of the real studio class teaching and learning

environment in higher education. The classroom interactions between teacher and

students, and student and peers, were observed, recorded, and interpreted. Students were

also interviewed in order to gain a better understanding of participants’ perspective.

The theoretical frameworks were based on system theory, symbolic

interactionism, and constructivism. In the analysis section, James (1996) divided the

course structure into three categories that included foundational, studio, and critique

phases. In each phase, more categories were added, such as demonstrating techniques,

showing examples of art, interacting with materials, interacting with instructors,

interacting with peers, and group critique.

In the conclusion, James (1996) suggested that continued qualitative research of

other studio environments will illuminate the diverse realities of studio learning and

teaching in various contexts, and further investigations of peer interactions, instructional

delivery, creative processes, and instructional phases will enable further understanding of

their connectedness and meaning within studio classroom systems. James’s suggestions

give me inspiration in seeking the meaning of studio instruction in my study.

Walker (2004), a graduate student at Concordia University, conducted an

ethnographic study of a painting class instructed by professor Susan Scott in one

academic year. This research is a recent ethnographical study of teaching painting at the

university level. The question investigated in this study was clearly stated: “What

organizational and personal qualities of a teacher, as exemplified by an active artist and

studio teacher at Concordia University, lead to the success of a studio art class at the

university level and contribute to the essence of good teaching?” (Walker, 2004, p. 1)

Walker (2004) used the method of participant observation and interview to

examine the organization of the course and the content and the pedagogical qualities.

Field notes and weekly journals were assembled and were descriptive and reflective

based on observations.

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In Professor Scott’s course titled Methods and Materials of the Artist, students

developed a basic understanding of the traditional materials and techniques of painting,

and also developed an understanding related to contemporary art practice (Walker, 2004).

Professor Scott focused on the introduction and demonstration of historical materials and

techniques, such as watercolor, encaustic, egg tempera, fresco secco, egg oil emulsion,

and silverpoint. The information that emerged from this study enabled Walker to define

the essence of good teaching and to develop his philosophy of education.

Walker (2004) adopted the three phases that James used for the analysis course

structure: the foundation, studio, and critic phases. Three emergent foci from observation

helped Walker to define good teaching: first, the way the course is organized; second,

additional knowledge and information to help create new avenues of creative exploration;

and third, the instructor’s quality.

Finally, Walker (2004) concluded with the subject’s teaching philosophy. He

believed that “structure” and “freedom” were equally important components in his

teaching. The structure referred to the rules, basic craft and techniques. Through the

teacher’s demonstration and the students’ practice, students mastered the techniques. In

order to express the students’ ideas effectively, the teacher needs to help students

combine the techniques they learned with their ideas so that students can create their

work freely. As a former student of Professor Scott, Walker re-evaluated her own

learning experience in this course. All comments were positive, and this may have been

related to her student-teacher relationship with the subject, which is a profound limitation

of that study.

Summary

In this chapter, I conducted a salient literature review of historical painting and

drawing instruction in higher education in the United States that included descriptions of

some key artist-teachers and their influence on teaching. I reviewed three different trends

in studio instruction in higher education historically, which includes the early academic

tradition, the modernism and Bauhaus influence, and the art schools in universities and

colleges. In addition, I presented some issues and concepts in teaching painting and

drawing based on a literature review, including discussion of contexualism and

essentialism, creativity and skills, nudity and the academic tradition. I also compared

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some teaching and learning theories in the field of art education and education related to

teaching studio art. Finally, I reviewed previous research of teaching painting conducted

by art historians, art critics, painting instructors and graduate students from which I

derived inspiration for this study.

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CHAPTER 3

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

This is a case study focused on in-depth examination of the nature of a painting

and drawing program at one American university. Through an examination of the

painting and drawing program at Florida State University, I attempted to answer the

major research question: What is the character of the painting and drawing program at

Florida State University? In particular, what are the goals, strategies, and outcomes

envisioned for undergraduate student learning as articulated and modeled by the

permanent faculty?

The supporting questions are:

1. What is the philosophy of the department, and what are the goals of the

painting and drawing program in the visual arts department at Florida State

University (FSU) as represented by official documents and websites?

2. What are the pedagogical rationales and methodologies of the faculty as they

represent them through interviews, documents, and in practice?

3. What are the faculty’s issues and concerns as represented in interviews?

4. What are the faculty’s influences as they present them?

5. What is the extent of agreement or disagreement across the faculty regarding

the teaching of painting and drawing courses required of all undergraduate art

majors as presented in practice and through interviews?

The research strategy engaged is qualitative field research. Qualitative studies are field-

focused. That is, researchers go out to schools, visit classrooms, and observe teachers

(Eisner, 1991) to gain firsthand information about that which they seek to understand.

Qualitative study is nonmanipulative and tends to study situations and objects intact.

Qualitative methodologies refer to research procedures which produce descriptive data,

particularly people’s own written or spoken words and observable behavior (Bogdan &

Taylor, 1975).

In the art education field, by the mid-1970s a pronounced shift from empirical to

qualitative research had occurred (Efland, 1990). Initially this approach was labeled

participant-observer research. Later the terms qualitative research or qualitative inquiry

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began to be used (Efland, 1990). Eisner (1991) used the term qualitative inquiry.

According to Eisner (1991) the six features of qualitative inquiry are that it is: “Field-

focused; conducted so that the researcher is an instrument; interpretive in nature;

expressive in language; paying attention to particulars; and relying on coherence for

authenticity, insight as a primary tool, and instrumental utility to judge whether it makes

sense. My research focused on the qualities of teaching painting and drawing investigated

in studio classroom settings, arising from careful observation, thick description, synthetic

analysis (Anderson, 2000a), and interviews (Seidman, 1998) of faculty members

involved.

My research is informed by previous research by Sevigny (1977), Stokrocki

(1981), James (1996), Spicanovic (2000), Walker (2004) and others. The methodology of

my research is that of a qualitative case study. By going into the field and observing, like

a painter sitting on site to paint a landscape, I saw with my own eyes, felt and

experienced the qualities of teaching painting and drawing by all of the permanent faculty

members in the art department at FSU. As Eisner (1991) said: “Seeing, rather than mere

looking, requires an enlightened eye: this is as true and as important in understanding and

improving education as in creating a painting” (p. 1).

Overview of the Study

In order to gain a holistic sense of individual instructors’ teaching methods, and in

order to unveil the meaning of their teaching, immersion in their actual teaching

environment is necessary for the research. Participant observation and in-depth open

ended interviews (Bogdon & Taylor, 1975; Schuman, 1982; Seidman, 1998; Eisner,

1998; Patton, 2002; Bogdan & Biklen, 2003) are the primary methods of case study that

not only allowed me to discover the reality of teaching painting and drawing in a college

studio environment, but also allowed me to experience, live, the teaching methods and

environments of all these teachers. During one semester I interviewed and observed

painting and drawing classes taught by all of the permanent faculty members in the art

department at FSU.

In-depth, phenomenologically-based interviewing (Schuman, 1982; Seidman,

1998) was applied as the primarily approach for interviewing teachers. A formal three-

part interview was conducted for each teacher (Seidman, 1998). The first part of the

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interview focused on the personal life domain which includes the life experience,

educational background, and training background. The second part of the interview

focused on what the teacher actually does: the teaching domain which includes teaching

experience, teaching philosophy, teaching methods, issues and concerns in teaching. The

third part focused on the meaning of their teaching experiences. Each interview was

conducted for as long as necessary, but not over an hour. Aside from these formal

interviews, occasional conversations between these faculty members and me were

applied as a secondary interview strategy for gathering information. These formal

interviews were recorded, and the impromptu interviews were too, when possible.

Prefigured foci rising from the supporting research questions and emergent foci

rising from the research experience (Eisner, 1991) helped me to draw a series of themes

for interpretation. The review of literature provided both the grounds for the supporting

research questions and salient themes and issues of teaching painting and drawing, and

these required major attention as far as what to look for when I got into the field. The

emergent foci emerged during the observation and helped me find some key points while

observing the classes.

From interviews and observations, through field notes and coding activity, I

arrived at an interpretation of the meaning behind the phenomena that helped me and

viewers to understand the culture of teaching in a college painting and drawing program.

Phenomenological Foundations of This Study

The theoretical underpinnings, concepts, and philosophical propositions that guide

researchers in their inquiries and research are ways through which researchers look at the

world. All research is guided by some theoretical orientation (Bogden & Biklen, 2003).

The primary theoretical framework for this study is drawn from phenomenology

(Husserl, 1913; Schulz; 1950; Patton, 2002; Fraenkel & Wallen, 2003; Bogdan & Biklen,

2003). Phenomenology is the study of an experience and its essence (Stokrocki, 1997) as

constructed in the experience of the participants. What is the essence of the experience of

teaching painting and drawing in the art department at Florida State University as defined

by the faculty? What is the character of this program and what are the qualities of

teaching in this program as experienced by the participants? My study intended to answer

these questions.

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Phenomenological theory places emphasis upon the inquiry of meaning, structure

and essence of the lived experience of a particular phenomenon for a person or group of

people (Patton, 2002). The researcher hopes to gain some insight into the world of his or

her participants and to describe their perceptions and reactions (Fraenkel & Wallen,

2003). Through participant observation in the classroom and in-depth, open-ended

interviews with all of these teachers who teach painting and drawing in the art department

at FSU, I gained some insight of their perception of teaching and understand their

teaching from their own frame of reference. As Patton (2002) stated:

The Phenomenological approach is a focus on exploring how human beings make

sense of experience and transform experience into consciousness. This requires

methodologically, carefully, and thoroughly capturing and describing how people

experience some phenomenon – how they perceived it, describe it, feel about it,

judge it, remember it, make sense of it, and talk about it with others. (p. 104)

Phenomenological theory has been influenced by the philosophers Edmund

Husserl and Alfred Schutz (Bogdon & Biklen, 2003). Husserl envisaged phenomenology

as the descriptive, non-reductive science of whatever appears, in the manner of its

appearing, in the subjective and intersubjective life of consciousness (Moran, 2005).

Phenomenology accepts what is given purely as given, excluding all positing of non-

immanent reality (Moran, 2005, p. 3). Husserl presented the slogan “back to the things

themselves”, and he insisted on the “essence” or “genuine meaning” of the thing (Moran,

2005, p. 5). In other words, phenomenology wants to clarify concepts in terms of the

original intuitions in which they are experienced in a living way.

Conversely, Husserl (Gurwitsch, 1970) believed that the modern science

inaugurated by Galileo, in what he referred to as scientific reality, was an ideal

mathematical construction superseding, and substituted for, the life-world. For Husserl,

the life-world proved to be the most essential presupposition of a foundation of making

sense of the science of physics. The scientific universe he believed was constructed on

the basis of the multiple experience of the life-world.

Husserl (Wagner, 1970) believed that consciousness was the medium through

which the objective thing was manifested. Consciousness was the pre-existing

requirement to understand the life-world. According to Husserl, all direct experiences of

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humans were experiences in and of their life-world. The life-world was the whole sphere

of everyday experiences, orientations, and actions through which individuals pursued

their interests and affairs by manipulating objects, dealing with people, conceiving plans,

and carrying them out.

Schutz (1944) developed Husserl’s conception of the ‘life-world’ and emphasized

it as the social and cultural world, which was the root of our store of experience: as

Schutz called it “stock of knowledge at hand” (p. 99). The stock comprises a set of

connected rules and maxims of behavior in typical situations, recipes for handling things

of certain types so as to attain typical results (Schutz, 1964). So the knowledge of the

world of nature and the knowledge of social and cultural worlds I am living in are the

major components of my stock of knowledge at hand. All interpretation of this world is

based upon a stock of previous experience of it, and this stock is socially derived and

being transmitted to the person by his or her parents, teachers, other persons in authority,

and also by all kinds of associates (Gurwitsch, 1970). In this sense, all of these teachers’

teaching in the study was influenced by their stock of knowledge at hand which was not

only derived from their previous life and teaching experiences, but also from social and

cultural influences.

Phenomenologists view human behavior – what people say and do – as a product

of how people interpret their world (Bogdon & Taylor, 1975). In a phenomenological

sense, then, I want to know: What are the teaching experiences of these teachers in the

painting and drawing program? What kind of sense do these experiences provide for the

teachers? How do they feel about their teaching and what do they have to say about their

teaching?

Pragmatism

Pragmatism is another supporting theoretical framework in my research (Peirce,

1878; James, 1898; Dewey, 1934; Eisner, 1991) in the sense that my research methods

and structure rise from pragmatic principles. It followed and complemented the

phenomenological premises of this study.

James’s (1898) contentions that consciousness is teleological in nature and his

principle of experience (p. 32) are the basic theoretical underpinnings in formulating my

research questions. The understanding of all instructional activity and its products must

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include reference to the instructors’ pedagogical goal, their personal interests, and to the

department’s philosophy. The premise is that nothing is random without purpose. What

happens in the painting and drawing studio must reflect the department goal and

instructors’ rationale. For James (Suckiel, 2006), any concept or hypothesis which has no

experiential implications or effects is meaningless. Everything real must be able to be

experienced, and everything experienced must be real. James believed that the appeal to

experience was both necessary and sufficient for explaining phenomena we seek to

understand. In this sense, both instructors’ own experience of teaching and my own

experience of their teaching will be necessary and sufficient for explaining the teaching

phenomena I seek to understand.

Dewey’s (1934) propositions of doing and undergoing and having an experience

are also fundamental to my research. One of the key ideas of Dewey’s pragmatism is that

reality only reveals itself as a result of the activities – the doings – of the organism

(Biesta & Burbules, 2003). The interaction between the living human organism and its

environment constructs a process of transaction (Biesta & Burbules, 2003) which is the

core of experience from which we construct meaning. The term experience for Dewey is

a function of the organism-environment transaction. As Dewey (1934) stated: “Every

experience is the result of interaction between a live creature and some aspect of the

world in which he lives” (pp. 43-44). The relationship between doing (action) and

undergoing (reception/consequence) must be joined in perception and this relationship is

what gives us meaning. In Dewey’s view, meaning is embedded in an acquired

perception which lies between the individual and their encounter with the world. In my

research, this transactionalism manifested itself between all these painting and drawing

instructors and their authentic college studio teaching context, between their antecedent

education, their life world and their teaching philosophy and teaching methods; between

their teaching philosophy, and teaching methods and students’ artworks. What and how

they teach reflected their beliefs, which gave meaning to their teaching.

Elliot Eisner (1991) took Dewey’s pragmatism as his philosophical foundation in

educational qualitative inquiry. His premise is “To see is to experience qualities,” (p. 1).

Eisner’s (1991) Elightened Eye says:

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Experience has its genesis in our transaction with the qualities of which our

environment consists. By qualities I mean those features of our environment that

can be experienced through any of our senses. Our capacity to experience

qualities is, from one perspective, well developed when we enter the world. (p.

17)

Here, Eisner emphasizes that experience lies in the transaction between ourselves and our

environment, which is derived from Dewey’s organism-environment transaction view.

Anderson (2003) likewise suggested that meaning lay not in the objective world nor in

the subjective self, but in the transaction between them. Through our sensibility and

perception, the features of our environment could be experienced especially when we

entered the real world in the research field, and the meaning could then be interpreted.

Eisner (1991) also stated: “What we experience is shaped both by our conceptual

framework and the tools we have available” (p. 28), which was similar to Schutz’s (1944)

stock of the knowledge at hand described in the previous segment. Eisner (1991) called

this “sensibility and schema” (p. 34). How we see, respond and interpret the world is

dependent upon our sensibility and schema, which bears our own signature. Sensibility

and schema gave import to observation which provides the means through which we

make sense of a complex qualitative situation. The historical antecedents of a context

provide a background against which particular episodes acquire meaning. Personal

history, antecedent knowledge and previous experience shape people’s experience and

act upon our consciousness.

Phenomenology and Pragmatism share some common ground. Both of them

frame the study of the live experience in similar ways. In this case, both of them

contribute to understanding the teaching experience of these painting and drawing

teachers, which results from the interaction between their instruction and the authentic

academic environment. Second, both of them seek the meaning of the phenomena

engaged, in this case the instruction of painting and drawing by the permanent faculty at

FSU.

Methodology: Qualitative Case Study

Case study research is a form of framing for qualitative research that, in turn,

endeavors to discover meaning, to investigate processes, and to gain insight into and in-

46

depth understanding of an individual, group, or situation (Lodico, & Spaulding, &

Voegtle, 2006). A qualitative case study is an intensive, holistic description and analysis

of a bounded phenomenon such as a program, an institution, an event, a person, a

process, or a social unit or group (Merriam, 1988). In order to discover the meaning of

teaching painting and drawing in the art department at FSU, and gain an in-depth

understanding of the teaching phenomena of all the permanent painting and drawing

faculty members, case study is the best approach.

Case study first appeared in the disciplines of anthropology and sociology

(Hamel, 1993). During World War I, Bronislaw Malinowski (1915), a Polish-born

Austrian anthropologist, took refuge in Melanesia for three years in the Trobriand

Islands, and he carefully observed the local village culture. First hand observations of

patterns of behavior, beliefs, and customs of local people were faithfully noted in the

field logs. The village offered a homogeneous social life, combined with a low

population density. The study immediately provided many practical benefits for case

studies because it was an enlargement of all of the culture’s traits and features (Hamel,

1993).

In sociology, the French sociologist Frederic Le Play (Hamel, 1993) is considered

the founder of the case study in France. From 1835-1836, Le Play conducted a systematic

study of the working-class populations of various European nations. For Le Play, society

cannot be studied as a single entity or unit. The focus must be on some key element. This

element served as a prime observation point, one that made up the society’s basic unit.

This unit revealed the characteristic features of the society, its social state. The family

was his observation point, or the case. An in-depth study of the family case would

provide an understanding of the society in its characteristic features.

In the United States, the case study was the approach of choice for early

sociological studies, and the University of Chicago became the leader of the case study

approach (Hamel, 1993). Since 1916, teachers in the Department of Sociology at the

University of Chicago, Professors William I. Thomas, Robert Park, George H. Mead, and

their students Ernest W. Burgess, Herbert Blumer, Robert Redfield, and Everett C.

Hughes, conducted case studies focusing on the social problems provoked by

urbanization and immigration. These case studies were influenced by Dewey’s pragmatist

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philosophy. According to Dewey (1934), the interaction between the human being and

our life environment defined the meanings of our life. The actor’s view was valued in

these case studies in the University of Chicago School.

Another characteristic of the case study, (Lodoco, Spaulding, & Voegtle, 2006), is

that case studies can be differentiated from other forms of qualitative research because

these studies focus on a single unit or a bounded system. In order to determine whether

the case studied is a bounded system, the researcher might ask whether there is a limit to

the number of people involved who could be interviewed. If there is no end to the number

of people who could be interviewed or to observations that could be conducted, then the

phenomenon is not bounded enough to be a case (Lodoco, Spaulding, & Voegtle, 2006).

A case study might also be selected because it is intrinsically interesting in and of

itself, and one would study it to achieve as full an understanding of the phenomenon as

possible (Merriam, 1988). Stake (1995) defined three kinds of case studies. These were

the intrinsic case study, the instrumental case study, and the collective case study. This

study is an intrinsic case study because I have an intrinsic interest in the case, in terms of

a particular issue: painting and drawing in a major American university.

The interest of case study lies in examining process rather than outcomes, in

context rather than a specific variable, and in discovery rather than confirmation

(Merriam, 1988). There is no manipulation or treatment of subjects. The researcher takes

things as they are (McMillan & Schumacher, 1984). A case study design is used to gather

descriptive information about the present status, past experiences and environmental

forces that contribute to the individual social units (Sevigny, 1977). In qualitative

research, the researcher emphasizes episodes of nuance, the sequentiality of happenings

in context, and the wholeness of the individual (Stake, 1995).

Educational Criticism and Qualitative Research

The task of the critic is to transform the qualities of a painting, play, novel, poem,

classroom or school, or act of teaching and learning in a public form that illuminates,

interprets, and appraises the qualities that have been experienced (Eisner, 1991). The aim

of educational criticism, or educational connoisseurship (Eisner, 1991), is to appreciate

the qualities of some educational situation or events and their antecedent and contextual

condition. The aim of educational criticism is to help others see and understand (Eisner,

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1991) a given educational situation. In the context of art education, the critic looks at

educational interactions, situations, and institutions as though looking at a work of art for

meaning and significance (Anderson, 2000A).

The aim of educational criticism is to discover significant human meanings,

especially through looking at what, how, and why people do what they do in a social

context (Anderson, 2000A). The researcher is trying to get a picture, recognize patterns,

and understand the significance of what’s going on in the situation he or she is observing.

In this research, it means trying to understand what is being taught, and how and why it is

being taught.

In order to examine the teaching methods and the meanings they have to the

participants in the FSU painting and drawing program, I adopted Eisner’s (1998) and

Anderson’s (2000A) educational criticism strategies for case study as a vital strategy in

my research. The former strategy included four dimensions: “description, interpretation,

evaluation, and thematics.” The latter strategy included three stages: “immersion and

response, description (which moved from surface to depth and from general to

analytically specific), and interpretation (which included and generally concluded with an

evaluation).” Both strategies helped me to interpret the meaning behind the phenomena.

A combination of these two strategies guided my research.

Research Strategies

Literature Review

Qualitative research on teaching painting and drawing at the university level is a

new field of study. A review of the literature suggests little research had been conducted

on teaching painting and drawing in the past. Through a computer search strategy, I

found about ninety papers related to the subject of teaching painting and drawing of

which there were only two articles directly related to my study. Five dissertations were

tangentially related.

I used the databases ERIC, WorldCat, JSTOR, Article First, Wilson/web, and

UMI ProQuest Digital Dissertation through key word searches including: “teaching

painting and drawing,” “teaching method of painting and drawing,” “studio teaching and

painting,” “teaching drawing and painting,” “ painting and painting teaching method,”

“teaching painting and drawing at university,” “artist-teacher,” “painting and drawing and

49

approach and study,” “teaching studio art,” “teaching art,” “art study and teaching,” and

“painting and drawing instruction.” In addition, I also reviewed the journals through both

computer and manual search strategies, including, Art Education (1980-2005), Studies in

Art Education (1980-2005), College Art Journal (1940-1960), Art Journal (1960-2000),

Visual Art Research (1980-2005), Art & Academe, and American Artist.

I found two key articles (James, 1996; Spacavonic, 2000) one master’s thesis

(Walker, 2004) and five doctoral dissertations (Sevigny, 1977; Stokrocki, 1981; Janesick,

1982; James, 1996; Petsch, 1998) which were directly related to my research. These

studies all used qualitative research methodologies. The five dissertations focused on

perspectives other than mine, such as the teacher-student interaction, student-learning

environment, and cultivating artists’ creativity.

The search also yielded sixteen articles tangentially related to my study. All of the

sixteen articles utilized the historical research and case study approaches. Through this

research I had gained an historical overview of teaching painting and drawing in

American higher education from eighteenth century to today. These articles pointed out

some vital trends and issues that had emerged within the discipline, for example, how in

different historical periods, the rationales and teaching methods of painting and drawing

reflected evolving concepts of how to teach painting and drawing.

The literature did suggest topics and concepts that were to be used in structuring

aspects and foci of my inquiry, and were addressed as supporting questions and topics in

the interviews and in analysis and interpretation of data.

Sample

I adopted convenience sampling strategy (Patton, 2002; Fraenkel & Wallen, 2003)

congruent with my focus. The sampling strategy contained within a case study which

focused on studying a painting and drawing program involving all of the permanent

faculty members who teach painting and drawing classes in this program. This case, the

painting and drawing program at the Florida State University, was chosen because it fit

my needs in that it showed one example of American higher education instruction in

studio art. My personal experience as an art major student studying in a comprehensive

university in China was an intrinsic interest for this study.

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Since I had been studying for my MFA in painting here at FSU during the last two

years, all of the painting and drawing faculty members were conveniently available for

interviews and study. That was I understand the field of study to be examined (Eisner,

1991), so the field observations and interviews were of easy access for me. Also, this case

involved an independent academic unit. An in-depth study of this unit provided a

thorough understanding of the wholeness through observing and talking with the

individuals involved. The graduate teaching assistants and adjuncts who teach painting

and drawing classes currently in the art department were not selected as my subjects for

interviewing and observation because theirs were temporary teaching positions and were

constantly being changed: only the permanent faculty members were selected for this

study as duly appointed representatives of the art department.

Out of five permanent faculty members contacted for this research, four

(Professors A, B, C, D) agreed to participate. Of the participants, the four faculty

members include two female and two male professors. Two are recently hired, and the

other two are full professors with over 20 years of teaching experience.

Professor A (PA) went to the University of Alabama at Birmingham for her

undergraduate degree and received her MFA in painting from the University of Illinois at

Urbana Champion (UIUC). PA taught six years of painting and drawing. She taught

Drawing I, Drawing II, 2D Design and Figure Drawing over the course of three years at

UIUC. At the University of Alabama at Birmingham, she taught all level painting and

drawing courses, from Drawing I to Drawing IV, and graduate drawing, as well as

intermediate and advanced painting for three years. Currently, Professor A teaches one

2D Design and two Figure Drawing classes at Florida State University. This is her first

year teaching at FSU.

Professor B (PB) first went to Meramec Community College in St. Louis for two

years studying art. Then he went to another small college in St. Louis called Fontbonne

College and got his BFA, a bachelors degree for painting. After that he went to Indiana

University for two years to get my Master’s degree. Professor B had been painting for

thirty-three years, and he had taught painting and drawing for 23 years at FSU. Currently

PB taught all level painting courses.

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Professor C (PC) completed his undergraduate education at the Memphis College

of Art in Memphis. Tennessee. He completed graduate school at the University of

Illinois and later completed postgraduate study at Harvard University, and then the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston. PC had been teaching for 35 years and

began his instructional career when he was in the undergraduate phase of art school.

When PC started out teaching at FSU fifteen years ago, he was teaching mostly

Experimental Design and Drawing I. Currently PC teaches Drawing II, and Figure

Drawing.

Professor D (PD) went to the Art Institute of Chicago for a BFA where there were

markedly more installations and a distinct emphasis on postmodern art. She then went to

the Florence of Academy of Art in Italy, which stressed classical realism in the style of

French Beaux-Arts. Professor D obtained her Master’s degree from the University of

Delaware, but she was studying mostly with the conservation department with focus on

the materials and techniques of the old masters. PD had studied painting for 25 years.

Professor D has seven years of formal teaching experience and started to teach at FSU in

September 2007. She teaches Materials and Technique, a workshop, and also teaches

graduate students. She likes to work with students in a one-on-one setting, talking about

what materials are best for them to execute their work and the process by which to

develop it. She also teaches Painting I, Painting II, Drawing II.

All of these four faculty members were trained in different background and were

influenced by different teachers and art movements. They had different teaching

experience. Two are recently hired assistant professors, and the other two are tenure-

tracked full professors. In chapter 5, I will present an in-depth analysis of these faculty

members’ educational/training background.

Triangulation

Triangulation is fundamental in qualitative research and it improves the quality of

the data that are collected and the accuracy of the researcher’s interpretations (Fraenkel &

Wallen, 2003). I used triangulation to include using different data collecting techniques.

Triangulation strengthens a study by combining methods (Patton, 2002). Triangulation

was first used in the social sciences to convey the idea that to establish a fact you need

more than one source of information (Bogdan & Biklen, 2003). Triangulation was used in

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qualitative research for verification of the facts. It came to mean that many sources of

data were better in a study than a single source because multiple sources lead to a fuller

understanding of the phenomena you were studying (Bogdan & Biklen, 2003). The

triangulation process in this study included three methods: interviewing teachers,

observing classes, and examining documents including students’ works and analyzing

other records of teaching, such as syllabi, personal documents, and lecture notes (Patton,

2002; Fraenkel & Wallen, 2003). I used this triangulation process to authenticate the

research findings.

During interviews of the teachers, I asked questions addressing these domains: 1.

personal domain, such as their previous training background and life experience; 2.

teaching domain, such as, the teacher’s feelings, instructional goals, motivations,

attitudes, concerns, issues, and means about teaching painting, and teacher’s opinion

towards traditional and contemporary painting teaching method; and 3. meaning domain,

such as, the meaning of their teaching experiences.

Through observations, I focused on: the studio classroom setting; the teacher’s

method of instruction; the content, structure and goal of the class; the basic information,

content, and techniques delivery; and how the teacher helped students combine the

techniques they learned and their individual concepts into their art creation. Field

observation (Fraenkel & Wallen; 2003, Patton, 2002) was recorded in a journal, and

included description and interpretation. I transcribed and analyzed the data I collected

and summarized the main characteristics of the painting and drawing classes, especially

the teaching methods of these teachers.

Through examination of the documents, I examined students’ works to verify the

teachers’ teaching. I scrutinized whether the teachers’ instructional goals were

implemented effectively, and whether the students combined what they learned, such as

the techniques and concepts into their artworks. In addition, I examined the records of

teaching through personal documents which included all written materials that were self-

revealing of a person’s view of experience. For instance, syllabus, lecture notes, diaries,

published autobiographies, exhibition brochures, and so forth were analyzed.

Data Collection Devices

Data collection devices included the following:

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The researcher as an instrument. The primary instrument in my study was myself.

Eisner’s (1991) said that the researcher was the primary instrument in qualitative

research. This maybe seen as both an asset and a limitation.

Observation. I observed one class for each permanent faculty member who

teaches painting and drawing at FSU’s Arts Department during one academic semester

(Emerson, Fretz, &Shaw, 1995; Anderson, 2000; Patton, 2002; Bogdan & Biklen, 2003)

Interview. I interviewed all of the permanent painting and drawing faculty

members at FSU’s Visual Arts Department (Eisner, 1991; Seidman, 1998; Anderson,

2000; Patton, 2002; Bogdan & Biklen, 2003).

Document analysis.Written documents, such as art department and college

bulletins, syllabi, course handouts, and student evaluations were examined (Eisner, 1991;

Bogdan & Biklen, 2003).

Audio recording. All of the interviews were audio recorded and transcribed into

written format (Eisner, 1991; Bogdan & Biklen, 2003).

Note taking. Field notes were taken for each class, (Eisner, 1991; Anderson, 2000;

Bogdan & Biklen, 2003). They were narrative, descriptive, analytic and interpretive in

nature. Note taking served to remind me of the key information that emerged in the event.

Digital Photography. All of the studio classroom settings were recorded by digital

camera. Some of the students’ artworks finished in the painting classes were recorded as

document samples (Eisner, 1991; Bogdan & Biklen, 2003).

Data Gathering and Coding

Data gathering. As Bogdan and Biklen (2003) stated: “The term data refers to the

rough materials researchers collect from the world they are studying” (p. 117). Data

includes materials such as interview transcripts and participant observation field notes,

photographs, official and personal documents, and newspaper articles (Bogdon & Tylor,

1975; Eisner 1998; Wolcott, 2001; Bogdan & Biklen, 2003). The data in my research

included a field notes journal, interview transcripts, department documents, personal

documents and photos.

The field notes journal included descriptive notes that were detailed objective

recordings of the classroom setting, the content of the teachers’ instruction, and the

conversations between teachers and students. Based on the descriptive field notes, I wrote

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reflections (analytic comments) that were more objective and reflect critical interpretation

of what I perceived, and what I thought it mean.

Interview transcripts were transcribed from interviewing teachers. All of the

interviews were tape recorded, then transcribed into written transcripts.

Personal documents include art books, syllabi, diaries and lecture notes which

were used as data collection materials. These materials portrayed the subjects’ own life

experience with their own words. In addition official departmental literature reflecting the

program’s stance toward painting and drawing were examined.

Digital photographs of studio classroom settings and students’ art works were

taken. Photographs provided striking descriptive data, often used to understand the

subjective, and are frequently analyzed inductively (Bogdan & Biklen, 2003).

Coding. One set of codes came from reviewing the literature and are framed as

the supporting questions. And another set of codes came from a pilot study described

below. Furthermore, emergent codes arised from searching through data. Patterns, themes

and trends were found and written down using words and phrases to represent these

topics as codes (Bogdan & Biklen, 2003; Goodall, 2000; Eisner, 1998; Emerson, Fretz &

Shaw, 1995). Themes rised from patterns in the data, which were the result of emphases

by faculty or repetition in their arising. Emergent codes included terms such as, teaching

rationale, teaching method, teaching experience, techniques and skills, concepts and

ideas, artists, art style and art movement, color relation, proportion, and composition. In

reviewing the interview and field notes, abbreviations derived from the initial letters of

key words were employed for sorting and used in further post-fieldwork. For example,

teaching method was TM. It helped me to handle my field notes, interview transcripts,

and other descriptive materials for further interpretation.

Confidentiality

Confidentiality of all subjects was maintained. All of the participants remained

anonymous (Seidman, 1998). I used Professor A, B, C, D…. to name the subjects in the

research. All audio and visual recordings were kept in my private apartment and locked

in a drawer and destroyed once the study was completed.

Before the observation and interview, all of the participants were given informed

consent forms (see appendix F). Informed consent forms summarized the purpose of my

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research. They knew who I was and whom to contact for information if they had

questions or concerns with the research process. I also informed the participants of the

right to participation. Their participation was voluntary and they might stop participation

at any time. All participant responses were kept confidential to the extent allowed by law.

All of the quotes from the professors’ lectures and interviews were reported in the

research, but identities of the lecturer/interviewee were protected.

Reporting

I gave each subject a report of my research, which included all of the interview

manuscripts and data analysis for a member check of accuracy. Eisner (1991) pointed out

that as a qualitative researcher, we should provide our subjects the opportunity to read

and comment on the study, and their feedback could help the researcher eliminate those

misunderstanding or unfair description had occurred. If there was disagreement as to an

event I negotiated a correction, but interpretation of events were my own. This report

served both as a member checking mechanism to ensure accuracy, and as a completed

document when the dissertation was finished. It was in a narrative style and reported my

findings exactly as the data revealed (Bogdan & Biklen, 2007). My task as a qualitative

researcher is to record the facts as they actually happened (Goodall, 2000) and tell the

truth as it exists (Anderson, 2000).

Summary

In this chapter I have presented the theoretical frameworks of phenomenology and

pragmatism as well as educational criticism, the qualitative research methodology, the

concept of case study, and how these apply to my research. I also outlined my research

strategies, data collection, and reporting strategy. In next chapter, I presented a pilot

study that I conducted as a preliminary study for further field research.

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CHAPTER 4

A PILOT STUDY

In a pilot study I conducted, I observed two classes taught by two professors at the

FSU art department. (See appendix A, B, C, and D). One color theory class was taught by

Professor A. This class is a preliminary foundation course for Painting I. The other figure

painting class was taught by Professor B which requires that students have had Painting I

and Painting II. I also interviewed Professors A and B (see appendix A and B). I applied

ethnography as my research methodology.

I spent about twenty hours observing each of these classes. The color theory class

was on Monday and Wednesday afternoons, 3:30-6:00. I spent about seven hours

observing Professor A’s class on five Wednesdays, for about one and one-half hours per

observation. The figure painting class was on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons 3:30-

9:00. I observed this class four times at one and one-half hours per observation.

Furthermore, after my first observation, I conducted one 30 minute interview with

Professor A and another with professor B.

From my observations and interviews, I wrote field notes in my journal book.

From the descriptions I transcribed and analyzed the data I collected and summarized the

main characteristics of these classes at FSU as I saw them. Here are some patterns, trends

and themes that emerged from observations and interviews with Professors A and B:

Patterns

Professor A’s color theory class is not only theory-based, but also requires

technical knowledge. It connects color to art making, therefore color becomes

meaningful. In the first part of the class Professor A introduces color theory. Through

making collages, students resolve technical problems. In the second part of the class

students paint paintings with acrylics, and students support their own ideas by using the

color system.

At the beginning of each class, Professor A takes attendance and then begins his

lecture. First, he introduces basic color concepts, such as, additive and subtractive colors,

variable light levels (from high level light to low level light), simultaneous contrast, color

vibration and color transparency, primary colors, secondary colors, tertiary colors, and

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color tint and shade. Second, he discusses scientific knowledge of the eye and sight, such

as the limitations of our eye, the light sources, and the difference of visual function

between human beings and animals. Third, through art books he introduces artists who

applied color theory into their art creation. Finally, he gives a homework assignment and

students begin to work on the assignment. From theory to practice, students applied the

color concept into art making.

Professor B’s figure painting class is a studio workshop which emphasizes

students’ practice through observing and painting nude models. The teacher critiques

students’ artwork personally based on the students’ particular problems. Professor B gave

verbal directions that are based on the individual’s situation. Based on the specific

problem of the student, the teacher takes examples from famous artists and gives the

student visual solutions. Each student develops his/her own style and makes progress.

There is no group lecture for the whole class, however, Professor B gives personal

suggestions while students paint. There is no copying from the masterpieces.

Trends

From observing Professor A’s class, several emergent foci (Eisner, 1998)

appeared. First, Professor A’s color theory class was influenced by the European Bauhaus

System. This focus confirms my previous literature review. For example, several authors

of the textbooks in Professor A’s class were the instructors of the Bauhaus School in

Germany, such as, Josef Albers (1963), and Johannes Itten (1963). In a demonstration,

Professor A adopted Albers’ method of juxtaposing color squares as a strategy of

showing color effects in collage, such as color vibration and simultaneous contrast.

Second, Professor A’s class was highly structured. This also was an emergent

focus. From theory to practice, students applied the color concept into art making.

Third, Professor A combined scientific research findings with color theory.

During class he was showed pictures, read newspapers and used variable light

instruments to illustrate vividly the concept of color to his students.

Professor B’s figure painting class was seemingly influenced by the traditional

European studio art class. This reflected my previous literature review of teaching

painting in American higher education. For instance, one reflection was the adoption of

the nude model in the traditional academy both in Europe and the United States. In the

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French Academic art school and British Royal art school, the model was used as the main

subject. In American art education history, before 1920, there were many art schools that

still used similar methods, such as the Buffalo Fine Arts Academy and the Rhode Island

School of Design (Barnhill, Korzenik & Sloat, 1997), where the teacher set models for

students. Through painting using nude models, students learned about human anatomy,

proportion, color harmony, and composition. The model kept the same pose for several

classes. Students set their easels around the model from various points of view. The

realistic style was the main style adopted by the students. However, in Professor B’s

class, the model is used only as the visual information supporter. Students had their own

choice to create their own style. Some students used abstract styles, while some adopted

surrealism. Each student’s work had its own style, which was different from the

traditional European and American academic styles instruction under which all of the

students produced similar representative style painting.

Another emergent focus in Professor B’s class involved there being no group

lectures on anatomy. Professor B gave students some personal suggestion on anatomy

instead of group lectures. Only nude models were studied. There were no clothed

models.

Themes

In color theory class, I found four themes, these being: color concepts; scientific

research of light, eye and sight; artists; and art style or art movements.

Color Concepts

Professor A teaches additive and subtractive colors, variable light levels (from

high level light to low level light), simultaneous contrast, color vibration and color

transparency, primary colors, secondary colors, tertiary colors, color tint and shade.

Scientific Research of Light, Eye and Sight

After professor A introduced the basic color concept, professor A always

discussed new scientific findings of the eye and vision.

Artists

Professor A also introduced different artists who used different color theories in

their paintings, such as Wayne Thiebaud, Fredric Remington, David Casper, and John

Stobart, who painted under different light levels in the morning, at dawn, and at night.

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Professor A used Cezanne’s, Van Gogh’s, and Monet’s paintings as examples to illustrate

how they combined simultaneous contrast. Professor A introduced the artists who took

the ideas of collage and applied it into their art creations such as, James Rosenquist,

Robert Hudson, and Gee’s Bend. Professor A used the paintings of Monet, Degas, and

Seurat as examples to show students how these artists applied color transparency.

Art Style or Art Movements

Professor A mentioned Abstract Expressionism, Pointillism, Impressionism,

Divisionism, and Photo-realism.

In Professor B’s figure painting class, I found four themes which were composition,

color relationship, proportions, and techniques.

Composition

Professor B always suggested that students deal with their compositional

problems.

Color Relationship

Light and dark, warm and cool, primary and secondary, and complementary

colors were mentioned.

Proportions

The relationship among each part of the body such as face, hands, arm, torso,

limbs, legs, and so on were presented.

Techniques

Professor B emphasized using special brushes, colors or tools to realize specific

effects.

Findings from Interviews

Teaching Experience

In the interview, I asked 10 questions of each professor. In questions 1-4, I

focused on the personal domain. I asked about each professor’s educational and training

background, and his teaching experience.

Professors A and B were both experienced professors. Professor A has taught art

class for 32 years. Professor B has taught art class for 18 years. Both of them hold the

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terminal degree in studio art, the master of fine arts degree (M.F.A). Both are practicing

artists. When they are not teaching, they spend their spare time painting and drawing.

Teaching Rationale and Methodology

In questions 5-10, I focused on the teaching method domain. I asked Professor A

about the basic teaching methodology of his class, the main textbooks, and what he

believes to be the most important element in his class. Professor A believed that color

relationship is most important in his color theory class.

I asked the same questions of Professor B. Professor B emphasized cultivating

students’ personality and creativity. Thinking and looking are the most important things

he teaches his students. His teaching method is based on personal need and support of the

students’ unique solution. He also mentioned that there were traditional techniques such

as composition or color harmony that student should know. However, there was no

perfect solution to any problem, he said.

Findings from the Pilot Study

Professor A’s class was theory-based, and from theory to practice students applied

the concept they learned into art creation.

Professor A implemented color theory with both scientific and artistic methods.

Most recent scientific research on color was transmitted through his lectures or

demonstrations.

Professor A’s class was Bauhaus influenced and highly structured. He adapted

Bauhaus textbooks for his class. Following the established structure in his class, from

informing the basic concept of color theory, to showing examples which represented the

concept, students learned to apply the theory into practice.

Professor B gave students more freedom when they painted. In professor B’s

workshop, students chose their own styles to paint. Various styles were developed.

Professor B taught the subject matter in the fashion of a mentor. He critiqued each

student’s work based on his own experience, also compared it to some masterpieces

which might give some solutions for this student.

Based on the different levels of students, Professor B gave different suggestions.

For some beginning level students who had just started figure painting, professor B asked

them to work on smaller canvases or focus on portrait or a section of the body to begin

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with. For the students who had more experience of figure painting, he suggested that they

work on large-scale canvases, and deal with certain problem, such as proportion, tone or

contrast.

In this pilot study, I learned aspects doing of qualitative field research. Qualitative

research is a time consuming, labor-intensive process. Up to this point, I had only

focused on teachers’ instruction for short periods of time. Also, this pilot study does not

go beyond basic findings, leaving off at the necessary deeper level of interpretation of

meaning, which must be incorporated into the final study. But further research will be

conducted.

Summary

This pilot study reflected some basic features of the teaching reality of two of the

professors in the Art Department and grounded me in how to conduct my further

research. The findings in this pilot study also serve to suggest points of interest and

patterns to be further examined in this dissertation. The next chapter is the thematic

presentation of the data from both the interviews faculty members and my field research

in narrative form.

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CHAPTER 5

THEMATIC PRESENTATION OF THE DATA

The data presented in this chapter were collected through interviews, field

observation notes, department documents, personal documents and digital photos. First,

contact emails were sent to contact all permanent faculty members who teach painting

and drawing in the Department of Art at Florida State University. Out of five faculty

members contacted for this research, four (Professors A, B, C, D) agreed to participate.

Following this initial contact, the four faculty participants were interviewed about their

training and formal education background, teaching philosophy, teaching methods, and

issues and concerns they encountered in their teaching and material gathered from these

interviews were recorded and transcribed into written transcripts. (Appendix G-J). In

addition to the interviews, one class taught by each of these faculty members, 20 hours

for each class during one semester period, were observed and documented and altogether

80 hours of field observation was conducted with field notes being compiled after each

observation (Appendix K-N).

Of the participants, the four faculty members include two female and two male

professors. Two are recently hired, and the other two are full professors with over 20

years of teaching experience. The observations that form part of this research are based

on Professor A’s Life Drawing Class, Professor B’s Painting I Class, Professor C’s

Drawing II Class, and Professor D’s Painting II Class, thus forming a broad overview of

introductory and intermediate drawing and painting instruction at Florida State

University. Additionally, for the purposes of this research, relevant written documents

were gathered for analysis, including Art Department and college bulletins, course

syllabi, and course handouts for contextual analysis. These research materials were

complemented by digital photos of both the studio classroom environment and some of

the students’ artworks created in these classes. Finally, while observing the four

professors’ classes, an interview was conducted with the chair of the art department

(Appendix O) in order to gain a general overview of several foundational aspects of the

Department of Art.

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The process of interviewing and observing the four painting and drawing

professors who participated in this study, a wealth of useful data was collected but for the

purposes of this study, this section contains only the most salient features of the

collection based on a series of themes that emerged. For a fuller overview, the reader is

encouraged to view the complete data set in Appendix G-O.

The data analysis for this study was reported in the following broad thematic

categories that include the following:

● Educational background and subsequent teaching experience.

● Teaching load handled and routine of a normal day.

● Aspects of educational philosophy more generally, including content, methods,

major influences, choices of textbooks and materials, teaching goals for each

class, as well as issues encountered in teaching environment (such as frustrations

and rewards, for example) and other matters of concern.

● More classroom-oriented specifics such as the general studio environment, the

structure of the class and major techniques and materials employed, underlying

concepts of the classes and matters of demonstration and presentation.

● Issues of feedback and evaluation, including the use and perceived usefulness

of group and individual critiques, grading systems, and the outcome of students.

For purposes of focus and clarity, the data in these categories are presented after

first offering the data related to the department’s philosophy and objectives from written

sources.

Data from Department of Art Written Sources

As stated on the website for the Florida State Department of Art, drawing and

painting at the FSU Art Department is described as follows:

Drawing is a fundamental skill that all artists use in varied forms, from

preliminary sketches for a painting, sculpture, installation, or animation to a small or

large-scale autonomous drawing. Drawing can be experimental and playful, but most

importantly it can allow the student to discover new and exciting possibilities of

expression in a relatively short period of time. Drawing is for everyone. Painting

embraces a critique-based curriculum that stresses a strong background in painting

fundamentals, materials, conceptual and analytical processes needed in order to build

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technical proficiencies in painting. The goal of the faculty is to develop artists with

personal insights and independent visions that can then be fully realized through the

medium of paint. (n. p.)

From the website it is apparent that drawing at FSU is perceived as both a

fundamental skill required for students in order to enable them to explore greater

possibilities in other disciplines in art as well as an independent medium for the

purpose of experimentation in art creation. Painting emphasizes the students’

individuality through technical proficiencies in painting and it through the

development of skills in both of these unique but interrelated disciplines that

students are able to achieve a level of proficiency sustainable enough to allow for

more free, open, and ultimately more creative artistic exploration.

Data from Interview of Art Department Chair

In addition to the broader departmental overview offered on the

Department of Art website, other general and qualified information was gathered

during the interview phase with the Department Chair Joe Sanders. Professor Joe

Sanders is a new Chair of the Art Department since 2006, and from his

perspective, he provided some key information of the department.

The department has 25 faculty members, has the largest number of

graduates in the College of Visual Arts, Theatre and Dance, and is the largest

program in the college. According to the Department Chair (Sanders, personal

interview, May 29, 2008):

Last semester we had close to 680 students, I think that’s the peak of our

enrollment last fall for art and design. The art department has a more

multi-disciplinary art program. We have a more multi-disciplinary area

program. We offer courses that are very similar to other programs, but we

also encourage students to investigate cross-disciplines within the

department and some degrees outside the department.

According to the chair of the Department of Art at Florida State University, there

is a very distinct philosophy that underlies a great deal of the mission. The response to a

question about the philosophy yielded the answer from the Joe Sanders (personal

interview, May 29, 2008):

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If you can think it, you can make it. That’s my own personal perception,

but the core philosophy of the department is crossing boundaries, is

interdisciplinary thinking, cross disciplinary thinking. Thinking outside of

the box. Coming up with innovative ways to express oneself. It would be

to continue asking questions, continue building on tradition, using

fundamental principles to build up for undergraduate students, so we

enhanced our foundation program a lot these past two years with a new

foundation program director that is giving our students technical and

conceptual skills they need to be successful in art and design. We are

trying to build a solid foundation of technical and conceptual information

and let them really explore a lot of ideas and a lot of different disciplines

immediately after that.

As the Chair described above, the structure of the undergraduate curriculum in the FSU

Department of Art has two stages. Undergraduate students in this department must finish

the foundation program during the first two years. This foundation includes seven

sequential courses (1.Success Strategies, 2. 2D Design, 3. Drawing I, 4. Figure Drawing,

5. Survey, 6. Studio Practice, 7. 3D Design). After completing the foundation, they can

then apply for the BA or BFA program and move into the second stage. In the second

stage, students become art majors and they can take any class in the art department, such

as painting, sculpture, printmaking, photography. They can also explore different

disciplines. BA applicants are going to be less specialized, and BFA are more specialized

and have more studio credit hours.

The painting and drawing program has five faculty members at the time of this

study, representing the largest number of faculty in any one discipline area in the

department. “The Painting and Drawing program is probably more focused on developing

studio artists than anything else,” the chair of the department remarked (personal

interview, Joe Sanders, May 29, 2008):

In other words, they really want to give the painting and drawing students the

skills they need to be successful in the gallery, the museum, and the exhibition

arena. So they want to give the students the tools for success as a practicing studio

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artist, and then on the undergraduate level or the skills to succeed if they try to get

into a master’s program.

Therefore, as suggested by the curriculum and the Department Chair, the painting

and drawing program is studio-oriented and is focused on cultivating studio artists and

future graduate students. Regarding the painting and drawing program, the department

chair also commented:

I think the painting area is really developing well, there are some really solid

traditional roots and color field painting, and abstraction in some degree, and then

recently with new hires really strengthen our figurative painting. So I think

probably we are one of the better programs in the southeast in terms of painting

with the recognition of our faculty, and also with the strength in figure drawing

and landscape painting. The drawing area is a smaller area; it’s actually a part of

the painting area. (May 29, 2008)

From the interview with the chair, I obtained the basic information of the art

department, such as the philosophy of the department, the student and faculty numbers,

and the goals the painting and drawing program. The goals of the Department of Art are

congruent with the values of the School of Visual Art as noted on their website:

Put students at the forefront of all efforts and prepare them for successful

academic and professional careers; emphasize care and attention to the needs of

each student by maintaining manageable class sizes and providing individual

guidance; respect the full range of the arts and scholarship, from old to new and

from mainstream to highly innovative. (n. p.)

Cultivating student’s individuality in art creation and emphasize both traditional

and contemporary arts and scholarships are the goals of the Art Department and the

School of Visual Arts. Consequently, there is an alignment in philosophy between the

School of Visual Arts, and the specific focus of the Department of Art, thus proving a

thematic link in mission.

Data from Department of Art Faculty Participants

The following section offers the detailed answers from the faculty participants to

the thematic elements discussed previously.

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If You Can See, You Can Draw: Professional/Thematic Instructional Data for

Professor A

Educational background. Professor A (PA) went to the University of Alabama at

Birmingham for her undergraduate degree and received her MFA in painting from the

University of Illinois at Urbana Champion (UIUC).

Teaching experience. Professor A taught six years of painting and drawing. She

taught Drawing I, Drawing II, 2D Design and Figure Drawing over the course of three

years at UIUC. At the University of Alabama at Birmingham, she taught all level painting

and drawing courses, from Drawing I to Drawing IV, and graduate drawing, as well as

intermediate and advanced painting for three years. Currently, Professor A teaches one

2D Design and two Figure Drawing classes at Florida State University. This is her first

year teaching at FSU and her Life Drawing class was the subject of one of the

observation locales used in this research.

The goals of the class. The goals of Professor A’s Life Drawing class are to

explore the anatomical, conceptual and expressive complexities of the human form (Life

Drawing Syllabus, Fall 2007). This demanding course focuses on the development of

rendering skills with particular emphasis on the human figure and helps students gain the

basic skill of drawing the human form through observation using a variety of media and

techniques. In the Syllabus-Course Objectives, PA wrote: Upon successful course

completion, students should be able to

• Convey movement and action through gesture drawing

• Use foreshortening and proportion to convincingly represent the figure in any

pose

• Demonstrate substantial knowledge of the human skeleton

• Create a compelling illusion of volume through a variety of shading techniques

• Convincingly incorporate the figure in an environment

• Propose and complete an ambitious project of their own design (Fall, 2007)

Teaching load and normal day routine. (Note: During the interview with this

professor and the other professors, I asked a series of open-ended questions. Each of

these questions is italicized in this chapter, followed by the response to the question and

for the sake of brevity, Professor A will be referred to as PA.)

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“What is your current teaching load?”

“I teach 3 and 3. So I teach 3 in the fall and 3 in the spring. Right now I am

teaching one 2D design class, and two drawing classes, figure drawing, and in the spring,

I will teach the same.”

“What is a normal day like for you at work?

“I don’t really know, everyday sort of changes. But basically, I spend a lot of time

outside of class reading. I feel like as part of being a good instructor you should be really

familiar with what’s going on in the contemporary world. I spend a lot of time reading

articles, magazines, monographs about different artists, but also preparing handouts,

preparing lectures, looking back through previous notes, just to make sure that if I’ve

written notes about different assignments that I did in class once it work better. One thing

that I think is really important about teaching is making sure of the order in which you

introduce certain techniques and certain ideas. I think this can really have a huge affect

on the outcome of the class. So typically, I wake up and read email, I respond to email, I

spend some time reading about artists, looking at work, and I grade papers. I teach,

obviously, and I have a fair amount of meetings, I do some one-on-one individual

meetings with students, just look at their work, a lot of time just on graphic design, not

even drawing, just sort of giving them an idea about what I think their strengths are, and

so forth. We have faculty meetings, we go every Friday to the MFA warehouses and then

once a month we go to the BFA warehouses and talk to the BFA students.”

Teaching philosophy. “What is your teaching philosophy?”

“I think that it is important to the students to develop their own path to a certain

extent. I don’t try to have a class where everybody is the same. And I try to work with

each student’s strengths and each student’s ideas. I think it is important to allow their

ideas to have some presence in the work as soon as they start to express themselves. They

have conceptual wants. But I also think it is hugely important to provide a structure; I

think it is important to give hallmark, to give feedback. I think students want to know

why we make them do certain things. So I try to provide objectives. I try to say I want

you to do this because you are going to get this out of it. So they understand how things

relate to each other.

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I’m very, very open. I would let my students tell me anything like, “You are the

worst teacher in the world.” Why is that? I will have a conversation with them on that

level, they can start a discussion anyway they want to. So I want them to be very open to

express themselves. I want to be open to receive that information. I feel like for students

to learn you have to urge a group of students to learn. You have to be able to express any

ideas you have or you are trying to convey.”

“What’s important to teach in drawing?”

“I think the most important thing to teach in drawing is how to see. And within

that I try to teach them a little bit of about why they see things the way they do. How

color works, why it’s important to get a full value range, what we can actually draw on a

paper. We see a lot more than we can actually draw so to teach them about that. I think it

is really important to teach mass and volume, so that the drawings have depth, value and

space. When I teach a typical drawing class, I don’t let them use lines at all. No line at

all. I asked them to make drawings that are absent of lines. If they want to make a line,

they only can put one value next to another to create an edge. So I make them do that for

two weeks before I let them use line at all. Because most of the students want to come

and draw contour line drawings, and that keeps your drawing so flat. So I think I

probably introduce that in figure drawing in next semester just because I still feel I

struggle with it so much within this class. So we start out with volume and mass, then

introduce line, so they understand how the two work together.”

“What do you have to say about the importance of teaching art skills, techniques and

creativity?”

“I think that it is critical to teach technique, and give them the tools. I think it’s a

mistake when teachers, especially in the beginning, teach a lot about ideas, and try to get

them to build the conceptual without the technical as base. Not that it’s wrong to teach

conceptual early, I think that’s great, but I really think that’s a mistake. A lot of

instructors make that mistake; you have to teach the basic building blocks, teach them the

rules, teach them how to use different materials. I think creativity is sort of inherent in the

task, whether it’s just using the technical instruments or making something. I think the act

of making is very creative all on its own. But I do definitely want to build idea-based

work and have the students become aware of what it is they are trying to say. I first teach

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them the vocabulary, which is sort of technical material skills, and sort of help them

develop the discussion. What is there? Whether it is narrative or conceptual, help to build

that.”

Teaching methods. “Can you describe three of your most effective teaching

methods you use for your drawing class?”

“I don’t know if I narrow it down to precise methodologies, but I think that one

thing that I do very successfully is I try to repeat myself over and over in different ways. I

try to say the exact same thing in as many different ways as possible. It probably makes

me sound like an idiot because I just say things over and over. But I think that is really

important. I even say it three or four times and they still sometimes don’t hear. Several

students will not hear you. But I also try to really be loud. If that makes any sense, I try to

present myself as a very loud person. As someone who struggled on my own, so that they

understand they shouldn’t just be brilliant from the very beginning that it is a struggle and

you can really learn a lot from your failures. So I try to give self-deprecating illustrations

of personal experiences so that anybody who would be discouraged might feel

encouraged by that.

And I also try to be more accessible to them. I don’t like creating a division

between instructor and students. Obviously there is a division, but I don’t like them to

feel like they can’t approach me with just the most menial question. I’ll pretty much

entertain anything they want to ask. I made that open.

Finally I try to do student evaluations one-on-one in class. I try to present the

ideas and sort of give an overview review, then I go around and try to talk, to talk to each

individual student and check on their progress. It’s really difficult at FSU because the

classes are too large and the studios are too small. I feel like it’s too much to really do

that effectively. And the class period is too short at only two and half hours, I miss the

three hour studios, so I struggle with that a little bit, but I do try get one-on-one.”

“What do you think is the most important thing you teach your students?”

“To make mistakes,” (said without hesitation) “I honestly do. I mean you teach

them concept, you teach them to …actually to make mistakes and to learn from the

mistakes, not just to make them. But to really pursue understanding, not just brilliance.

So I think that through making mistakes and taking risks, they actually understand more.

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They understand what failure is and how to turn it around. So I try not to let them make

mistakes and throw it away. I try to encourage them to work through it, and try to figure

out a way to incorporate it--sort of move beyond so it’s not just about perfection.”

“How do you motivate your students?”

“That’s a lot more difficult. It really depends on the situation. People who come to

figure drawing class usually come in two different groups. One group really enjoys

drawing the figure, and one group just has to take the class, and they have no desire to

learn, and they hate drawing the figure. Typically, I just try to explain how it will help

them grow whether or not they are going into graphic design, or photography. Beyond

that I just try to encourage them on the individual level, even the student who is making

barely mediocre to bad work. At some point, I try to encourage whatever strengths they

have. I try to point out the most interesting part of their drawing, what is successful about

it. I try to free up different media. So if they are really bad at one technique, they are

probably brilliant at the other. And when I know they do have a shift, they do succeed

with something. I say: ‘Wow, look how good you did. This is great.’ Just try to give them

some optimism, but I don’t think I try to encourage them overly; I try to tell them things

aren’t good when I don’t think they are. They ask me “is this a great drawing?” This is

not. I try to be honest with them. Because then when I do say something positive, I hope

they do respect it.”

Textbooks. “What are the textbooks you use for your drawing class? Why do you

choose them? If you don’t use a text, why not?”

“I don’t really use a text. There are several really good ones out there. My reason

for not using a textbook is purely sympathetic to the students. I feel like we ask them to

buy a lot of materials and it is really expensive. So I don’t require a textbook. I do,

however, always recommend textbooks on my syllabus. It depends on whether I am

teaching figure drawing or beginning drawing or whatever, but the one I particularly

promote is called the Experimental Drawing, which once again entreats you to have a

experience, try technique, and engage your creative side verses your analytical side. I

also encourage people to look at anatomy books, so they understand the structure of the

human form for figure drawing. Just sort of how the artists may look at the body as

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opposed to viewing them purely for scientifically structure. But typically, I try to stay

away from books entirely and provide something slightly different.”

Influences. “What artists or movements have influenced your practices as an

artist or teacher?”

“There are several key artists that I really like. Ann Hamilton is one. First of all,

she makes incredibly beautiful works. What I really like about her is she is an installation

artist for the most part. But even though she is an installation artist, she is also a sculptor,

she also does printmaking, she does drawing, she has such an incredible grasp of her

conceptual ideas that she uses the materials necessary to express what she is doing, and I

really appreciate that about her work. In addition, I like her ideas, what she works with

conceptually, but I think she is really seeks out the most important materials, and often

she will start with materials. She will have an old warehouse, she will research the history

of the building, and try to figure out what it was used for, and that sort of dictates the

material. Then she lets the materials sort of speak to the art project. In a way, she sort of

works from reverse. A lot of time I sort of like how she has this push and pull, how she

lets the work inform her, and she informs the work simultaneously. I really like that about

her. I would say mainly I’m really interested in installation artists, but also people who

just sort of explore personal history.

When I first went into art, I was an electrical engineer and math major actually,

and I just took a class. I went to a school that was not great in art by any means, and I

remember talking with my painting faculty Mark Majesky. He was just really

encouraging, but in an indirect way. He just talks about what it was. He was also very

straightforward, he painted a non-glamorous picture of the artist which I appreciated. You

know it’s about work, generosity, sort of staying perseverance. But I really appreciate

that. Then I got to graduate school, I worked with Funs Facter. While my work was

completely different, the ideas were fairly distinct. He was a really good mentor. He

asked a lot of hard questions that really made you think about your work in a way. He

pushed me in ways I wouldn’t push myself, so I think that was important. One from my

undergrad, sort of pushing me going into art, and the other was a subtle push, that wasn’t

like he was a monumental figure, it’s a steady influence in my graduate program.

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In my graduate program you came in as a graduate student. If you have a teaching

assistantship, you are given your own class. And the university was very good, and they

sort of gave you a list of guidelines that outline the objective in the classroom, but they

didn’t really tell you the content of your class. What you should teach? But over the

years, just having talked to me, I can’t really name anyone. But having talked to people

you know everybody just tends to give you a little bit advice, and you collect together,

you sort of build your own. But I think I have been very fortunate to have very good

mentors. I think you can learn from just about anybody you encountered. That’s the

beautiful thing. Everybody probably has something to give.”

Issues and concerns encountered in teaching. “What are the most pressing issues

and concerns you have encountered in teaching drawing?”

“Well, I think that in teaching drawing … depending on what level of drawing, it

is a little disconcerting if you get advance level drawing students who really are

struggling with basic concepts and basic techniques. I think that I struggle with making

sure they have a really strong foundation, if I am in the beginning stage of the teaching. I

teach Drawing I, this time I’m teaching figure drawing considered as an upper level

drawing course. But if I were teaching a beginning drawing course, I would really make

sure that they know their tools, they understand perspective, they understand composition

and form, value and light, and these were some things I really struggled with this past

term. I had a lot of students within the class that didn’t have these. I felt like I had a

certain level of expectation. I would say 95 percent of the class didn’t meet that level of

expectation. So I had to go back a lot further than I would normally in a figure drawing

class to try drilling the basics. You know … how do you look at a composition, how do

you choose a composition, how do you lay it out, how you develop a drawing. So I think

that is a concern I have right now in this program. It’s in fluctuation. We just had a new

foundation director who is changing the structure. They used to take Drawing I, Drawing

II, 2D-Design, 3D-Design, and that was it. Now figure drawing is actually a requirement

to foundations. So it’s actually required at FSU now, which we are working on changing.

So right now we are working towards having a 2D Design, 3D Design, and 4D Design

(with Time-Based and Digital), Drawing I, and then a success strategy seminar class, sort

of to teach them, like how to approach college. You know basically students sometimes

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think it is everyone else’s responsibility to give them an education. So this class sort of

teaches them it is their responsibility to get an education, and really, what can they do to

promote that. So it is a seminar workshop. And then we are working on a bridge class,

after you take those. Right now you would normally take a figure drawing, but we want

them to be aware they can then go in a color theory class, a figure drawing course, a

drawing concepts course, or story board narrative drawing course. So there will be

options for that final foundation course.”

Frustrations and rewards. “What are the biggest frustrations you experience

related to teaching?”

“There are several. I really enjoy teaching, I think that I am really lucky with that.

I like doing it, I like going there. But once again, specific to this university, I feel that the

student body has a long ways to go. I was sort of taken back by how loose they were.

They seem not to be as serious as I would want them to be. A lot of talking, a lot of

disruptive energy in the class, so I guess my frustration is really being able to engage the

group. I think that’s my responsibility, to engage students, but I also think it’s their

responsibility to accept that. I think the class size is too big to effectively engage

students, and the studio space is too small to effectively, you know … we don’t have the

right tools. We don’t have the right space. We don’t have the right lighting system to set

up the model, to light them up properly. We have 19 to 20 students. It’s too many. 15

would be great. There is not enough space really to get them around there. They get close

too the figure to see it. So you know there are a lot of these sorts of situations because of

the studio, and because of the lack of lighting. Because of the numbers, the students

aren’t effectively engaged, so I think it’s a little frustrating.”

“What do you think will be your greatest rewards in teaching drawing?”

“You know, you see them every semester. You have students who really enjoy the

process, are really sort of developing. You can see the progress. Usually you aren’t going

to see each student from beginning to end, you just see a marked change. That’s really

rewarding But it’s especially rewarding when students enjoy it enough to where they

want to pursue it, and get excited and talk to you about what are the other artists I should

be looking at, and are there people you would recommend. They just get that energy and

that excitement. That’s a thing that’s really rewarding. But on top of that, you know I

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always find my work grows every time I work with them. I research other artists, I

discover somebody new, and it is important for my own studio practice. Excitement!”

Grading. “What strategies do you use for evaluation or grading your student

work?”

“It’s difficult. I think I try to present the project so there is a clear objective, so

that I can just say, you know, did you or did you not meet the objective and then I rank

them based on information they should have gained through prerequisites of the class. I

rank them on the information that I know I have given them and I have talked with them

about. A lot of time, I rank them on their motivations. That’s sort of an arbitrary one. I

think a lot of times, you have a weak student who is not very skilled but they try new

things. They put a lot of time, energy, and dedication into it. Maybe it doesn’t come out

to be as good as somebody who has really strong talent, but didn’t really put much effort

in it at all. But as long as the person who is the weaker student tries really hard and is

making progress and making important discoveries, I definitely reward them for that. So

it is a little bit subjective. Motivation definitely plays in; dedication, experimentation, not

just unfruitful experimentation, but really investigating. I give them usually a two-part

grade. That’s A, A plus, A minus, B, B plus, B minus. Each assignment should have a

score, usually split into two parts. One is purely honest, technical--whether or not they

did a job creating the piece and then the second grade is sort of just on the effectiveness.

Is it just really beautiful? Is there conceptual strength to it that very clearly presents

itself? Did they just follow the rules or did they put a little more into it? For the final

grade I average everything. I do turn the A-minus into numerical grades for that average.

The way I do that, say A-plus is a range, it goes from 96 to 100 in the point range, or 97

to 100. And then if they have been really strong in class, really done a great job in class

participation, involved in critique and working hard, I’ll give them the benefit of a high

end number in that range. If they are sort of distraction in class, they’re fairly lazy, I will

give them the lower end of that. So, they end up B-plus. And it is a great student who

really makes the class a better class. I will give him consistently an 89 score for that B-

plus versus someone who is constantly leaving the classroom, or talking, or not paying

attention. I will grade them instead of an 89, I’ll give them the lower end, which maybe is

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an 85 or 86 point value. So I like class participation coming that way. I allow 3 absences,

no matter what, and after that I start to lower their grade a letter.

Perceived meaning of teaching. “I just think that teaching is really something

that’s incredibly important. And it’s nice when an instructor is there because they want to

teach, as opposed to just the job that gives the paycheck. And it’s an opportunity to make

art, and protect the environment, which I think you do find. But I think it’s just, you

know, you learn from the students. You live in this space. I think that a good teacher is

probably someone who is learning as much as they are teaching.”

The studio environment. The Art Department owns different buildings on campus.

The life drawing classroom is located in the “Church” – an old church that is now used

for painting and drawing classes. The church is located just across the street from the

Department of Art, and it has two large studio classrooms. There are several offices of

faculty members of the painting division also located in this building. Most of the

painting and drawing classes for undergraduate students are held in here.

Inside the drawing studio (figure 1), about twenty metal easels and three wooden

easels are set around a round table. The table is in the center of the room and covered by

two pieces of felt. A wooden stick lays on top of the table. An old cushion has fallen to

the ground. The floor is covered with black charcoal dust and looks dirty. About 15 gray

drawing horses (benches) are set around the table between the easels. On the wall behind

me, there is a blackboard, with a white clipboard hanging next to it. In front of the

blackboard, there are five studio spot lights with stands, and a movable screen, on which

is hanging a large life size anatomy poster. Nearby, in the corner of the same wall, there

are a couple of white pedestals. Against the wall in front of me there are three metal

archive tables with horizontal file drawers attached to them. On the left wall there are 3

large white clipboards, each measuring 8x5 feet, which are usually used for hanging

students’ works during the critique. On the right wall, there is a rolled projector screen. A

U.S. flag is hanging from the ceiling. The roof is very high and the ceiling is triangular. A

white wicker sofa and some metal stools are scattered around. On the right side of the

entrance, there is a sink with a trash can under it. A fan is standing near the trash can.

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Figure 1. Drawing Studio in “The Church”

Materials and technique. The media in PA’s class includes vine charcoal,

compressed charcoal, graphite, conte crayon, graphic pencil, oil pastel, color pencil, ink

and brush, stick with charcoal, gum eraser, kneaded eraser, pink or white plastic eraser.

The techniques includes cross-hatching, positive and negative space relationship, gesture,

value shift, uncontrolled stick drawing, blind contour drawing, eraser drawing with

subtractive method, mix media experimentation.

The content of professor A’s instruction. PA uses the nude model and skeleton as

the main subjects. She teaches 10-minute quick gesture drawings as a warm-up exercise

at the beginning of each class, allowing about one minute for each pose. She then gives

different assignments for the later section of the class, such as figure and ground

ambiguity, blind contour drawing, 30-40 minutes poses study, and skeleton study with

mixed media experimenting drawing. She also gives outside class assignments such as a

self-portrait study, 15-22 studies of mouths in different positions and expressions, as well

as assignments based on sketchbook studies.

One particular assignment of note is the mixed-media experimental drawing. This

assignment is to combine two pieces of 18x24- inch drawing paper together to draw a

skull and skeleton. Students can explore different techniques into their creation. They can

cut and paste the paper, they can sew two pieces of paper together, they can add

background or textures with stencils. In short, by apply creative concepts; students can

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try almost any imaginable strategy to create the piece. The most importantly principle

underlying this study is that they are able to create and apply unique concepts using their

selected materials.

As demonstration of this more open-ended approach, for one class session,

Professor A brought some tree branch sticks and asked students to tape a piece of

charcoal on one end of them and, had them use these to stand up and draw. This practical

experiment visibly broke students’ sense of control and the lines appeared on the surface

of drawing achieved an unexpected effect.

Demonstration. In one class, PA demonstrates how to draw a skeleton with

different media. She sits on the floor using charcoal, graphite, conte crayon to draw the

same area, the knee cap, with different techniques, she used crosshatching, full tonal

arrangement, and positive and negative space as conceptual elements.

Presentation. PA did not make any presentations throughout the period of

observation cited in this research, but she constantly gave students personal advice or

arranged group critiques.

Group Critique. In one of the self-portrait sections, PA leads a group critique and

asked all of the students to hang their self portraits on the clipboard and began the

discussion by asking what the students learned from the assignment in question. A few

answered that the assignment was difficult, to which she responded, “Why is this hard?

You see yourself every day. You have an idea what you look like. That is very elegant.”

PA says, “A ‘shift’ is when you draw something, and it changes your perception.” She

continued her discussion on this aspect of difficulty by telling one of the students, “You

have expectation of natural detail, and a more hard, accurate representation.” She went on

to ask how many of the students could the classmates identify as who was being

presented in the self-portraits. While most of the answers varied between the students,

some of whom recognized six and some who recognized none, Professor A stated she

recognized ten of them before moving on with the next segment of her discussion.

For this part of the student discussion, Professor A addresses the students and

proposes new task: “Choose one of your favorites and talk about it. Then talk about your

own work. Why do you like it? Why not? Think about what you want to say about it,

something you want to talk about, you know exactly what you want to say.”

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“I like Rheon’s.” says a girl. “His head is bigger as compared to the shoulders.”

“I like the one on the bottom.” says Rheon. “I have trouble with my self-portrait.

It’s hard to draw myself in the mirror. The image moves.”

“Your face needs to be rounder. You cut off your chin.” says PA.

“I’m looking down.” says Rheon.

PA turns to another girl and asks, “Talk about your ears.”

The girl had drawn her ears different sizes. “One of my ears is different when I

see it with my eye.” says the girl.

“This is the psychology of her drawing. In her mind, one of her ears is different.”

PA says.

“Christina, go next.” PA says,

“I like Alexia’s. I like the eyes. It has details.” Says Christina.

“You have a darker eye. They are very tempting. The eyes have radiating lines.”

To another student PA says, “BP, talk about yours.”

“It looks angry. I didn’t mean to draw myself angry. I drew without a mirror.”

says BP.

“Do you think it an accurate representation of you?” PA asks,

“No.” answers BP.

“If you redraw it this weekend, what else do you want to improve?” PA asks.

“I will draw the shoulder bigger, and add more shadow.”

“Make it large.” Says PA.

“What would you like to change in order to make it look more like you?” PA

asks.

“What do you think?” BP asks.

“Your upper lip. Your nose is wider than your chin.” Says PA.

“She doesn’t know what to do. I’m asking these questions to help her. There is

something missing.”

“Next. Let’s go down the row.”

“I think Tyler has done really well. I like the eyes, the nose. I can’t really say

something about it. It’s not really like you.” A girl says.

“I really drew it part in parts, not so much on the whole.” Says Tyler.

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“I think you drew your mouth like your childhood icon.” Say the girl.

“I can’t stand it. I hope I don’t look like that.”

“You really have the personality in it. I recognize the nose. Soften up the cheek

bones.” Says PA.

“There are a couple of things. It’s believable, but something is not right.”

“I have different light.”

“Your drawing is a three-quarter point of view, one side of the face is bigger than the

other. Psychologically, they are symmetrical.” Says PA.“The shoulders have to support

the head. That’s a common problem. Ratio often is a little bit off.”

“Next.”

“I like the third one towards the right. It a little bit cartoonist like. I recognize

your eyes, nose.” A boy says.

“Feel your ear. Try to feel the relation to the neck. Here it is more linear, add

more value.” says PA.

“I like your forehead. Your eyes are too close together. You should have one eye

space between the two eyes. Widen the nostril, then correct your length of nose.”

“Just use the proportion, sometimes not always.” Says PA.

“That one does not look like him. It looks like him five years ago.” Says a boy.

“Your nose is not long enough. It needs to be down further. Many people make

the forehead too narrow.” Says PA.

“I’m kind of upset with it. It’s frustrating. It’s nothing like me.” Lee says.

“How are the shoulders? How is the proportion?”

“I like this shadow under the chin. The jaw is too high, down to the mouth. Your

nose is little too short. It needs to be longer. It happens a fair amount.”

“It’s about time today, please put your drawing on this table. Make sure your

name is on the back.”

Individual critique. For the midterm review, PA did a one-on-one critique

individually with each student. Piece by piece, she reviewed all of the assignments with

patience, helping students choose their best works and suggesting direction for their

further improvement. She tells the students that their portfolios will need to include the

student’s sketchbook and 10 selected drawings. Before she begins the review she has the

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students put their blind contour on top, followed by their gesture, model, and skeleton

drawings respectively. The process of review is detailed below in the form of field notes

taken during this review process. PA starts to review her first student for his midterm

selection of works. The two sit in the hallway on an old sofa. The boy opens his portfolio

folder, which includes some studies he did so far and also opens one of his sketch books.

Several other framed pieces are set up against the wall.

“It’s well done. Blind contour…You lost control. Ink and stick. The long stick is

really taking the level of control.” PA reviews his blind contour drawing and the drawing

with ink, and the drawing with a tree branch and charcoal.

Then, PA reviews the sketchbook and criticizes several sketches.

“These are five minutes pieces. I just barely start working on it.” says the boy.

“You go to library where people are hanging out. I really like these marks. I like it

when you come back articulate it. I want to see more of that. Quick drawings, you have

more energy here. Consider those types of things. Eraser. I like it that you use it as a type

of drawing tool.” PA encourages the student to do more quick drawings and combine

eraser as a drawing tool.

“Have you done this type drawing before?” asks PA. “I don’t know what to do. All these

marks are linear. When you are drawing additively, you still draw linear marks.”

“It pushes me away from value. It doesn’t create value. Why don’t we create a

midway? In spite of the value you put here, it is still flat because this line. You’ve got to

commit to it. Try to work on compressed charcoal and get away from contour. What

would happen if you went back and used charcoal to combine them?” PA suggests the

student to eliminate the lines in his drawing and use more full range of value.

“I like those energetic marks. This one seems more stable. You need more full

range value. Push yourself towards that. It articulates the values.”

“This is the first day.” Says the student.

“This is really nice. People, when they slow down, they lose the energy. They

become static. These are really beautiful. I want you to have a sense of … I like it when

you bring smudges in to articulate the form.” Says PA.

The student produces another piece and hands it to her, “This is the eraser

drawing; what do you think about the techniques?”

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“I like it that you are trying energetic marks on the drawing paper. Try to loosen

up a little bit. It may take three or four weeks. Make sure to have strong choices.” Says

PA.

“This one is earlier.”Says the student.

“You’ve got a sense of the structure underneath the skin.” Says PA.

As this review is being conducted, the rest of the group is working on their own

pieces individually while PA does one-on-one reviews of student’s midterm portfolios.

Then PA starts to review the second student’s works.

“True blind contour. How do you like blind contour?” PA asks the student

whether she like the blind contour line drawing.

“I’m messy. I enjoy it.” Answers the student.

“One thing I think I firmly believe: If you can see, you can draw. The rest of the

technique comes with patience. With your left brain.” Says PA.

“Just being in the class, now I look at things completely different.” says the

student.

“You do very well with gesture. Practice always helps.” Says PA.

“The more practice, the more I get it.” Says the student.

“It creates more geometry. It heavy handed. It is overworked. I would enlarge it.”

Following this, PA starts to critique the third student for his midterm review.

Students’ outcomes. Here are some drawings from PA’s class (Figure 2-21):

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Figure 2. Study of the Figure-a Figure 3. Study of the Figure-b

Figure 4. Self Portrait-a Figure 5. Self Portrait-b

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Figure 6. Figure Ground Ambiguity-a Figure 7. Figure Ground Ambiguity-b

Figure 8. Study of Skeleton and Self Portrait-a Figure 9. Study of Skeleton and Self Portraits-b

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Figure 10. Experiment Drawing with Skeleton-a Figure 11. Experiment Drawing with Skeleton-b

Figure 12. Study of Skeleton-a Figure 13. Study of Skeleton-b

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Figure 14. Study of Figure-c Figure 15. Study of Figure-d

Figure 16. Study of Figure-e Figure 17. Study of Figure-f

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Figure 18. Gesture Drawing-a Figure 19. Gesture Drawing-b

Figure 20. Blind Contour Drawing-a Figure 21. Blind Contour Drawing-b

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Figure 2, 3 are in depth study of body. Students spend 40 minutes or longer time

to study the anatomy and proportion. Figure 4, 5 are self portraits study. Students drew

their own face in front of a mirror to study the facial characters. And they also study the

scull with the self portrait (figure 8, 9) in order to understand the underneath structure of

the head. Figure 6, 7, are the study of figure/ground ambiguity. This assignment is

emphasis on the blurred old photography effect of background and figure relation by

using eraser as a drawing tool to erase across the edges of the shadows and contour lines.

Figure 10, 11 are experimental drawings with skeletons. In figure 10, the student

uses two different kind of paper. She draws a skull on a piece of white drawing paper,

then she tears it, then burns certain part of the edges. After that she glues it on another

piece of brownish craft paper, and continues to draw another skull which is crossing from

the white paper onto the brown paper. She then adds some darker tone around the skull to

create contract between the image and the background. She adds bones of a hand on the

lower part of the brown paper. For the background, she tears and burns some holes.

Finally, she starts to use white tempera paint to add some highlight on the skulls and

bones, then splashes some white spots with the white paint on the back ground.

In figure 11, the student uses two same sized white drawing paper and lays them

on the floor in a certain angle. Then she starts to draw the skeleton on top of them. After

that, she uses stencils to create the industrial like textures on the whole background. Last,

she uses black and yellow watercolors to create an opposite effect on the background.

Figure 12, 13 are study of skeletons with subtractive and additive methods. For

the subtractive method, students use 6B or darker graphite or black charcoal to lay out a

dark background first, then use gum eraser to erase the light area, and add the highlight.

Finally, students go back to articulate some tones and reinforce some contour lines to

define the shape. Figure 14-17 are the study of the body, which emphasized the skeletal

and muscular structures and 3-dimensional volume. Figure 18, 19, are the examples of

students’ gesture drawings. They are created very quickly (about 30 seconds to one

minute for each pose). Figure 20, 21 are blind contour drawings. Students are constantly

looking at the model while they use contour line to define the edges of the model. From

the beginning line to the finished line, students do not look at their drawing paper which

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helps students to better understand the continuous structures and bigger shapes of the

human body as a whole.

Other questions. “Do you think it is important to be a practicing artist in order to

be a good art professor?”

“I do. I think you need to have a studio practice of your own. Do I think you need

to be the most brilliant artist? Definitely not. I think some of the strongest instructors,

strongest teachers probably don’t have the most successful, sometimes even the most

interesting art, but I do think they actively engage in the process of making.”

“What do you think about the relation between drawing and painting?”

“I think drawing is really crucial to all of them, but I think drawing is central for

painting. Even if you are working in pure abstraction, and non-objective work where you

don’t have to have a true likeness of anything. Just to understand how to build the

composition, knowing how forms relate to each other, and scale, proportion and energy.

All that you want from drawing. I think also just the process of the way you make marks

really, really very directly does affect the way you paint, the way you hold the brush, the

way you move paint on the canvas.”

“What do you think about drawing and painting in relation to other disciplines within

visual arts?”

“I think that painting is fairly separate. But I feel that drawing is just a strong

foundation for everyone. For everything, whether it is photography, whether it is graphic

design, sculptures. Painting helps those disciplines as well, but I think it’s less direct. But

I think drawing teaches you about layer, about putting information next to each other,

about process, all those things are hugely important in other disciplines. Plus it’s really a

quick way to illustrate ideas before you spend a lot of time making them. Make sure

those ideas fit in your conceptual frameworks.”

“Do you have discussions among your teaching colleagues about teaching drawing and

painting?”

“Oh, yeah, quite a lot. We have meetings. We do have meetings about it. Less

frequently about specifically teaching and how to teach. Sometimes we do meet with

adjuncts sort of to observe different classes. I haven’t done that here at this university, I

have at others. But very informally, meeting with other colleagues, just sort of talking. A

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lot of times just about a specific type of student. You know what you do if you have a

student talking all the time. How do you approach this? What becomes of this? Probably

you have to deal with it, or ignore it. You know I definitely had people say how do you

illuminate them, how do you really teach them about this concept. What is prospect do

you use if someone is struggling with something? People are fairly open about asking,

and getting influence. So, definitely, definitely.”

“Do you collaborate with other painting and drawing teachers? How? Give examples?”

“Not formal collaboration here yet, but in the past I’ve taught collaborative

courses with the History, English, and Music departments where we’d collaborate

between all of them. So I taught class for two weeks. We would sort of take historical

references, literary references, musical references, and art references, and pull them

together, and sort of have this creative artistic class where students could choose to work.

And from that there would be a period where students would reach out, sort of choose to

work with one of the foreign instructors on a more extended project based on what their

persuasion was. Whether they like art, music, or…or just want to experiment with one or

the other. So, I’ve definitely done that. But I also taught collaborative classes within the

arts, which are really typically usually exciting. They are difficult to get through the

administrative process because of who gets credit for teaching. You know it’s a little bit

problematic, but I think in this period of cooperation the two instructors just have really

great ideas, they usually figure out a way to make it work. That can be very useful just

because you expand the knowledge base. The students get to see how two different

people approach a similar topic. It’s really important and exciting. I think it’s an

important thing.”

Listen to The Painting. The Painting Tells You What’s Going on:

Professional/Thematic Instructional Data for Professor B

Educational background. Professor B went to a community college for two years

studying art. It is called Meramec Community College in St. Louis. Then he went to

another small college in St. Louis called Fontbonne College and got his BFA, a bachelors

degree for painting. Then he went to Indiana University for two years to get my Master’s

degree.”

“Did you study painting/drawing? What courses did you take in painting/drawing?”

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“Yes, mostly a lot of art classes. So many painting classes! I took a lot of

sculpture classes. I liked doing a lot of sculpture, but after some point I got to where I

didn’t enjoy the process of sculpture, making molds, and the extra labor intensive work. I

didn’t actually make any artwork. It’s the fabrication of structure to make the work. I got

kind of tired of that. So, most were painting classes. A lot of them were figure painting,

figure drawing. That’s about as specific that I got with any of them.”

“How long did you study painting/drawing?”

“I really start painting probably about 1974. Thirty-three years, I guess.”

Teaching experience. “What classes do you teach at FSU?”

“I teach painting class. Right now it is a Painting I class. The class I first taught

was a self-portrait class, so, the idea of what self-portrait might be about, maybe just

physical likeness. It is difficult for the students because they only know painting as a

pictorial reference to themselves. They don’t really grasp the notion of self-portrait

beyond a physical likeness. It’s been interesting.”

“How long have you taught painting/drawing class overall? And how long have you

taught painting/drawing at FSU?”

“I started teaching since 1985 here at FSU. It’s about 23 years.”

Teaching load and normal day routine. “What is your teaching load?”

“Right now it’s two undergraduate classes, then graduate students on top of that.”

“What’s a normal day like for you at work? (Describe your routine.)”

“The first class starts at 12:50, I paint in the morning usually, and then I get to

school about 12:00. Get stuff ready. Check the mail in the art office, and have a Painting I

class for two and half hours. Then another class in the same room, so it’s a pretty easy

transition. Sometimes we have faculty meetings.

Teaching philosophy. “What’s your teaching philosophy?”

“You know, it really is to try to find what the students are interested in in their own

mind, because I don’t need to teach anybody to be like me. There is no reason why

anybody should try to teach somebody to be like them. So you have to try to get into

students’ heads and figure out what they really want to learn, even if they don’t quite

know it. So you end up piecing together a lot of little clues, almost, and try to help them

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to figure out where their own personal insights may be. Sometimes it’s hard work’ like a

detective story, adding parts of clues and figuring out the answer.”

“What do you think the most important thing is that you teach your students?”

“I don’t know. It’s an interesting thing. I don’t know if there is a single most

important thing. It’s hard to say. They never had to be very creative for the most part. So,

maybe just inside, how to take advantage of their own individuality, and how to think

differently, and how to trust the solution. A lot of time you trying convince them there is

no correct answer, but there are a lot of boring answers. You don’t want one of those, you

just want something new and different and individualistic. Maybe just how to be

confident and individualist.”

“What’s important to be taught in drawing and painting?”

“There are so many things. Some of it just may be the history of it, and why

people do it. Or it may be why, even more important, people do it today. And why

humans do this thing. Particularly with painting and drawing, there is a notion that there

is only the one of something. They are not like multiple produced or computer produced

things. There is only one of that piece of paper which that drawing is on, or one piece of

canvas. I think students don’t really understand or appreciate the uniqueness of what they

do sometimes.”

“What do you feel are the basic skills that students need to master? And how do you

incorporate them in your class?”

“Sometimes they have to realize that it’s a lot of work. They’re used to instant

gratification …the computers, anything … are short term interests and focus. With

drawing and painting, the skills have to be built up over years, of thinking, of observing

and learning. You have a lot of mechanical processes you have to learn. Particularly with

the painting, you know how to build a canvas, how to build the stretcher. There are a lot

of physical, mechanical skills, and that takes a long time for one individual to start to get

a handle on.”

“What do you have to say about the importance in teaching art skills, techniques

and creativity?”

“Skills are pretty easy to teach. Once they understand the mechanics, maybe how

to work with a saw or figure out how to get the canvas square, you know those things

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maybe they just need to be exposed to, they can absorb that really quickly. Techniques

are really kind of individual choices, and again I am trying be responsive to what that

student seems to be really enjoying, whether it is really thick paint, really thin paint,

loosely interpreted subject matter, really tight realistic, … I try getting a sense for what

they are really interested in thereafter, and I work toward that direction. Creativity is

probably the hardest part. Because they haven’t been exposed to art that much, they don’t

really have to… Going through the education system nowadays, the students are bright.

The students learn how to memorize things really well. They are not really asked to

create anything or invent anything. So it is really difficult for them to come up with some

interesting ideas. They come up with an idea, usually it’s a fairly solid idea, but it’s not

very inventive. It’s hard for them to think past their initial idea where it could just

become something much more different than anybody else might come up with. That’s

probably a hard thing, just teaching somebody maybe a process to becoming creative.

Just take your first idea, and think you are genius. I try to see what I can do to make more

of a difference than if I thought personally that they are just lazy or they haven’t

exercised that part of the brain.”

The goals of the class. “What are your instructional goals for your painting I

class?”

“For Painting I class, a lot of it really is a first exposure to painting. So sometimes

it’s just to get them to comfortable with that, knowing that they can do it. You don’t have

to worry about the styling of it. And give them some insight into the history of painting,

so they can maybe appreciate it and enjoy looking at paintings.”

Teaching method. Regarding the most effective teaching methods, Professor B

said: “I do a lot of work particularly when they start on their drawings. You can explain

things to them, but you’re dealing with a visual language. So if you are trying verbalize

things, sometimes it’s a difficult way to get the point across. So I just draw on their

drawings, or show things: ‘Why don’t you do this? Do you see this?’ They tend to say,

‘Oh yes, I see that!’ Same thing with paintings a lot of the time. It’s so easy just to

demonstrate this idea of how to get this shape, how to get this form, how to get this color.

Sometimes I show videotapes to them just to get them exposed to other artists.

Particularly they are relatively unconventional artists. They have a preconceived notion

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of what art is or what a drawing should look like, and they really haven’t been exposed to

other or more recent options for the visual arts, painting and drawing. In Tallahassee, you

can’t go to a museum. You can’t point out something on a painting and say, “Look at

how this artist did that.” So you end up using a lot of books, as good as you’ve got.

Certainly, you deal with the reproduction, the small scale. You lose the texture. That’s

really the only resource you have to work with here in Tallahassee.”

“How do you motivate your students?”

“Motivation is kind of a strange thing. Some people you can never motivate, so

you don’t spend a whole lot of your energy trying to motivate. Other ones tend to be self-

motivated, you just keep them focused and engaged. You have to get a sense for when

you feel the project is dragging too long, so you find a new project. Or you build on a

current project for the future. And you have to figure out sometimes what are the

students’ paces. They don’t work on the same pace. One class doesn’t work with the

same pace as the other class. I always end up being in a fairly loose structure. The

schedule is produced depending on what that particular class has done and how far they

get, when they are ready to move on. So we transfer to something completely different.”

Influences. “What artists or movements have influenced your practice as an artist

or teacher?”

“One of the things that I always try to do with the students is to break with the

more art historical understanding of the sequencing of art and artists. Try to convince

them or try to explain to them that they might not need to think of art chronologically,

and to think of other artists as sort of non-time referenced. So you look at somebody who

was painting in the 16 century perhaps, and try to have the same insight and same

perseverance as them, and you might have somebody who is working now. I’m not trying

to stick them in historical archives some place. You can certainly get stuff on books for

hours of just inventing and imagining anything going on now. Sometimes again they are

good for understanding information and memorizing things, but it’s hard for them to

shake that structure of education. Things have to be chronological. No they don’t, when

you talk about art! Good artists make specific time periods.”

“Are there any artist-teachers influence you on your career? Describe them and their

influence.”

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“There are a couple of teachers I guess that had a certain influence me. When I

was in community college, the first painting teacher I had. He was an old guy, he was an

adjunct. He probably retired, he came to teach painting class. We had still life set up. I

didn’t really know anything about art. I didn’t really know anything about painting. So I

am taking this class. We were studying still life. He came over, he did this painting of a

little kerosene lantern. It was kind of magic to watch this thing. Just sort of happy. It

wasn’t like you sketch it out or diagram it. You just look at it and kind of painted it. Just

in a kind of magic way. I thought, “Oh, people do that.” It’s not like an engineer that has

a blueprint. You look at something, you just interpret it. It’s a sort of enlightened

moment.

The other one is a teacher I had at the last two years in undergraduate school. He

started talking about interests in other artist. He read other artists and trying figure out the

larger painting significance. How to look past, maybe, just the subject matter of the

painting and figure out why it’s a great painting, and maybe just why it’s a great story.

So, you know it’s about … I hate to say … ‘interpreting’ anything, but ‘appreciating’ I

guess.

When in graduate school, you know the teachers are a little different. I didn’t

learn anything specific maybe from them, but learned what to be like, or the expected

avenue if you are going to be a professional artist. So you see these people working, you

see these people exhibiting. There is another aspect to this whole art thing I never really

contemplated very much.”

Issues and concerns encountered in teaching. “What are the most pressing issues

and concerns you have encountered in teaching painting?”

“The students expect things to be done quickly, or they don’t realize the amount

of time and energy that is involved in doing that stuff with any certain degree of

competency. I don’t mean to say they are lazy, but they just don’t maybe grasp the

amount of the focus that it takes, you know. ‘Cause to think about it and just take to

somewhere … they think they have a vision in their head, and if it doesn’t become that

vision, they feel like they failed instead of listening to what the image was evolving into

and going with that. They tend to be a little frustrated.”

Frustrations and rewards. “What are the biggest frustrations in your teaching?”

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“Most of my colleagues. The students for the most part are conscientious, they

may not work hard as they should. But never much in the way of difficult students. I

guess you have higher expectations of your colleagues maybe, in general, across the

board. Some of them just… they might be ineffective teachers, they might be disengaged,

they just don’t care. They might not be willing to pursue their own career very far. They

do their own research. I often wonder what a lot of them do when they are not teaching.

Obviously, they are not working on the career, not making art works. I guess they sit

around and watch television or something. I don’t know what they do.”

“What do you think will be your greatest rewards in teaching painting?”

“It’s an interesting question. There were, what probably comes down to maybe a

few dozen real good students that you have over the years, but you can at least say that

you maybe helped to get them to where they wanted to take that stuff. You feel good

about that. Have the goal or have the success. They actually care. You talk to them a little

bit. You make suggestions because a lot them just kind of become disappointed. The

point when you’re done with college, you don’t know in which direction you are going

right now. A lot of them just don’t know. They are in need of advice and suggestions.

You feel great about that.”

Grading. “What strategies do you use for evaluation or grading student work?”

“That just depends on where they started and to where they evolved. I don’t have

a set bar that everybody has to reach, because not everybody starts at the same level. How

much information they’re willing to absorb and do something with.”

Textbooks.“What are the textbooks you use for your painting class? Why you

chose them? If you don’t use a text, why not?”

“There is no text book in my class. I use the master painters’ books to show my

students. Most of the common painting books in the market are pretty dry. There are no

cookbooks for painting.”

Meaning of teaching. About the meaning of teaching, professor B said: “I always

enjoy the job. I always kind of enjoy this, You know, watch and help out all the students

at one level or another. Sometimes I think about someday when I’m retired. You kind of

wonder how much you miss it. You know probably I’ll miss some interaction and

problem solving with the students about their works. At some levels I guess.”

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The studio environment. The painting studio is located in the “The Church” which

is actually an old church just across street from the Fine Arts building. Inside the studio

there are some wood and metal easels. Some metal stools and small cabinets are scattered

around the easels. Paint marks are seen on every surface, and there are these colorful

marks on the easels, stools, and the floor. You can smell the linseed oil in the air although

the fan has been turned on. The wall in front of me is about 40 feet long, and is used for

displaying students’ works during the group critique. On the wall behind me on the left

there is a sink and a trash can. Further left, there are three 7-foot metal cabinets in which

there are all kinds of objects for still life. On the wall, several pieces of student’ self-

portraits are hanging. On the wall behind me to the right, there are three middle size 4

foot metal cabinets which are used for carrying students’ art supplies. On top of the

cabinet are piles of students’ paintings, stacked in rows. Some paintings are landscape,

some are figure paintings, and some are still life. Against both the left and right walls

there are four big, wooden shelves which are used for storing students’ paintings. In the

left corner of the room, there is a big table on which a still life setting is set up. Some

glass bottles, plastic fruit, and pots are displayed, and a paper sign on the table reads

“Please do not move.”

Figure 22. Painting Studio in “The Church”

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Don’t Worry about the Likeness at First

Demonstration. When I came to the studio classroom, Professor B had already set

up an easel, and a small table with a paint box. Inside the paint box, there is a set of

palette papers on which oil paint had been prepared. Two jars are placed beside the paint

box: one jar contains linseed oil as the medium, and another with mineral spirit for

cleaning brushes. A piece of white rag is sitting on the corner of the table. A spotlight

with orange light is clamped on the easel. Professor B will teach students how to paint a

self portrait. One male student is sitting as the model. He has blonde hair and wears a pair

of glasses. Professor B prepares by plugging in his extensions cords to power his lamp

and as he waits for the final group of students to arrive, shows the students present how to

place their mirrors for the self-portrait exercise.

PB prepares paint while talking to the whole class. Students move easels around.

“Come over here”. PB starts to paint the model. “The first part tests your creativity. Find

some photo surface. Start really dark. Stay away from blue and green. Set your palette on

your right side. Think about how you orient your canvases. Big things first, small things

later. Don’t think about likeness at first.” Professor B is leading by example and as he

works, he continues on with his discussion of qualifiers for the exercise in self-portrait

painting.“A couple of things you need to be aware of. Think about light from a ping pong

ball. Think about nice gradation, highlight, light area, shadow area, core of shadow,

reflected light, and cast shadow. Think about reflected light. Paint the nose like a ping-

pong ball. Always look for corners.”

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Figure 23. Demo of Self Portrait by PB

“It’s an angled corner. Use your purple and orange. Add cool reflect color. Work

in some kind of dark. Redefine the jaw. Don’t think about the glasses. Drawing the frame

is easier than eye balls.”

“Try colors. Variation colors. Get a guess. Illuminating things can be possible.

More like sculpture. Catch conversions. Nose and ear warm. Translucent. Don’t paint

your face nice and paint the neck like that.” PB paints an elongated neck to contrast with

the proportioned face.

Students are standing behind PB and observing his demonstration. One student

asks, “Which red is that?”

“Cadmium red light hue.” Answers PB, “ Look up sternomastoid. Round up the

chest. Tighten up a little more. Don’t start it too light. You look for the corner.”

“Keeping it light, redefine the shapes. You got the idea already?”

“Every time you look, use your nose as reference to the chin. Don’t try to be a

camera. Allow yourself a couple of chances.”

“Do we make the background on top of it?” a student asks.

“Use yellow ocher. Find something you are interested in for your background.”

“I’ll show you books in my office when you work on your background.”

“Will our finished project be Picasso-like?” a student asks.

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1:19 p.m., PB finishes the demonstration. The demonstration is about 20 minutes, and

then students begin to paint. PB brings several books for students and helps students set

up easels and mirrors.

The goals of the class. Professor B’s Painting I class is structured to give students

their first exposure to painting mediums. For the most part, a goal of this class is to

encourage students to learn to work with a full palette of color while dealing with the

problems of building a painting that conveys a realistic illusion of a 3-dimensional world

on a 2-dimensional surface. Other important aspects of this class are studying historical

examples of painting and developing the verbal skills needed to carry on informed

discussions about painting and art. As the class progresses, the emphasis shifts towards

promoting the personal style and individual creativity of students and how they approach

the mediums and techniques.

The content of the teacher’s instruction. Professor B gives students a variety of

assignments for his Painting I class. Typical assigned projects for this class include:

● Copies of the works of masters

● Self-portraits

● Landscape painting

● Paintings based on randomly-selected images using a mixed media approach.

Regardless of the assignment, the main medium is oil paint on canvas. Based on

each student’s specific problem areas, Professor B gives personal solutions. There are no

presentations in PA’s painting I class, although in one class session Professor B did show

a video of a contemporary artist at work.

Students’ outcomes. Here are some artworks created in PB’s Painting I class

(Figure 24-35):

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Figure 24. Self Portrait-c Figure 25. Self Portrait-d

Figure 26. Self Portrait-e

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Figure 27. Self Portrait-f

Figure 28. Landscape-a Figure 29. Landscape-b

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Figure 30. Landscape -c Figure 31. Landscape-d

Figure 32.Randomly Selected Images Painting-aFigure 33.Randomly Selected Images Painting-b

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Figure 34.Randomly Selected Images Painting-cFigure 35.Randomly Selected Images Painting-d

Figures 24-27 are self-portrait paintings created by several students in Professor

B’s Painting I class. In figure 24, Professor B asked the student to emphasize the cast

shadow under the cap and the chin to create the 3 dimensional effects. In figure 25, he

showed this student how to paint glasses. He asked the student to temper down the eye

and add some cast shadow, then suggested that the student create some reflection on the

lenses of the glasses. On the background, the student put some black lines on white lines

and it became too busy. To remedy this, Professor B suggested a change to some another

color to create balance and detract from the problem and also encouraged the student to

consider a different color on one side of the face. As a result of these suggestions, this

student covered the background with some blue and purple on one side, and yellow and

orange on the other side.

In figure 26, the student adopted Van Gogh’s Starry Night as the background.

Because the student used an orange spotlight as his light source, Professor B suggested

that he add some orange to the background so the portrait and the background were

connected with the same tone. In figure 27, another student put purple and red on each

canvas, and he juxtaposes two canvases as one piece. His face was separated by these two

canvases. Professor B encouraged him to use this format and also suggested that he think

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about the opposite characteristic of this duality. One side uses cool colors; the other uses

warm colors. On the background, he painted a pool table on the upper left which was

borrowed from Van Gogh’s painting as well.

In the landscape assignment which is presented in figure 28, Professor B showed

a student how to paint a cloud; He suggested the student work with blue first, then add

white on top. He asked the student to consider the light and dark areas of the cloud, then

soften the edge. Furthermore, he asked the student to think about the flying giant rocks,

which have a side, top, and bottom.

In figure 29, PB suggested the student tone down the color in the distance and

then soften the hard edges of the distant background. In figure 30, the student found a

zoom in viewpoint for her composition. It is the corner of the old cafe which was an old

train container with the wheels at the bottom. In figure 31, PB suggested the student

separate the foreground mailbox, mid-ground gray wall, and background sky. He

suggested darkening the mailbox because dark things come forward, and to try some

other colors to separate the gray of the wall from the sky.

In the paintings based on randomly selected images in figure 32, the student in

this example glued some pages of a journal on the surface of the canvas as the first layer,

then glued shorter pieces of paper strips on top of it as the second layer. He then wiped

acrylic black all over the surface to get some nice texture. Next, he covered the center

area with a piece of blue color fiber, and used a palette knife to add Acrylic Gel Medium

to the fiber. Finally, he used black marker to draw some images he randomly selected

from an old journal which included: a pilot, an airplane, a bird, some clouds, and

skyscrapers from New York City as the top layer. In figure 33, the student used Japanese

Kanji characters, the Eiffel Tower in France, and the French words: “C’est ne pas une

femme” which means “There is no woman.” in English. He also added Chinese

characters representing the same meaning. In figure 34, another student covered the

background with black paint first, then he dripped the green and orange acrylic paint on

top of the black from the top and bottom directions. In figure 35, the girl combined a

nude figure with some images she found in her daily life.

Other questions addressed by professor B. “What do you think about the relation

of drawing and painting?”

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“While in a way they are so well related, in a way they are well apart. I am trying

to, a lot of time, convince students painting really has a lot more in common with

sculpture in a way; the idea of adding things, layering things, building of surfaces.

Drawing tends to be kind of about a containment of information. In most of the cases, it’s

a line around something. There is not that physicality of building up a surface of a

column on a column. Probably the important thing I am trying get them to understand is

that painting really isn’t as close to drawing as they think. But all they share in common

is the 2-dimensional surface. It’s hard for them to understand that for a long time. They

want to draw things and fill them in. I tend to try to not let them do that, because that’s

again the first thing coming into their head, “Oh I can draw, so I fill in. Oh, I’m

painting.” In most cases, it’s a completely different world.

“What do you think about drawing and painting in relation to other disciplines in visual

arts?”

“It’s way superior. I don’t know. The singularity of art, at least drawing and

painting extend to the rest of them. Even sculpture, people have no problem. A lot of

sculptors in most cases, making multiple images make images off their original. Every

museum in the country got one of Roden’s Thinker at sometime. It’s another thing, it

seems, to do that, to accept that idea with paintings and drawings. I did a lot of sculpture

in school, I enjoyed it. It wasn’t as magical as painting. Painting is all about illusions. It’s

always flat, whether you dealing with the illusion of space or you accept that flatness. It’s

all flat. There’s a kind of magic to that. It’s a very limited possibility, but at the same

time, an endless possibility. In sculpture you always make something. It’s like making a

coffee table or making a chair. I mean there is a room. It’s a 3-dimensional thing, and has

weight and mass. There wasn’t any magic to that I guess so.”

“Do you have conversations with your colleagues?”

“Just the one I like. The ones I don’t like or don’t respect, I just tend not to talk

with them.”

“Do you have discussions among your teaching colleagues about teaching drawing and

Painting?”

“We share sometimes ideas or projects that succeed.”

“Do you collaborate with other painting and drawing teachers? How? Give examples.”

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“No. I really don’t. Some faculty members do or enjoy doing that. I guess I don’t really

do or probably wouldn’t want to do it. I don’t know. I think I just like the sort of one-on-

one interaction with the students. We have a group critic or something like that, a lot of

time you try to be on a committee with people with whom you have a sort of shared

ideology or shared notion of approaches. Sometimes you don’t. Sometimes you get on

one, but the discussion ends up being between the two faculty members, and the students

just sit there, relatively disengaged.

Dare to Be Stupid. Egg on Your Face: Professional/Thematic Instructional Data for

Professor C

Educational background. Professor C completed his undergraduate education at

the Memphis College of Art in Memphis. Tennessee. He completed graduate school at

the University of Illinois and later completed postgraduate study at Harvard University,

and then the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston.

Teaching experience. PC has been teaching for 35 years and began his

instructional career when he was in the undergraduate phase of art school. When PC

started out teaching at FSU fifteen years ago, he was teaching mostly Experimental

Design and Drawing I.

Teaching load and normal day routine. “What class do you teach at FSU? What’s

your teaching load?”

“This semester for instance, is Drawing II, and then Figure Drawing. Then I guess

you can count the graduate workshop, it’s on Friday. It’s not a studio class. It is more like

a seminar.”

“What’s a normal day like for you at work? (Describe your routine.)”

“One thing is preparing. I don’t have any morning classes. My first class at

1:00 … 10 minutes of 1:00 … 12:50, is the Figure Drawing. Then after that I have the

Drawing II. In the morning, usually late morning, I prepare for the classes. I like to bring

something in, especially for Drawing II, but then also for Drawing I, I have a library at

home, and I bring in examples of other artists. I don’t show too many slides, but what I

do is this. Because I have been teaching Drawing II for many years … this is the first

semester in a long time with the Figure Drawing … so, for Drawing II I have about five

or six years of students’ drawings, examples, digital images, etc. So I project these

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examples for them so they get to see those examples. I have to try to make it clear that

these, of course, are not to be copied, but sometimes it’s hard because I have students

come up to me and just get frustrated and they just ask, “Professor, what do you want me

to do?” Usually the answer is not what I want you to do, but what you want you to do.

You must do it.”

Teaching philosophy. Regarding his teaching philosophy, Professor C said: “If it

is a fundamental class or a basic class, my philosophy for drawing I would be different

from Drawing II. Teaching art in general, like an umbrella, the whole bottle of glass, is

that I try to think of myself as a facilitator first, where I can facilitate the whole idea of

exploring, experimenting, taking chances, not always sitting comfortably in the middle of

the room, but rather on the edge. In other words, not on the middle of the table, but sitting

or standing out on the edge. And all too often I will say, ‘Fall off! Sometimes jump, take

risks!’ And I mean this when I tell the students … I mean seriously, “Dare to be stupid!”

So what I really mean is … don’t be afraid of take those risks. You are going to feel

sometimes that you get egg on your face. This is an American expression. “Egg on your

face.” You look like a fool. All of us are usually afraid to look like this. We don’t want to

be foolish. So, I mean, it’s not to say that my philosophy is to be foolish, it is to dare to

take the risk. But sometimes, especially with the young students, the undergraduate

students, maybe not so much as the graduate students, if I say “Dare to be stupid” I’ll get

up on the table. This is where we all mostly want to be … in a warm bath. You know …

a warm bath, taking a bath, very comfortable, in the middle. But what you want to try is

to be on the edge, try jumping off some time. But I think it is human nature to be in a

warm bath, very comfortable. Just, the last thing I’ll say … let’s say Drawing I compared

to Drawing II, or Drawing 3 or Experimental Drawing … Drawing I, I think is important

to have the fundamentals, line shape, volume, color, progressive … you step through

those elements, understanding perspective, two dimensional depth, three dimensional

depth. For Drawing II, it is more exploration. That’s one of the problems in a good

foundation class or course, basic design, or basic drawing, or basic sculpture … that you

have the fundamentals of understanding what it takes to make a good solid piece of

sculpture or a good fundamental drawing. “Let’s see representational drawing!” I mean,

you know from your training.”

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“What do you think is the most important thing to teach your student?”

“Have confidence. To build the confidence. I would always say that everyone is

talented. The technical talent varies, but they all like to explore. Sometimes they are

afraid to explore. But they can’t come out of my class without the confidence to win, to

play, to explore, to take chances, to dare to be stupid. All of those are so important, just

being you. So many people are just stuck in routine, or in jobs. It’s a boring life,

sometimes. Being an artist, you are a creative person. I think everyone is creative.”

“What’s important to be taught in drawing?”

“Like what I was saying, in a basic classes it is, you know, what grammar is in

English. You have grammar in Chinese. You have a strong foundation. From that

foundation, is then to take the risk, to explore, to experiment. You know I had a very

strict, maybe not as strict as yours, but a very structured drawing and painting

background. You know how to draw. I went to a high school, art school. It’s a high

school which had a museum in Connecticut, near New York. It’s the oldest art high

school in the country. Norwich Free Academy. It’s a city, a small city in Connecticut. It

looks like a college campus, it has a museum, and it has an art school. Have you ever

drawn with silverpoint? That’s how I learned to draw the figure.”

“What do you feel are the basic skills that students need to master? And how do you

incorporate them in your class?”

“That’s pretty straightforward in drawing, something like a fundamental class, the

Drawing I. But it’s something I am struggling with in the advanced drawing classes, like

Drawing II or Experimental Drawing. I like to think that just by the content of the

assignment, they are going to learn certain skills, certain technical skills and concepts.

That’s important. I like to think that as they go along from Drawing I, Drawing II, or to

more advanced classes, or whatever class it is, it is a balancing act between the content,

the concept and the technique.”

“What do you have to say about the importance of teaching art skills and techniques, and

the role of creativity in this?”

“Sometimes they overlap. The technical versus the conceptual. I think it’s

important to have a good foundation, in case of drawing, a simple stepping from the first

part of the semester, line, shade … to gradually go through volume, then texture, and

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color. So it’s progressive. The fundamentals, the grammars, the basics. With that then in

Drawing II like I’m teaching now, to encourage students to use that skill. But then take

chances with those skills. To really explore and sometimes I say, you know, “Look I want

you all … you are being too careful. Dare to be stupid!” Sometimes I use this table as an

example of the art world or the universe. Here we are in the middle of the table, right?

We never get to the edge. If we get to the edge, we only get this close. I want you to fall

off, and then get back up, taking chances.”

Influences. “Do you have some influences from other teachers in the past and

who stands out most in your memory?

“In all of my time … probably he has passed away. He was a painter at the

Memphis Academy; it’s now called the Memphis College of Art. It has an undergraduate

BFA and a graduate MFA program. His name is Ted Faiers and he did very, you could

almost say very flat, paintings but they are very socially and politically smart. He would

do paintings about issues of the day, but very seductively. Not abstract, not photographic,

not hyper real, almost two-dimensional kind of, not cartoon either, also flat at the same

time. He wasn’t a big talker like me. He taught by example in his work. And we would

talk about ideas and social and political issues, a little bit, not a lot. I think of all of the

years and all of the people I have known, he was the greatest influence.”

“In your career, who was the most influential teacher in showing you how to teach as a

mentor?”

“I never took any, like, Art Ed kind of thing. But I never took any of those courses,

or anything, or sat in. This is a difference with an MFA, the studio, all studio. Of course it

is a crap shoot, in another way. You can get some really lousy teachers. They are not

interested in teaching or do not have a training background. So what I know is, of course,

what I pick from colleagues, or from talking with other artists or other people that are

teaching. So over all these years, I’ve learned from all these other people. Someone had

passed away; Ed Love who was only here just before he died, five or six years or so. I got

to talk to him quite a bit. He genuinely cared about art students and loved to teach. I had

and still have great respect for Ed Love. Also I was around him with students as well. I

guess one thing I picked from Ed was that you can be pretty forceful, you can be very

forceful, but it comes from your heart. You can be ….You don’t say, “This is shit.” You

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can say, “This is the problem with the drawing. This is what I think you can do to make

this a stronger drawing. Look this is really beautiful here.” You have these ways of

complimenting. Complimenting another works. Do you know what I mean? There are

some things you are doing that are good, but also there is a way going around almost like

the back door and saying, “Look! This really needs a lot of help. You’ve got to change

this.” Like, the student says, “I really want the table to look three dimensional, it looks

flat.” You just say, “Woo! You are in trouble. You’ve really got to get working on this.

There are some possibilities. Here’s how to make it look more three dimensional, more

spatial.”

“What artists or art movements have influenced your teaching?”

“In the early twentieth century, before and during World War I.… the Surrealists.

Then later in the fifties and sixties, the Situationists. Then after World War I, the Dadaist.

So what makes me curious about these movements is why somebody always related to

them … because those artists start to look at art with an experimental quality. Experience

outside of the studio, outside of the gallery, another world. Art work does not just have to

be in papers, on canvas or marble—that actually can be anything. I will give you an

example of a performance that I did with a student from the Academy of Vilnius where

they have a picnic on a landfill, on a garbage can, so outside, within this landfill with all

of this open garbage, there is a beautiful table cloth, beautiful food. These young people

sat around eating the food with acres, acres and acres of garbage. I should send you the

website. It’s a beautiful image. But you realize what they are doing and where they are

doing it. But the point I try to make is … Situationist. The Dadaists were actually after

World War I, one hell of a war. Millions of people died. People just came out and shot at

each other this close. “There is a war, let’s go man!” A lot of the artists were really

affected by that. Some people felt that this was insane, “How can I paint on canvas, or

draw on paper?” So they start in the streets walking, performing. Technically it’s not so

much. Mostly just ideas.”

Teaching methods. “How do you motivate your students?”

“It’s a good question. All these years I have been teaching, it’s still a challenge all

the time. Especially now, I feel that with all of the competition from media, the

computers, the iPods, all of the plug-ins, the cell phone, the digital this and that. For sure,

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sometimes I think I’ve got to be an entertainer rather than an educator. I have to get up on

the table, and dance. You know tap dancing. I get their attention then I deliver the content

after I do the dance. I don’t know, I feel that’s unfortunate. But to keep them motivated,

part of it is, you hope, that the assignments, for instance, in figure drawing, which you

haven’t been sitting in on, but figure drawing … not only getting different models, but

also .... right now my class was doing composition drawings. They are doing drawings

from other models and incorporating them into a larger drawing. That’s all they have

been doing up to now, up to mid semester. It is always an ongoing endeavor or it’s very

challenging. I think of motivation and energy being very similar. I guess one of my

favorite words is “challenging.” How can I challenge the student? I think if they are

challenged with these assignments or projects that give them not just excitement, but a

little bit of self consciousness about that. Seems like we live in an entertainment culture.

You have to be entertained to be excited, to be involved. But I guess nothing is wrong

with that. To get them involved is also challenging them at same time. I am hoping by the

example that I have formed a big library of digital images of student work and other

examples.

So within Drawing II, for instance, one of the earlier assignments is that of the

fruits and vegetable based upon Giuseppe Arcimboldo. So, Giuseppe Arcimboldo was a

sixteenth-century northern Italian painter. Students bring in their own fruits and

vegetables and they draw a portrait. And they set up the lighting to make it look like …

you didn’t get to see … I had a display of those in the Fine Arts building. I should have

told you that, I just took them down. That one they really seem to get excited about,

because they are doing something concrete--a portrait. And then they’re also using fruits

and vegetables that they are familiar with. It’s right in front of them, right? It’s so

important that they have their own fruits and vegetables. The actual fruits and vegetables.

So I pick up an apple. I say, “You see this apple? I want you to look at the apple. But I

want you to think about an apple and I know you all can think about what an apple looks

like. You all know, probably you all think you know exactly what an apple looks like.

But I’m telling you this apple I have in my hand, is not like any other apple in the world.

And I want you to understand that when you are drawing it. This apple is as unique as

you, so when you drawing it I want to see that personality, the personality in the apple, in

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the whole portrait. It’s a challenge. We can close our eyes, we know what an apple looks

like, what a pear look like, what a banana looks like. They are such common symbols.

But sometimes I see students. They have the still life in front of them, like the apple or

the pear, the banana. Here is the paper, their nose is stuck to the paper because they know

what the banana looks like. It’s amazing. You’ve probably seen people do that, even in

figure drawing. Sometimes I will go behind them, I’ll tap, and say, “Look at the model.”

They are like this. Stop drawing with your nose. They are so close. These are just bad

habits. I have a book that’s actually for children, in other words, the old illustration are

very large. I think that is pretty good for illustrations. That excites them. I think that

motivates them.

Also, the unexpected: I like to introduce, from time to time, something that is not

on the syllabus. For instance, when they come in, what I might do is, once they’ve settled

in … they are working on a drawing, let say, or they just look like they are settled in but

they are not very motivated. I’ll turn the lights off. All the lights off, dark! I ask them to

be perfectly still, not to do anything. First, I tell them to stop. Whatever you doing, stop.

I’m turning the lights off, of course they definitely stop. So one technique after I do that

is … I have the small vaulted cap candles. They each get a candle which is lighted. They

have the drawing boards too, so I have to set that up. And a piece of paper, or sometimes

I give them small sheets of 8x10. I wait at least 5 to 10 minutes when their eyes become

adjusted. I want them to be very quiet. I want them to be able to hear their breathing, and

to try to breathe very slowly, and also try to empty their mind. Try to think about either

just one thing--a color, or a line, or the absence of it. Just to try to get them to focus on

something, but out of the studio, here at FSU, Tallahassee, Florida. All of the other

problems, they got a date tonight, whatever is going on that makes their brain busy, right.

So they forget that. That, and also the challenge I give them to just breathe slowly. Don’t

to do anything. Don’t drift with your mind. Then I say I would like you to draw

something.

Sometimes they had music, sometimes the music is classical, very peaceful.

Maybe like Chopin, not very loud. But not all the time. So if I don’t have the music, then

I’ll say, “I want you to draw a line. I want you to draw these lines, but I don’t want you to

think about an object. I want you to be very peaceful, I want you to be very quiet.” So,

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it’s a peaceful and quiet line. They can see the paper, with just a very low light. And I

know the blood pressure is low, their heart’s probably not going fast. Maybe there are a

couple of them just, pang, pang…, “What the hell’s going on here?” Right? So it could

start with that peaceful music. I might say something that is very coarse, or, “I want you

to make some line a little more erratic.” So anyway, this kind of …, so many possibilities.

I don’t know I’m talking about the other thing. I’ve got all of these long sticks

with charcoal on them. Or again I don’t want them to think about drawing a chair or

drawing something realistic. I want them to look at the line and what the line has to give.

I want them making lines spontaneously. For some it becomes natural to improvise that

way. For others, they are in a way … I guess you can say, natural. In our culture, people

like drawing to be on a paper, on a two-dimensional surface, something photographic.

That’s what they revere and respect. So clearly to draw photographically is automatically

prized in our culture. In many, not all. Some more than others, in some degree. I think it

is important to have a grasp of the techniques and craft, to know how to draw. But

anyway, the long sticks and charcoal just disrupts the routine. Other times, I just let them

have the candle and the paper, and just turn off the light. And I say, “Would you please

all stands up? I want you forget what you are doing. So we’ll do some breathing

exercises.” If you driving down the boring highway, and then suddenly there is a light, or

an arrow directing you to turn one way abruptly … maybe it generates something in your

mind, but you never thought of it before. For one thing, you’ve got to turn right. You’ve

got to get off this boring road, right? I kind of hope these little tasks that I assign join the

assignment.

You know within the drawing assignments I like to think that there are enough

interests in the context within the limitation. They have to use several threads – important

social, political, and aesthetic issues in the context. What’s important to them? They

might say the war in Iraq. Another might say no parking on campus. Another might say

global warming, or the election coming up. So they don’t have to pick out one of those

subjects. They can combine them. And then they have to incorporate the person’s name

in the drawing as well. It’s a type of contemporary art, I called it topical issues. Issues

like those that appear in National Geographic.”

Textbooks. “What art textbook do you use for your drawing classes?”

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“I don’t use a drawing textbook. But I bring in different art books to show

students. Like today I brought one. It’s actually on street art, on graffiti art, or painting or

drawings in public spaces, or private spaces. The reason why … I haven’t found a book.

If I taught drawing I, it probably would be something traditional. For instance, for Figure

Drawing, which I teach this semester, I will use a book … but it is not demanded, I will

bring it in. And I’ll copy some from the original. I think I bought it at a local Barnes &

Noble. It’s a very simplified with the torso and the cube. And how to begin, begin with

gestures. But for the Drawing II class … I get a lot of books through the mail that the

publisher sends. I look through them. But for now I end up bringing in books on artists,

design, graffiti artists and sculpture, and painting. I leave them on table, and have them

come and look through the books.”

Issues and concerns encountered in teaching. “What are the most pressing issues

and concerns you have encountered in teaching drawing?”

“The space, the studio space. The institution. The art department is always

financially distracted. For instance, if we want to put in lighting, a floating light, the

ceiling is so tall, they’re not sure how to do it. So we don’t have these tripods. That

would be very important in figure drawing. I’m not sure we can do that. Issues involving

having a proper studio environment are very important.

The other issue is having a strong foundation. All of the students should have it if

they go onto interior design, sculpture, graphic design, video production, painting,

drawing … they should have the fundamentals. It is so important. If you have the

fundamentals, you can do anything. For Drawing I, to me, the skills are more important

than the ideas. Still side by side, sharing. The core is foundation. Then whatever you

want to do in your life, performance, video, sculpture, painting … you can do because

you’ve got this range of skills. There are other artists, instructors in other fields. For

instance, you decide if you want to make not a Statue of Liberty, but a very large

sculpture, made out of bronze, You’ve got to learn how to cast, right? Tomorrow you

want to do some very elaborate video production performance. You learn the Video

Editing software, all of the programs. So some people call these the foundations. I’m

talking about as a discipline only. You discover what it is you need. But in this institution,

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especially in public university, you got so many students. Some are very, very talented.

They need to be fair to them.”

Frustrations and rewards. “What are the biggest frustrations in your teaching?”

“One is having a good, well-equipped studio. Maybe that’s just my age too, I wish

students could be more motivated. I’m always trying things, other than standing on the

table dancing, or strip-teasing. So I get frustrated because I think every student is talented.

But is every student motivated? Maybe…I’m trying to motive them. You see the talented

ones, and just go with that. Life will be beautiful.”

“What do you think will be your greatest rewards in teaching drawing?”

“When I see students, and just say, “My God! I’m not making them suffer for no

reason at all!” I said ‘not making them suffer.’ I give an assignment, it will have

limitations. Young people like total freedom, machine gun everything first. Then see if

you can learn something or get something out of it. So in Drawing II, I have limitations,

like with Persona, or whatever it is. What gets them excited is, when they made this

unbelievable drawing, an unbelievably challenging drawing, with all the limitations that

are given to them to kind of focus them. The small area … all the possibilities. They see

all the possibilities. They have seen the excitement on the drawing and in them, in the

student too.”

Grading. “What Strategies do you use for evaluation or grading student work?”

“In relation to Drawing II class, I grade according to the student's attention to the

drawing assignment's context. In other words, did the student understand the limitations

of the assignment and within those limitations produce a fantastic, knock your socks off

drawing. That results in a "fantastic grade." However, if the student for instance does

NOT pay attention to the limitations of the assignment, the grade suffers

accordingly. Critique participation is an integral part of the final assignment grade too.”

The goals of the observed class (Drawing II). Professor C’s goal in Drawing II is

to allow the more experienced student/artist to explore with various media in a creative

environment. Within the constraints of the materials and assigned projects, each student

is encouraged to produce works in the spirit of exploration. A major preoccupation for

everyone in this workshop should be to experiment/play. The students explore the many

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possibilities of critical observation through a variety of black and white and color media

and the sketchbook is an important part of the class.

Content of the instruction. PC gives different assignments including still life

presentation of fruits and vegetables, portrait drawing, assignments based on basic

drawing and textures, persona drawing, book of drawing, and group murals. Each student

creates drawings based on a given theme or concept. From the preliminary sketches, to

concept development, to the final work, Professor C always gives students the creative

means to make their own decisions.

Materials and technique. Color pencil, graphic pencil, charcoal, ink and pen, color

pastel, gouache, watercolor, and other media (such as, maylor and, vellum) are explored

by students. There is no demonstration for Professor C’s Drawing II class because the

course content hinges so much on the flexibility afforded by personal exploration and

experimentation.

Concepts and ideas. Many of the core concepts and ideas expressed by Professor

C can best be demonstrated through an example taken from the field notes gathered

during observation of one of his Drawing II classes. In one class, Professor C asked

students to create a drawing based on the concept of persona. Before any students were

given the chance to begin work on the project, however, Professor C asked the students a

basic, but obviously difficult to answer question; “What is persona?”

“How you appear to other people.” says one student.

“It’s not a human quality.” says another.

“It’s when you make a room for yourself or create an identity.” answers yet

another.

“Spiderman.” says a boy.

“Hero.” Says another boy.

Professor C listens to these answers without individual comment and, seeming

comfortable with the answers he received, he tells his class, “You just introduce your

piece. What does it personify? Talk about the process you went through to get there.”

A female student begins the discussion about her piece. She had drawn a group of

female and male figures in the forest, and they seem to be emerging from the trees.

“What you are pulling out? What’s the Persona?” Professor C asks of her.

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She answers that her piece represented “The natural world, the birth. Repetition of

that tree. Emotions. Well to me, the trees are like barriers. Like burdens. The man, the

girl, they are coming out of the trees. There is the contrast of nature. The trees are dead.

Humans are killing nature. If you kill nature, you kill yourself. Fiber-like, open trees with

figures, rebirth, the psychology of rebirth. Something death, something taking its place.

Younger people.” explains the student.

Without interruption from Professor C, the student continues with her own

analysis saying she didn’t have a specific image haven’t a specific image “Just man and

woman. They are naked. The tree is dead, but is very strong. You point to that direction.

We each bring our own experience to the visual images,” the girl continues.

“Yes, we’ll interpret the same piece with our different points of view.” Professor

C says and continues, “If I draw things on a piece of paper, you call it square. It is not

that specific. You can’t make a clear point or definition to the persona.”

Another student offers his own critique of the piece, suggesting, “It’s superman

rat, rabbit. I really want them angry. I know you have another meaning behind it. I see the

turtle like Indian, sharks like Americans, taking territories with force. The sea animals

have industrial weapons, but the turtles only have sharp arrows” The student says.

“Next.” Another piece emerges as the topic of discussion and the students take

turns offering their insights, for the most part uninterrupted and uninhibited by the

reflections of Professor C, who listens carefully and thoughtfully to each observation.

“Horrible pastel.”

“It’s hard for me to see. Quickly folks.”

“The bird enjoys the day,” says another student, “It’s good luck. One of my

teachers told me in the elementary school. He told me that is means good luck.”

“I thought that there were four panels. The bird’s good luck wears out, and he

starts targeting people to poop on them.”

Professor C adds a question into the discussion, “Is that a sheet of paper, or did

you cut it? I can’t see what is there.”

Another boy draws three portraits which represent himself at different ages. “It’s

about aging. Being born and being a daddy, the transition.” says the boy.

“Make it fuller. It’s a self-portrait?” asks Professor C.

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“No. It’s just came from my head.” answers the boy.

An African- American student draws a portrait of her mom. Around her portrait,

there is a Chinese character.

“Your mother is a strong woman. She is really feminine too.” says Professor C.

“What’s the meaning of those symbols?” he asks.

“The word “Li” means strength, the power. This symbol represents female.”

“I was wondering why put a symbol on her shirt, the juxtaposition of a character.

Most American wouldn’t recognize that character.” Professor C comments.

Students’ outcomes. Here are some artworks created in PC’s Drawing II class (

Figure 36-61):

Figure 36.Perona-a Figure 37.Persona-b

Figure 38 Persona-c Figure 39. Persona-d

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Figure 40. Persona-e Figure 41. Persona-f

Figure 42. Persona-g Figure 43. Persona-h

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Figure 44. Book of Drawing-a Figure 45. Book of Drawing-b

Figure 46 Book of Drawing-c Figure 47. Book of Drawing-d

Figure 48. Book of Drawing-e Figure 49. Book of Drawing-f

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Figure 50. Book of Drawing-g Figure 51. Book of Drawing-h

Figure 52. Book of Drawing-i Figure 53. Book of Drawing-j

Figure 54. Book of Drawing-k Figure 55. Book of Drawing-l

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Figure 56. Book of Drawing-m Figure 57. Book of Drawing-n

Figure 58. Book of Drawing-o Figure 59. Book of Drawing-p

Figure 60. Book of Drawing-q Figure 61. Book of Drawing-r

In the Persona assignment, in figure 36, the girl tried to personify the natural

world and the rebirth. According to the student who created the piece, the trees were like

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barriers, like burdens. The man and the girl were coming out of the trees. The trees were

dead. Humans were killing nature. When they kill nature, they kill themselves. Fiber-like,

open trees with figures represented rebirth, the psychology of rebirth. Something death,

something taking its place. In figure 37, the student drew a war scene between turtles and

sea animals. Invaders come from the sea. The turtles have arrows, and they are on the

shore. The sea animals have machine guns and industrial weapons, and they are on the

ships. The turtles are like Indians; the sharks like Americans, taking territories with force.

The sea animals have industrial weapons, but the turtles only have sharp arrows. In figure

39, a girl drew a serial of cartoon style pictures in which a clam acts as different

characters in daily life, the business guy, the cheer leader…

In the book of drawing assignment(figure 44), in figure 45, the girl drew trains,

boats and other types of transportation; in figure 46, and 47, a girl drew a robot and a

burger; in figure 48, and 49, a girl incorporated the drawings with an Atlas map to

represent the places she had been to; in figure 50, and 51, a boy drew an angle and a man,

adopting computer generated images into his drawing; in figure 52, and 53, a girl drew a

character lost in the woods; in figure 54, and 55, a girl drew a travel book; in figure 56,

and 57, the student drew a Halloween party; in figure 58,59, a student drew an abstract

color drawing titled color chasing.

Other questions for professor C. “What do you think about the relation of drawing

and painting?”

“Historically they’re related to each other. Usually drawing is like the step-child

of painting. Some painters think drawing is a way to get to their painting; they draw on

canvas too or as a preliminary study. All of that appeared, certainly, historically. In fact,

before the Impressionists, before they paint outdoors, artists would go draw landscapes

and go into the studio and paint the landscape indoors, from the drawing. I think drawing

could be something that simply stands on its own like painting or sculpture. Or it’s about

ideas. It is important to be able to doodle on paper, to do a lot of nonsense on paper, and

not get very serious of it. Drawing is a help for me because drawing helps me relax more.

It’s so instantaneous. There is high art like painting and sculpture. And everything else

below that is drawing, printmaking, photo, video. Painting is held very high in West, I

think in your culture too, right? For sure.”

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“What do you think about drawing and painting in relation to other disciplines within

visual arts?”

“It can be interchangeable with other disciplines as well. It doesn’t have to be

‘This is painting, two-dimensional. Drawing is two-dimensional.’ You can take

inspiration from outside the studio. You can actually do your work, your performance,

your video outside the studio. It is important to you as an artist. It can be historically

inside the studio. That’s perfectly fine. But it’s so broad. It’s more interwoven together.”

“Do you have discussions with your teaching colleagues about teaching drawing and

painting?”

“Yes, but not enough. Faculty meetings, probably no. But two weeks ago, at

meeting of painting and drawing faculty, so there was a discussion, but not enough. I had

been to the foundation meeting, there are ideas. So that’s very important. For instance,

next semester, in January, we have a retreat, where we go a day or two day. Stay in a

hotel; I have been some of those, more discussions about philosophy, teaching.”

“Do you collaborate with other painting and drawing teachers? How? Give examples.”

“I have in the past, but not recently. More recently, what I’ve done is to invite

someone into class from either painting or drawing, or a photographer, to discuss their

work. So they would come in and show their drawings. Several years ago before Janis

Hartwell retired, we did a workshop together based on the environment, our earth

environment. And students were to do a project around readings. It could be drawing, it

could be sculpture, it could be almost any media. It is hard to do because of the way

bureaucracy is set up. But Janis and I would meet together with students.”

“Is there anything else you want to say?”

“Nothing other than … give students enough information and skills, so they can just be

excited about what they can be as an artist, and not get cynical and disappointed. Keeping

their confidence, believing in themselves. It’s hard. It’s a hard struggle. Basically giving

them tools.”

Failure Is Part of the Success: Professional/Thematic Instructional Data for

Professor D

Educational background. Professor D went to the Art Institute of Chicago for a

BFA where there were markedly more installations and a distinct emphasis on

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postmodern art. She then went to the Florence of Academy of Art in Italy, which stressed

classical realism in the style of French Beaux-Arts. Professor D obtained her Master’s

degree from the University of Delaware, but she was studying mostly with the

conservation department with focus on the materials and techniques of the old masters.

“What courses did you take in painting/drawing?”

“In my undergraduate, I took a lot of figure drawing and figure painting, and

figure sculpture in clay, and also welding at the Art Institute of Chicago. At the Florence

school, we learned classically how to draw with charcoal from cast and figure studies.

One year in Italy, a whole year. Usually that program (the one in Italy was a certificate

program) would require like three to five years to complete. So I really just …I did what

would have been the equivalent of the first, and perhaps part of the second year. And then

graduate school. It was not nearly self-directed study because I had done many painting

reconstructions. But the courses that were offered for art conservation were working with

contemporary knowledge from spectralisis and X-rays of what old masters used. So it

was working from the reports from the conservators about what they had found about the

artwork. We did reconstructions of Vermeer, Manet, Canaletto, Cenualiy.”

“What was the focus/emphasis of your training in relation to painting and drawing?”

“The materials and techniques of old masters. Not just one focus, but kind of split

between the Primitive Northern Renaissance and what would have been Grizelled

painting with artists such as Vermeer. I was interested in icon painting, so I worked a lot

with egg tempera and gold leaf.”

“How long did you study painting/drawing?”

“I feel I studied painting for 25 years. But, on paper, eight years of higher

education.”

Teaching experience. Professor D has seven years of formal teaching experience

and started to teach at FSU in September 2007. She teaches Materials and Technique, a

workshop, and also teaches graduate students. She likes to work with students in a one-

on-one setting, talking about what materials are best for them to execute their work and

the process by which to develop it. She also teaches Painting I, Painting II, Drawing II,

and she will teach a critique course and color theory next semester.

Teaching load and normal day routine. “What’s your teaching load?”

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“This semester three courses, last semester two courses, so 2 and 3 for the whole

year.”

“What’s a normal day like for you at work? (Describe your routine.)”

“On average, I have meetings in the morning or at lunch and I prepare for my

class in the classroom. Prepare the room for the students. For example, today we had a

demo where I brought in another professor who showed us how to do an encaustic

process. But generally I would do a demo, and do a lecture, and discuss each course of

the assignment with the students. I would focus individually on the students, redirect for

the entire class, and then talk about what happens in the next class. Break it down for

next class. What is nice is that in the Materials and Techniques class, I leave many other

things out so that I can show my painting II students the same thing the prior class was

learning. So that there is bleed-through. I like to have an open door policy, so I invite my

students from later on in the day. They always come earlier, or there is a special demo. I

try to have students from Painting II come to catch the techniques lecture. I try to get the

students involved and come in, and even with the figure drawing at night. I try to invite

other students from other classes. Other teachers know that if there are any students that

have problems and need more hours, they can come to my section.”

Teaching philosophy. “What’s your teaching philosophy?”

“I try to help the students facilitate their ability to have a concept and have the

materials and techniques they are using reinforce the concept so that their intent, their

subject, their content, and the materials all reinforce the integrity of the project. I like to

expose students to conceptual ideas so that their works are about ideas. But I am not

interested in students’ work looking like my work. I am happy to expose any element of

my work in it when it’s appropriate, I don’t mind using my own work as an example, but

I am not interested in having students paint like me. I’m most interesting in finding out

what motivates them, and help them access what their vision is.”

“What do you think is the most important thing you teach your students?”

“Not sure. How to not give up. One of the most of important things I tell them is

that failure is part of success because it is too easy to be defeated and walk away and

never do something again. Say no. By all means be patient.”

“What’s important to be taught in drawing?”

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“In drawing, I believe that … to start representationally. And then

representationally show them elements of design and value. And how to see, and how to

break down reality into a structure so that it doesn’t matter what you are looking at, you

can represent it accurately.”

“What’s important to be taught in painting?”

“Painting with color is another element of design with the composition. So I try to

teach them how color resolves the composition. And that is mostly done at the abstract

level, even though you have to have the drawing, in my opinion, even if you are to

unlearn it and work only abstractly. So there is a process which is integral. Sometimes

you have to unlearn things in order to have progress. I like to have them in a very rigid

beginning and foundation, and then do some assignments that purposefully disrupt their

understanding of what they’ve learned, so they start to have an original voice.”

“What do you feel are the basic skills that students need to master? And how do you

incorporate them in your class?”

“At the painting I and drawing I level, I am much interested in that they are

connected with the materials, that they are fighting the materials, that they are learning to

analyze and strategize for having successful composition and observing the world. If they

don’t understand how to perceive it’s very challenging to get them to have the hand-eye

coordination, to get the results to connect.

And at the Painting II and Drawing II level, I am much more interested in what

they have to say with the media, and I expect that they have some exposure and/or

mastery of the media. By the time they get to Painting II, they are able to refine their

technique. They really begin to have ideas or concepts they’re expressing. They are

willing to experiment, experiment perhaps to the point where they fail. If they learn why

it doesn’t work, learn how those ideas can be expressed through painting or drawing.

Alternatively, they’ll learn that painting or drawing weren’t the best media, perhaps, for

all of the ideas.”

“What do you have to say about the importance of teaching art skills, techniques and

creativity?”

“I have a lot to say. I’m developing a lecture that speaks about the importance of

art, teaching art, but also about understanding that inheritance that we have, culturally.

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Art is a privilege and if we trade perceived freedoms for our abilities to express ourselves

freely, it can jeopardize our ability to have art. So I’m very interested in students in

general understanding art history, so that they can understand that this is not an arbitrary

thing … you can or can not do art, it may or may not be art. But that it does something

very powerful, very influential. And that is a great privilege that could be taken away if

you don’t preserve it. In regards to the skill and being a technician, my feelings are also

very passionate. Which is … if you don’t maintain the knowledge base of how the

masters made paintings, you lose this knowledge and with the death of each master

painter, it was like a library burning down because very rarely they passed on their

process of their techniques. They would just go out, and it would be a mystery and then

we would go through a period of time when no one kept this knowledge alive. Sometimes

the workshops could help the situation. Hundreds of people were trained but it has to be

with intent to keep those traditions maintained. It’s just whether or not someone cares

enough to share and create other artist educators. For example, Gérôme taught hundreds,

if not thousands of people, and Gérôme studied with Ingre and David, so he was passing

on these techniques. These techniques then passed on to Ekins, Ekins studied with Ives

Gammell, Ives Gammell studied with Lack, Lack studied with Daniel Graves, and Daniel

Graves is who I studied in Italy. So it passed from master to master to masters, so that

there is some great inheritance in skill. It also becomes a form of taxidermy which cannot

be terribly original. You really recreate somebody else’s vision from two to three years

ago. So there is a tension, “push and pull” between maintaining what was in the past and

responding to what will be innovative in the future.

So lastly, how do I respond to creativity? Which is … Carl Rogers, the

psychologist, maintains that it is very important to study art, and important in every

pursuit, whether it be science or medicine or any type of entrepreneurial adventure,

because with art you have to be daring. You have to strategize. You have to problem

solve. You have to use the ability to think in less predictable ways in order to solve the

problem. And this creates innovation and honestly, it also creates a kind of willingness to

persevere. I think it will strengthen your spirit. And while as an educator, I may not

create artists, I think I do create better thinkers and they can resolve problems more

creatively as the result of the education. So I think that is a qualitative life-enhancing

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degree, or pursuit of study, but I cannot be wrapped up in the potential success specific to

the artist.”

The goals of the class. “What are your instructional goals for your

painting/drawing classes?”

“For Painting II this semester, it’s to have a variety of assignments that are based

partially on observation and partially off of an abstract concept. That may have some

research attached, so it might be advantageous for them to look at other painters, go to

library, look at magazines, have political opinions. Or, if they are used to being an indoor

painter, go outside. There are a variety of ways to start a painting, not only technically,

but also conceptually. Are these formal issues that you are trying to resolve or conceptual

issues that you are trying to resolve? Come at a painting from as many different

directions as possible as a survey, but I want the students have their own voice.”

Teaching methods. “Describe three of your most effective teaching methods do

you use for your painting/drawing class?”

“One is horribly contemporary. Either I take them directly into a computer and I

show them the picture … ‘This is what I’m thinking of. Here is the artist, here is the

artist’s statement, the artist’s biography.’ … all of it. Or, unfortunately second to those …

books. There are so many things that I want to show that are not in any books. There is

no book on certain topics. So while I have much access on the internet, I would prefer to

be showing them books, but internet is free--books cost money.

Generally they trust me enough … I ask permission if I may work on their work. I

think that it helps them with authorship and authenticity, that I am much more interested

in them subverting their desire to have total authorship of their work, I don’t want

necessarily to compete or share. It’s merely that I can show them, and they trust me and

by showing them that I know what I’m doing, and I’m willing to pick up the materials.

I’m not just going to talk to them--I’ll show them. I’ll demonstrate on other work, but I

will work on their work and I will show them these are the steps that you must take in

order to achieve the effect. Demonstrations, but also … early, not later--but early. Just

that ability to work with them quite literally.

We have this large problem in our Florida State system … where we have access

of surplus materials. We have no equipment fee. That’s why we are working in an

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environment that looks abysmal. It’s less than satisfactory. However, as a result of

Florida, I don’t know legislation perhaps, each student has money that is allocated out of

the tuition toward their supplies. So we have this money in excess because we almost

can’t compete with more supplies to pay for it. But I can because I’m a Materials and

Techniques teacher. So what I like is to promote the new open door policy, and invite

students or even graduate students, so that they can come in and work with the supplies.

This is something I can do only on a small scale this semester because I just got here. But

in the future this is what I want. I want them to have access. I want them to be able come

in at any time and be able to use encaustic, acrylic, or oil, as long as they are not to take

the tool home and work with it here. I would like them to have infinite exposure to

whatever materials they want to work with, and just provide them an environment in

which to experiment.”

“How do you motivate your students?”

“Exposure. I do give power point presentations that show them old masters and

contemporary artists. I like to encourage them to be an art person. I am less following

through on that this semester. I did take them over to see the students, the older students,

the MFA, the BFA students installing their exhibitions so they knew what they were

looking forward to. What the goal was--to have these major exhibitions. But I am

planning trips to Ringling in the fall, and one to New York City in the spring. Let

students have much exposure to actual art, because it’s very frustrating to realize that

some things are digital representations, and quite unlike the actual experience of art. I

think, trust motivates them a lot, because they realize very quickly that I am interested in

their goals…. So they know that I will be honest with them and tell them which things are

working or not working, and I am happy to work with them. I have already given them

encouragement and directions towards the idea to do the work. It seems to be a successful

practice, you need successful motivation. So I think I am able to provide them strategies

for that success.”

Textbooks. “What are the textbooks you use for your painting/drawing class?

Why do you choose them? If you don’t use a textbook, why not?”

“Specifically I would like to have Pixie Moore from Britain. An extremely small

book, a primer on painting, formally available in Britain. I am not certain if I can get

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permission to reproduce it, or if I can just reproduce it. It’s only about thirty pages, and it

talks about pretty much everything you need to know about oil painting and it’s really

insightful, and I would like all of the students to have that because it’s short and concise.

What is a primer? Sometimes students don’t know what a primer is. What is sizing? You

know just these things. How do you put it on? Very simple, not too much information.

It’s just adequate, and short. I don’t have it because it’s not available, so I am trying to

resolve that. I showed them mine, and they thought it was great. I often read my books. I

have always found books that are available from the internet, but I have never required

the students to have the current edition. This is because I don’t know exactly how the

scam works. But if you are a teacher, and you always insist that they all have the same

edition or the current edition, it costs 4 or 5 times more than older edition. I don’t

understand what kind of evil is currently here, making students go get the latest book. I

do show them a book that would be beneficial to help them accomplish their work. I

think what is more important is having a library like the one that I am borrowing from,

from another professor. I can take a book from their office, and students have access to

the books, and have them available. I wish in our school we had a lounge where the

books would just be available, and to have those books close to the studios. It is great to

have a library, but it is better to have accessible books near the art space.”

Influences. “What artists or movements have influenced your practice as an artist

or teacher?”

“All of them. Julie Heffernan, so many things about timing … she was the first

Latina painter who was doing old master painting techniques. I did study with her, but

she personally didn’t teach me anything except that going to Yale makes you a jerk.

I’m so interested in materials and techniques. I learned from everyone, my ex-

husband (laughs), he is now a conservator. Some bizarre things happen when you get

married. [My ex-husband] was a great painter. We got married, he never painted again.

He was my painting coach. So kind of like Bouguereau marrying his best student, she

never painted again. You don’t know … she was painting Bouguereaus, probably. [He]

never painted me. I don’t know if that works. I think I accidentally cannibalized potential.

I study from dead artists because they are easy to learn from. After you’ve learned the

fundamental Holbein, Vermeer, and Mumbling, it teaches you a lot.

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Daniel Graves with the Florence Academy of Art was an instructor who had so

much study with the masters as he was studying with three hundred years’ tradition and I

could teach your dog how to do this type of painting because I’m so dogmatic and rote.

You do step A, step B, step C … and it was complete abasement of any kind of personal

expression, zero. I had an exposure, but in terms of a really truly personal connection

with somebody who mentored me, I have somehow avoided it in general. I am very

rebellious, and I think that why I sought out an authority that wasn’t alive and that is why

I purposefully attach myself to those painters who had already deceased.

Brown was one who taught me how to do painting with instruction. And he said I

was superb of all in that class, because I was asking too many questions. Why I started

teaching was because I had so many awful teachers. Ha, ha, ha … I was teaching my high

school art class because my high school art teacher was awful. He was hired to coach

football, and he was so bad that they removed him from football immediately cause no

one wanted him coaching the football team. And they left him in painting to linger for

nine years. Every day I looked at him for 4 years because I refused not to take art. I was

sitting there and I was teaching all the other students how to draw and I’ll just do my own

work and he will give me my A. All my senior year I wrote a manifesto on why he should

be removed and how he wasn’t supporting art and education and I reinforced it with all

empirical evidence of the numbers of students that would enter his class as freshmen, and

how few exited as seniors, and how he couldn’t have worse … you know, these things

may have been listed on the books, but he didn’t offer them. And he didn’t offer them,

because the numbers weren’t there. But I showed, you know … I just showed his history

of neglect, and his inability to provide what we needed.

Hilton was one at the University of Delaware, a formidable teacher. He was very

structured, millions of times more structured than I am now. He has been teaching for 30

years. I would say, he was the most influential. He was also such an authority; he also

knew that nothing was wrong because no one can be that right. I think it is important to

say that you just don’t know something, or that you think this is how it is.”

“Are there any artist-teachers who had influence you on your career? Describe them and

their influence.”

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“Yes, I learned a lot about what you don’t do. I am a part, and hope to continue to

be a part, of the think tank that I stirred. I’m still doing that … trying to get national

recognition of higher education for art, at the undergraduate and graduate levels, because

honestly, I think we’ve been in the dark ages. I think it had been medieval and entirely

unstructured.

So you can have the best and the worst, but there was no standard--and the

standard is coming, and it turns to the old master techniques, really, in the last ten years.

Under postmodernism they disregard the structure, while even maybe under the guise of

Bauhaus. Pretty much it was under the teacher. If you feel it, do it, you know, kinesthetic,

very loose, very free. I think that depends on a swing the other way. We will go through a

period of being much more dogmatic. The downfall of that will be we will have an

enormous amount of mediocrity, without the highs and lows. But it will be standardized.

And then it will fall apart again.

I am excited about that revolution. It can occur. It hasn’t in the entire higher

education system yet. The last time that education and art were together was in the 20s.

Then art and education split, and we need to bring them back together. This is starting at

FSU, it’s not national. We will make it national. Not because of me. Mary Stewart is

going to build a national institute. I am extremely impressed. She is doing it, so I don’t

have to. I support her, but I don’t want to do it.”

Issues and concerns encountered in teaching. “What are the most pressing issues

and concerns you have encountered in teaching drawing and painting?”

“That students take art for granted and don’t understand what they are inheriting,

what their mission and potential is, for what art can be – to expose people or change

people’s lives. I just want them to understand how powerful it is, how many different

ways art can be creative, and how it has evolved. So I am really interested in biography

and teaching the context in which art was created because so many things were done in

the same context.

Art may not be the same art it was when it was created, because of the mind of the

people if they don’t maintain comprehension--why it was and what it was. If you are a

contemporary Jewish woman who has an Asian art collection, and you see the entire

collection of religious paintings, you think it all is Christian crap. That is an uneducated

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point of view. Helga donated the Asian art collection to Ringling thought that. It just

shows that when you just hear something, you don’t necessarily understand it. So the

more exposure I can give my students … so that they can say, ‘Yes, this all-black

painting by Ad Reinhardt is art.’ More than that … ‘This is why it was known as art in

that context.’ You might think that it has not been created anywhere. Of course not!

Because somebody has already done it.”

Frustrations and rewards. “What are the biggest frustration in your teaching?”

“Trying to create my professional work in addition to service--in addition to

creating my professional work. I’ve had wonderful students this semester and last

semester, yet I have had class with horrible students, and it’s partially because I was

inheriting the bad structure from before Mary got here. So we had beyond … beyond the

worst structure. It was just a shock to come here from another system, (and I think I have

had some students that were challenging in the past) and to end up in a way I would

consider to be typical, and not the students fault. And realize that their foundation is

totally lacking--it’s devastating, it’s underwhelming, and more than anything, it defied

my expectations of what they should been. If I thought they were all planning on working

with people who were severely mentally disabled, my expectations would have been

different, or if they were getting PhDs in art education and had never worked with art

materials, that what have been a different set of expectations. But my expectations for

them, being majors and at their age level--we didn’t meet. So I am hoping that will

forever be different.”

“What do you think will be your greatest rewards in teaching painting/drawing?”

“I am very much interested in long term personal interaction with my students and

knowing that I was able to make their lives more meaningful and more significant, no

matter what kind of interaction that is. It is just something I want for my own existence.

If we have someone who wants to know, who wants to do art, who wants to

communicate, connect, we will make them better. It’s through the power of observation

that we can maintain that. To be an instructor that only focuses on the student for one

semester and then it’s out of my hands, I don’t want be that person, uncertainly putting

people through the program. Now, this can’t be with every single student I’ve ever had.

However, this is what is meaningful; finding out how much you are changing the world.”

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Grading. “What strategies do you use for evaluation or grading student work?”

“I am much more interested in having very clear expectations and outcomes with

the freedom to experiment, but they know they must fulfill certain requirements. And

then you need to be able to help them understand how they’ve been evaluated, then they

can self-evaluate how they achieved the assignment. I’m less interested in being a

dictator, and more interested in finding how far they were able to bring themselves. In the

end, it was very clear who was achieving the highest level and who was trying to add to

it, and who was marginally covering the assignment and who was not… I’m more freely,

personally experimenting with giving Fs.

Now I realize that during the first seven years I taught, I midwife the lower third

of the class. I was too interested in that, and now I’m not interested in that. I can

participate too openly, and they are working and have their goals. I mothered them, and I

might as well have done all the work, because I may have kept them in class. I kept them

working, but I’m now experimenting with letting that one-third go for the sake of

conserving my own energy. While, if they fail, maybe this semester they weren’t

supposed to be in this class because they couldn’t handle time constraints--and that’s

their problem. It’s more a real-life learning than a painting-learning, but they didn’t know

how to manage their time. I do have a student on the other hand … and this has nothing

to do with intelligence … I have a student that I suspect has a very low IQ or severe

disability. I’ll collect students who are willing to work hard from other teachers, but it

was an unsuccessful match, and she now comes to my class because I know how to direct

her. I guess I’m more interested in the student that’s not even mine who wants to work

than I am in students who I have to control and listen to, and make a excuses for, and get

in between love and their personal life, and why they don’t have the work done. Now I’m

just losing them.

Or there is another 5 percent--they work better at home. They work better work at

home where they actually paint. I am experimenting with making attendance optional. I

quit taking attendance for Painting II. It’s an experiment. I may never do this again, but I

think we are creating a society which is ambivalent. I think we are creating a society of

people who are unable to be adults. If you go to work where they are just taking

attendance, you just get fired if you don’t go to work. So why am I treating my students

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like they are in the second grade? This is my philosophy presently. I may change by next

semester, but this is my first experience for this semester … so far I have the same

number of A, B, and C students and these students are happy. I checked with other

teachers to find out what their numbers are: We start with 16 students, but now we have

this many. So it doesn’t seem to be that similar … that just I had a better attendance in the

past, but I was exhausted. I don’t think it creates a quality environment. It is not ‘leave a

child behind’ it is ‘water the flowers, not the rocks.’ If I’m constantly teaching towards

becoming a nominator and try to bring everybody, it’s really rough, which I consider to

be embarrassing. I don’t have the energy I once did, something has to go. I guess my

feeling is that as an adult, you have to make a decision. How bad is it? My feeling is if

you miss a few classes, your works perhaps are already failing, but there is that exception

… one student who might have mental problems, or be depressed, or for whatever reason

cannot work in the room--they might still (I am still wondering for this exception) if they

still can get an A at the end with horrible attendance, if their work is better somehow. If

they don’t need me, then the teacher obviously … I don’t know.”

The structure of the Painting II class. Professor D gives assignments based on a

theme or a concept, such as provocative painting, window painting, homage to Van

Gogh, or view-finder paintings, for example. Before each assignment, she presents a

Power Point presentation and introduces historical and contemporary artists who applied

a similar concept in their paintings to provide the assignments with a richer set of

contexts.

Professor D values both the old masters and contemporary artists, but she has a

tendency to emphasize materials and techniques from the old masters. Also, she

constantly shows students current artists through the use of personally-selected internet

websites or art books. Professor D’s Painting II class covers a large amount of technical

and conceptual information.

Concepts and Ideas. When I came in the classroom, Professor D was leading a

discussion for the new assignment, which was based on a “provocative” theme. To begin

the project, Professor D offers the students a general definition of “provocative” in the

context of the assignment, telling them,

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Provocative means serving or tending to provoke, excite, or stimulate. For example, "a

provocative remark" or "a provocative smile". Provocative also means a stimulating

discussion or exciting controversy. For example, "a provocative novel" or it could be an

exciting sexual desire.”

Following her definition of the term, she asks her students what the opposite of

provocative might mean, which elicits a number of answers from her students, most of

which related to the term “ordinary.” In agreement with the offered definitions, Professor

D continues, suggesting that the opposite of provocative is related to the term “banality”

which, as she puts it, “means boring, ordinary, conventional, or dull ordinariness,

unremarkable.”

She asks her student directly “How is your work provocative? Is it political?

Racial? Sexual? Poor Taste? Culturally inflammatory? How is your technique reinforcing

your concept? These questions, she urges, should be supported with the ideas a

techniques the students have gleaned from learning about other artists.

One student talks about her idea and suggests her desire to do a research piece on

abortion or the distinction of animals.

“The Abortion. Animal form, distinction or political issues, it could be great topic.

What’s your color sequential? Have a great idea, a great composition” Professor D

contributed.

“I have two ideas. New York attractive or unattractive. Baby being raped.”

Another girl says.

“Look works of Botanski, a photographer –world war II. Blow up, high

resolution. Life and death.” Professor D suggests.

“You could print the image on canvas.” PD suggests to another student.

“This is turning out interesting. People like seduced.”

“One of things is my daughter is 18 months old. She does weird things. She holds

beer bottles.” Another student says.

“I think those are great. I’m not there yet. That’s the point. Listen to everyone

else.” says Professor D.

“Look the work of Daumier (French 19th century artist) who did cartoon like

works. His work was so controversial, so profound.” PD says to another student.

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“It’s against the religion. It’s the biggest political tension they faced.” another boy

plans to do research on religion issues.

“Is it merely religion?” asks PD.

“This is wonderful. Look Duchamp, 1917. He was famous for ideas.”

“The Sensation Show in London, Britain, Tate Gallery. We have more freedom

than ever. We had that show when it came to Brooklyn Museum in New York City.”

“He was so outrage. I’m so desperate.”

“Look John Curry. Pornographic painting.” PD suggests a student to look John

Curry’s painting.

“The Provocative painting due next week.”

In the next class, PD continues lead a group discussion on Provocative painting.

A girl presents her idea of provocative painting: “Today is technology dominant.

We can easily search online. The internet dating. Woman have sex with Robots. I’m

thinking of color.”

“In 1950s, there was an artist who drew a woman with vacuum, look at your art

history books.” Professor D suggests.

“You might think about women in home. Washing machine, vacuum. Don’t take

the idea of internet, take it further. Color was used in certain way. Postal blue, pastel

pink. In Africa, woman with rings stretch neck, Chinese woman stretch feet. It will be

hard to paint. Figure out sex box. Advertising, Porn sites. Less is more. Title will be “Sex

with Robot.” PD elaborates her ideas.

“Who like to be next?”

“Oral sex, children, toys. Puppet, Barbie doll.”

“Apple and baby’s head in the plastic bag. It’s going to be crippy.” A boy paint

still life with apples and bowls, and a plastic baby toy.

“Who’s next?”

“Girls and guys. I put guys upside down. I put my dad’s sunglass. Direct

suggestive.”

“It’s about what you want to see. Over-sexualized view of childhood.”

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“What is appropriate for an age level? Childhood and sexulization. What’s

underneath?” Professor D encourages the student to think more critically about this

concept.

“She is standing there like a mirror, look. There is an African-American artist, she

paints their faces in black, their skin color in a white American perception. What black

should be? It is the context. You are walking a line.”

“Child, sexualities, mirror. Make a bridge, make the means. Something that can’t

be said with word. You can use painting as a media.”

“Animals. Fascinating features seems very fragile. They make into a form. The

psychology of animal. Sketch quality. Don’t say you can’t do anything else. In

contemporary society articulate in a way. Talk 7 days of your work, make a lot of

sketches, push more.”

“Nature sells itself for who? For what market? Confinement.”

“A BFA student put dead animals in the show.”

“Girls exposing. Water reconnecting. Suppose to be outside. Look at Marcel

Duchamp’s last piece. Readymade. In Philadelphia Museum of Art. Ivels’s work. In a

dark, black room. She was holding lantern, constantly moving, water, flesh. What is real?

What is not?”

PD shows her Tattoo to students. She did it 16 years ago.

“The thing I tell you write it down. If you didn’t reinforce it. You won’t

remember it.” PD asks students to write notes.

“George Tooker, look his works in the art magazine.”

“You go. Life size of the girl. Let her hold a condom. Put a dress on it. Paint over

it. Female sexuality. Make some sketches. Look Rauschenberg’s Bed and Jasper John’s

Laundry. Dada works. They both are process oriented.”

“You can’t cover acrylic on top of oil paint.”

“Animal shark hunting. Monster human. Kit was drunk. Art had gone too far.”

“Crusberden. Shot him in the arm. He damaged himself, masturbating himself during the

show. Now he is doing real virtual architecture work.”

“Joseph Beuys. German artist. He used animal felt, cheese. He was holding a dead

hare.”

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“What are you thinking?”

“Look up a shirt, something. Woman shirt. Took photo. A hole in the bathroom.

You can create a space, we become a voyeur.”

“You are last. Multi interaction. Look at Barbara Kruger’s collage art. Consumer

society. When you have an idea, you have to hit it from the side instead hit it direct. Can

you be a mom on the phone? Here is mom, here is baby, here is mess. Fax the baby,

microwave the baby. You just not pay attention.”

“Statistically, woman are biological tight to the baby. Who has that

responsibility? You should do better. You might come up with something more

controversial.”

“Older children will be the younger kid’s keeper.”

Presentation. In another class, Professor D gives a presentation to students before

a new assignment, which is entitled, “Homage to Van Gogh” and she encourages her

students to go to the Van Gogh Museum website to see the collection of homage

paintings displayed there. Again, she begins with a definition of the important term, just

as she did with the word “provocative” in the previous assignment discussed here. She

tells her students that a homage is “respect” and that it “an expression of high regard, or a

tribute to something that shows respect or attests to the worth or influence of another.”

The class has a few moments to digest this definition and consider its relevance before

Professsor D begins her description of the assignment, which is for the students to create

an original composition based on the work of Van Gogh. What is most interesting,

however, is there are particular limitations for the students to observe in terms of

thematic elements fit for exploration. Instead of leaving the content of the compositions

solely to the discretion of her students, Professor D tells them they must use the subjects

of peasants, fields of cypress or olive trees, portraits (including self-portraits) and/or

landscapes. As a further qualifier to the study, she states that for technique, the students

must use a Post-Impressionist Staccato brush and work with pure color.

This was a rather complex assignment that involved critical planning on the part

of her students and to even further add a dash of extra necessary insight, she limited the

available themes for the project to those that had to do with “the psychology of intense

pure color, the dancing contours of form, the elevation of the working class, or the daily

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routine of painting what one sees. Within these contextual, thematic, and material

limitations the students had to choose a palette of colors similar to those used by Van

Gogh, thus eliminating certain colors such as Chrome Yellow, for instance and using

alternates such as Cadmium, which was available then. The students were given one

week and were told additional to be prepared by then to have started their final

compositions at that time.

With the students having a better idea of what to pay attention to given the

context of the assignment, Professor D begins a Power Point presentation of Van Gogh,

first talking about typical colors in Van Gogh's palette which included yellow ocher,

chrome yellow, cadmium yellow, chrome orange, vermilion, Prussian blue, ultramarine,

lead white, zinc white, emerald green, red lake, red ocher, raw sienna, and black. (Both

chrome yellow and cadmium yellow are toxic, so some modern artists tend to use

versions that have hue at the end of the name, which indicates that it's made from

alternative pigments.) With these elements in mind, students not only were given a visual

guide to the types of colors that would be employed for this project, but with the

historical guide to the available and often-used colors, they had a more solid academic

understanding of the assignment as well.

Second, PD talks about Van Gogh’s biography:

“Van Gogh was born on March 30, 1853, in Groot-Zundert, Netherlands….”

Professor D continues at length with the details of Van Gogh’s life before offering

more personal insights, suggesting that “his painting increasingly showed a lack of

brushwork as he, in his haste to capture it, spread the color he saw in life thickly on to the

canvas with his palette knife - and even straight from the tube.”

Demonstration. In one class, Professor D demonstrates how to make a toned

ground.

“You can paint fat over thin, you can paint transparent to opaque. Spanish

painters used a lot of red, French love warm grey. Alizarin Crimson not dry well is

transparent. 2” brush is wide enough. 1” brushes do work. You can find them in ware

store. Wait for 4 days before it dry. Create a middle tone. Acrylic dry fast, oil dries

slowly. Egg tempera uses tiny brush.”

“Does somebody stitch or make their canvas?” a student asks.

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“No. You buy raw canvas or primed canvas from art supply store. Either cotton

duck canvas, or Linen. Linen is very expensive. It is imported from Belgium or east

Europe. You stretch your canvas.”

Professor D finds an old canvas to use for a demonstration among the many used

ones sitting around from past students. She begins to use sand paper to grind lightly at

the canvas in order to get a smoother surface. Once this is complete, she adds green, grey,

white, Alizarin Crimson on the paper palette and with these laid out, she uses a 1” brush

to mix them together while pouring a little bit of mineral spirit until she achieves the

desired consistency. Finally, under the watchful eyes of her students, she applies the paint

on the canvas, talking her class through the process:

“Face to face or back to back. Warm sponge wet the back. Use a rag rub the

surface. Green grey, mineral spirit. White. 18x24.”

Materials and techniques. In another class, Professor D shows the paint she just

ordered from Italy. She notices the work of one her students, who is busy copying Van

Gogh’s Sunflowers. “Are you just doing reproductions?” Professor D asks.

“No. I have some ideas, but I just want to practice his technique,” he replies.

“You need some Prussian blue and Chrome yellow, Van Gogh sunflower’s

yellow.” Professor D then opens a box which she just ordered from the Italian art store

and opens one tube of Chrome yellow, squishing a small amount on a piece of paper

towel. “For Van Gogh’s technique, you might let the paint sit on the paper towel for a

couple of hours, the oil will be absorbed, then you might apply the paint on the canvas to

get the opaque effect.”

Professor D shows several students the paint she just ordered from Italy and

begins to describe their uses. “For certain techniques such as, Flemish school, Rembrandt

school, they use special color, and there are several factory still making this kind of paint

today which includes Maimeri Artistic oil paint in Italy, Old Holland, Blockx in Belgium,

Sennelier in France, Leerance & Bourgeois oil colour in France. Williamsburg and

Gamblin in the United States, and Michael Harding Artists oil Colours.”

Next, PD shows the students a book titled The Techniques of the Great Masters of

Art (Quantum Books), noting Rembrandt Van Rijn’s color palette on page 60: 1.) Lead

white mix with 25% chalk; 2.). Black; 3.) brown; 4.) Red ochre; 5.) Transparent browns

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(Cologne earth and bistre); 6.)Vermilion and organic red lakes; 7.) Lead tin yellow; 8.)

Smalt; 9.) Greens by mixing lead-tin yellow with azurite or smalt.

Students’ outcomes. Here are selected students’ artworks from PD’s Painting II

class (Figure 62-77):

Figure 62. Provocative Painting-a Figure 63. Provocative Painting-b

Figure 64. Provocative Painting-c Figure 65. Window Painting-a

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Figure 66. Provocative Painting-d Figure 67. Window Painting-b

Figure 68. Window Painting-c Figure 69. Window Painting-d

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Figure 70. Homage to Van Gogh-a Figure 71. Homage to Van Gogh-b

Figure 72. Homage to Van Gogh-c Figure 73. Homage to Van Gogh-d

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Figure 74. Viewfinder Painting-a Figure 75. Viewfinder Painting-b

Figure 76. Viewfinder Painting-c Figure 77. Self Portrait-g

The assignment on Provocative Painting, Professor D asked students to find some

stimulating or exciting issues as the idea or concept. In figure 62, one student took the

idea of technology dominant in today’s daily life and did research online and found a

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woman having sex with robots. Professor D suggested she think about woman in the

home and the symbolic relationship between this artistic representation and this woman’s

everyday mechanical items like the washing machine, sewing machine, vacuum, and the

use colors in the piece and life simultaneously. In figure 63, the student adopted popular

culture cartoon images with sexual indication (the hot dog) which Professor D suggested

that the student go look at Roy Lichtenstein’s painting. In figure 64, a girl juxtaposes a

sexy, blonde-haired girl’s face with a church stained glass painting and to aid her with the

development of this idea, Professor D suggested that she look at Playboy in the early

1960s and 1970s for common imagery, suggesting that she might take the idea of

women’s identities and the woman’s body in an overtly sexy, intellectual way. Professor

D also suggested the student examine the works of Joselyn Hobbie, Lisa Yuskavage, and

Diane Arbus and to read their biographies. In figure 66, the student recorded his young

daughter trying to drink his beer in a restaurant.

In the window painting assignment, PD asked students to depict a different view

from a window and use different strategies for the articulation of space. In figure 68, the

student used semi-abstract geometrical shapes to define the space inside and outside the

window. She also used warm and cool colors to represent the interior space and outside

landscape. In figure 65, the student adopted the idea of church stained glass and she

changed the image of Mary with a popular culture image. In the figure 67, another

student took the idea of a traditional church triptych window format and added popular

cartoon images on it. In figure 69, the student using the concept of window through

window and painted two windows with the observers e looking outside the window and

seeing another figure behind another window.

In the assignment of Homage to Van Gogh, in figures 70-73, PD asked students to

adopt Van Gogh’s colors, techniques, subjects, and composition into their own creation.

In figure 70, a student painted a portrait of Van Gogh and added another smaller face on

the top left area of background with similar style of Van Gogh. On the lower left she

paints a hand with a forearm. The whole piece is in a chrome yellow hue. On each

figure’s face there is one eye which is unpainted and left with sky blue. In figure 71, the

student used the same kind of brushstrokes in her landscape. In figures 72 and 73, the

student made copies of sunflower and iris and Professor D suggested that he use Prussian

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Blue and Chrome Yellow. For the opaque effect, she suggested the student let the paint

sit on the paper towel for a couple of hours and then the extra oil would be absorbed.

In the viewfinder painting assignment, students used a viewfinder to choose their

compositions. One student chose his bedroom (figure 74) and another chose a corner of

his apartment (figure 75). In figures 76 and 77, the student adopted Alex Kanevsky’s

method of painting. Alex painted the same model on the same canvas, and he used the

same canvas to continue to paint the next one when he finished the first one. So he

recorded the constantly changing status of the model. This student painted the beer

bottles during a twelve hour period while a party was going on his room and guests kept

adding empty bottles and the bottles were constantly moving and some were falling down

while others had been moved. The concept of still life became frustration. So this student

painted the bottles in a blurred manner to represent that feeling.

Other questions. “Do you think it is important to be a practicing artist in order to

be a good art professor?”

“You not only must be a practicing artist, but also you must practice art in a

classroom because you can’t even know what you need to say unless you are doing what

they are doing. And you can’t say too much. But I think somehow, in a room, especially

with figure drawing with observation, hand-eye coordination is one thing. Then, making

that communication, you have to process it. This is especially true with being a

professional artist. I don’t know how to do this. To have the expectation of being a

professional artist, a teacher must have experience. Otherwise, I’m teaching other

teachers to be art educators. How many of those do you meet? I don’t know.”

“What do you think about the relation of drawing and painting?”

“I think they are interconnected. They have a wonderful dialogue, but students

who paint and don’t draw lack structure. Students who draw and don’t paint haven’t been

given that authority to represent reality on a canvas surface. I think it’s wonderful to be

able to teach, I want to actually teach them both.”

“What do you think about drawing and painting in relation to other disciplines within

visual arts?”

“I think exposure is great, exposure to other media, so to have exposure to

ceramics is good. It could be photography, but at some point you also have to specialize,

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becoming an expert. So early on there is exposure, then you must become an expert or

you become an expert in multimedia, which means you have everything, but are not an

expert.”

“Do you have discussions among your teaching colleagues about teaching drawing and

painting?”

“We have no time to discuss anything because we are so busy trying to hire

people and have exhibits, and critique, and grade work. Yes, I would suggest that at the

beginning of the year we have more discussion about what is to teach, how to teach. We

have a wonderful group of painting and drawing instructors. There is interaction,

conversation, and dialogue, and there is just a healthy environment between drawing and

painting. I can be social, and just walk in someone else’s class. I’m teaching Drawing II,

and it’s so nice to exchange assignments from the outside and to find out what their best

assignments are, and my best assignments. The more excited we are, the more excited the

students are. I’m bored, and they are bored. How awful! Yuck!”

“Do you collaborate with other painting and drawing teachers? How? Give examples.”

“This is my first year. I have not had enough time, but, for example there is a new

hire, so I am excited for when she gets here.”

“Is there anything else you want to say?”

“This is my first year here. In my career over the last two years, I have had this

new commercial component and that can be helpful because I have done so much

navigating. I can be that much more interesting because I can talk about all of the artists

I’ve met and exhibited with, and make the external living art world alive within

Tallahassee, which is just about nowhere. But I would say I think I might have been a

better teacher right out of graduate school than I am now today, because I can do better.

So I’m looking forward to being better.”

Summary

From the data presented above, I tried to paint a realistic picture and offer some

practical insights into the reality of teaching painting and drawing at Florida State

University. All of these four painting and drawing professors have their own teaching

philosophy, teaching methods and influences and although there are parallels between

some of these aspects, there are generally just as many differences. Their pedagogical

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rationales, instructional goals and methodologies, issues and concerns, frustrations and

rewards were obtained through qualitative data collection methods and so to offer an

analysis of the scope of this subset of the art education curriculum, in next chapter, an

interpretation based on different themes will be proposed and based upon these outcomes,

a presentation of my findings will seek to organically answer the major and supplemental

questions underpinning this examination.

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CHAPTER 6

ANALYSIS, INTERPRETATION AND CONCLUSIONS

In this chapter, a generalization and analysis of key findings that emerged from

the interviews and observations with the four faculty participants in the previous chapter

was offered. Following was a comparison of what the participants said and what they did

with what the department chair said and what was being done with the written, stated

objectives of the department. With these elements in mind, answers were provided to

both the main and supporting research questions that were derived from the data

collection process. Finally, the conclusions were presented and some implications of this

study and suggestions for the direction of further research and teaching practice were

drawn based on the synthesis of these aspects of this study.

Findings about Professor A

Professor A’s Figure Drawing class adopts the nude model and skeleton as the

major subjects, which constitutes a prefigured focus and is similar to the classical

traditions in academies both in Europe and the United States. The nude model and

skeleton were set up under the studio light and students were studying them with the

emphasis that they understand the anatomical structure and 3-dimentional volume of the

human figure.

Professor A’s several classes stressed experimentation with the new materials and

techniques, such as the use of a tree branch stick for drawing with charcoal, developing

uncontrolled effects, and employing of mixed media for drawing, such as in the example

of the use of various materials to create a piece of skeleton drawing. This is an emergent

focus which is similar to Bauhaus’ in terms of an emphasis on material experimentation.

This faculty member encourages students to develop new concepts with the mediums,

which exemplifies what Professor A said in the interview when she suggested that she

adopted Experimental Drawing as her textbook and encouraged students to have an

experience and to try new techniques.

Gesture drawing is adopted by Professor A as a method of warm-up study at the

beginning of each class. This is a popular method in drawing instruction and which is a

method that first appeared in Kimon Nicolaïdes’ book (1990), The Natural Way to Draw,

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in the early twentieth century and is still pervasive among studio instruction of American

higher education today.

Students works created in this class included only part of the body. Most of the in-

depth studies of the body are only part of the torso instead of the studies comprised of the

whole body. Because the size of the drawing boards in the classroom are common

(18x24 inches), and students use 18x24 inches drawing pad, this make it difficult to draw

the full figure, which is part of the reason for this decision. Additionally, there are 19

students in the class and it is hard for them to use larger format paper or drawing boards

since it is already quite crowded in the studio. It should be noted that this issue emerges

in the interviews with Professor A and the large class sizes and lack of ample workspace

are of concern, especially for a class that requires more room than others might.

Professor A believes that one of the most important concepts to introduce and

encourage in students is how to see. In the interview she remarked upon this vital element

in her instructional philosophy, saying, “If you can see, you can draw.” Along these

lines, in order to teach students how to see she emphasizes concepts of mass and volume

so drawings have depth, value and space. To make this better understood, during the first

two weeks, she does not allow her students to use lines; students can only put one value

next to another to create an edge. After that she introduces line, and students understand

how the two work together. In the observation, it also emerged that Professor A stresses

the value and tonal arrangement in each class. This is a manifestation of the concepts of

emphasizing mass and volume.

Professor A thinks it is important to provide a structure and objectives in teaching

so that students understand why an instructor requires or emphasizes certain concepts and

assignments. For example, during the period of observation that forms the basis of this

study, at the beginning of each class, Professor A would always begin by presenting the

objectives of the new assignment and then went on to explain them to individual students

while the whole group was drawing, thus putting them in a more personalized and

immediate context that was not simple theory or concept, but something practical and of

importance to the assignments the students were currently working on.

Over the course of the observation, it appeared that Professor A tried to work with

each student’s strength and each student’s ideas and placed great emphasis on their status

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as individuals, rather than as members of a collective class. To this end, she would offer

up different media, so if a student was not proficient at one technique, he or she might

have the opportunity to prove to be brilliant at the other. During the observation,

Professor A gave various assignments which were based on different medium and

techniques, and she gave positive feedback to individual students both at daily class and

the mid-term review, all in the context of their personal strengths and weaknesses rather

than based on a rigid grading criteria or artistic standard based on one media solely.

While still maintaining emphasis on individual talents and weaknesses, Professor

A had a tendency to urge whole group of students to learn, and often would reiterate the

key points or information over and over in different ways to help the students understand

the same material in different contexts as well as drive home the importance of certain

materials.

Professor A thinks it is critical to teach techniques, and gives the students the

drawing tools at the beginning stage of studying. PA thinks it is a mistake when a teacher,

especially in the beginning, teaches a lot about ideas, and then tries to get students to

build the conceptual without the technical knowledge as the foundation for the artistic

implementation of the ideas. To this end, Professor A would often demonstrate different

techniques herself on her students’ drawings to help them learn in this more hands-on

manner that integrated ideas and practical application simultaneously.

Another important component of Professor A’s teaching philosophy is that she

thinks the most important thing she teaches her students is to make mistakes and learn

from them. Through my observation, it appeared that Professor A did not evaluate

students’ work based merely on the finished work, but on students’ efforts, their

willingness to try new techniques, and their openness to making important discoveries.

Findings about Professor B

One unique feature that emerged in observing Professor B was his encouragement

of his students to develop their own style and to avoid painting in his style or along the

lines of other artists. In some ways like Professor A, Professor B is tries to be responsive

to what the individual student enjoys and is good at and based on each student’s level,

Professor B gives individual suggestions as opposed to group-wide comments devoid of

personalization.

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As a teacher of painting, Professor B gives students more freedom, which is also

aligned with his encouraging of personal styles to emerge. In the self-portrait assignment,

for example, Professor B told his students at the beginning, “Don’t worry about the

likeness at first” which freed them from the constraints of symbolic perfection and

allowed the personal tone to emerge and individual styles to manifest. As a result of this

style of instruction, it became clear that students responded and began to open up and not

worry about likeness, thus giving them the opportunity to try to experiment with colors

and have more confidence at the beginning of painting stage. In line with this emphasis

on freedom and, perhaps to some degree, unorthodoxy.

Professor B paints or draws on another painting or directly on the students’ work

to show them the techniques or the concepts. Through personal demonstration, professor

B provides visual clues to students and shows by example rather than lecture.

These demonstration techniques to the whole group are a main characteristic of

Professor B’s teaching style. For example, during the self portrait assignment, Professor

B demonstrated how to paint a portrait before the assignment so that students understand

how to do it before they begin, although he encourages them to take their own direction

and not paint it the exact same way he does. Professor B also demonstrates how to stretch

a canvas and varnish a finished painting through example, even though he could easily

resort to web or printed materials as the main instructional guidelines for such tasks.

Through examining the randomly selected images painting, it becomes apparent

that PB cultivates students’ creativity and non-linear thinking and asks what students are

to do with these images remains open-ended. In introduction this activity, Professor B

tells his students, “Listen to the painting. Painting tells you what’s going on.” Instead of

having a preconceived notion of what the painting should looks like, PB encourages

students to work through the painting process. Based on the images they have, students

develop ideas or techniques that are based on the notion of individual style he encourages.

Professor B teaches the class in the fashion of a mentor. He critiques each

student’s work based on his own experience and also compares student work to some

masterpieces which might give some solutions or sources of further inquiry for this

student. Professor B usually brings some books about well-known painters to show

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students how the artists depicted dealt with similar problems such as color relations,

matters of composition, or the development of ideas.

Professor B’s painting class utilizes a flexible structure; the schedule is produced

depending on the students’ paces, how far the particular class has progressed, how far the

students get in terms of the curriculum, and when they are ready to move on. He keeps

the students focused and engaged to finish one project, and then moves onto a new

assignment.

Professor B has been teaching painting and drawing 23 years and is an

experienced professor. He studied painting for four years as an undergraduate and for two

years in graduate school, where he completed numerous figure drawing and figure

painting classes. Professor B has been painting for 33 years and received a national award

for painting last year.

Professor B tries to find what the students are interested in painting in their own

minds to determine what they really want to learn. In order to figure out where their own

personal insights may be, he tries to teach the students how to be confident and an

individualist. This concept was implemented in his teaching throughout my observation

both through his use of encouragement verbally and through his other interactions on a

personal level with his students.

Professor B thinks it is important to teach the students to understand the history of

painting and why people have done it throughout history and continue to do so. In these

terms, he tries to appreciate the meaning of painting rather than just the practice alone.

With this emphasis on history and painting in a cultural and historical content, it was not

surprising to see Professor B showing books about master artists, contemporary and

classical, to individual students. With this more philosophical approach to painting,

Professor B tries to teach the students to understand the oneness of painting and the

uniqueness of what they do. In the interview that was conducted for this study, Professor

B said, particularly with painting and drawing, there is a notion that there is only the one

of something. They are not like multiple produced or computer produced things. There is

only the one of that piece of paper which that drawing is on, or one piece of canvas

(November 18, 2007).

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Professor B feels that drawing and painting are skills that have to be built over

years of thinking, of observing and learning----and it takes a long period of time,

particularly with painting where there are a lot of physical and mechanical skills to learn.

PB tries to teach students to realize the amount of time and energy that is involved in

painting with certain degree of competency and stresses that painting is an unending

process of learning to be conducted over the course of one’s lifetime rather than over the

span of a single college course or two.

Professor B thinks the skills are easy to teach and they are based on individual

choices. Based on each student’s need, he then works toward the direction dictated by his

students, a sentiment he expressed in a segment of the interview (November 18, 2007) for

this study:

I’m trying be responsive to what that student seems to be really enjoying, whether

it is really thick paint, really thin paint, loosely interpreted subject matter, really

tight realistic, … I try getting a sense for what they are really interested in

thereafter, and I work toward that direction.

PB’s method is similar to Bruce Ferguson’s (2007)“need to know” curricula.

This means that rather than a body of knowledge to be handed down by gatekeepers,

advanced schools teach students material that is in relation to the individual students’

needs. Based on the personal needs of the individual students, teachers provide specific

knowledge and skills to help students learn.

Professor B thinks that creativity is the hardest part to teach and tries to teach

students a process to becoming creative because he thinks today’s educational system is

good at teaching students memorization of facts, but lacks the ability to show students

how to invent things. Based on the students’ solid ideas, PB helps them to make that idea

different and rendered as uniquely their own, despite any influences.

Findings about Professor C

Professor C encourages students to explore new ideas and possibilities with

variable mediums which are similar to Albers’ “pedagogy of learning” (Wick, 2000).

Professor C’s role is that of a facilitator who gave heuristic suggestions based on

students’ experiments and in this way, students were encouraged in a number of ways to

take risks. For example, for the book of drawings assignment, Professor C gave the

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constraint format with unlimited possibilities. Students make a book of art with 15 pages

of drawings with their own themes or use of various particular mediums and techniques;

some students adopt cartoon style drawing, some adopt hatching techniques, some

combine computer generated images, and some adopt found-objects. Other students use

pen, some use pencil, some use watercolor or color crayon, and some combine

printmaking.

Professor C’s class hinges upon the value of critique, which is a typical

postmodern strategy of teaching and learning (Anderson & Milbrandt, 2005). Through

group and individual critiques, the students experience cultivation of their analytical and

critical thinking skills and through critique, students add or change their concepts based

on the professor’s or peers’ feedback.

Professor C has taught drawing to students at all levels. In teaching drawing,

Professor C thinks of himself as a facilitator and encourages students to explore,

experiment, and take chances. In the interview, he says: “Dare to be stupid. Egg on your

face.” This rationale was seen through my observation as he always tries to push students

take risks and jump out of their comfort zone. In short, Professor C’s objective is to

challenge his students and does so through creative and challenging assignments that are

exciting to his students.

Professor C believes that teaching drawing is a balancing act between the content,

the concept, and the techniques. He thinks that for Drawing I, it is important to have the

fundamentals, to step through the elements of art, such as line, shape, volume, color, two

dimensional and three-dimensional depth. For Drawing II, Professor C feels the objective

is more about the process of exploration.

The exercises of breathing, mind drifting, and improvising drawing in professor

C’s class are also similar to Albers’ improvisatory exercises in self-expression, exercises

in body moving, and breathing when Albers taught in Bauhaus and Black Mountain

College (Katz, 2002). I did not witness Professor C using this method during the period

of observation, but in the interview, he mentioned that he did incorporate this method.

Findings about Professor D

Professor D uses computers and the internet as teaching resources to show artists’

works to individual students. This is a another postmodern teaching strategy which is

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different from traditional and modern teaching method (Spicanovic, 2000) and

throughout the observations, the other three painting and drawing professors in this

department did not seem to adopt a similar strategy.

Professor D gives students more information on traditional painting materials and

techniques, such as the Flemish School, Rembrandt School, and Van Gogh. In order to do

this, she orders special paints and mediums which are today made only by certain

factories in Europe and the United States. This also reinforces what she said in the

interview that art is a great privilege that could be taken away if we don’t preserve it, and

it has to be the intent to keep those traditions maintained. This teaching method is derived

from the traditional academy teaching method which Professor D learned in the Florence

Academy of Art.

Despite her different approach, it should be noted that Professor D adopted

traditional painting methods in conjunction with her teaching goal, which leans more

towards a student’s needs rather than standards based on a classical tradition. She seeks

to achieve a balance in her class of a “push and pull” between maintaining what was in

the past and responding to what will be innovative in the future in terms of artistic

innovation.

Power Point presentations are presented before each new assignment by Professor

D, such as window painting, homage to Van Gogh, and night scene painting, and so on.

When Professor D shows the power point slides, the assignment becomes clear because

students see how old masters and contemporary artists have developed ways to include

the similar idea or concepts in their works and thus can hopefully offer a synthesis that

her class is trying to project with the stated push and pull format between the old masters

and the new directions art is taking.

Professor D always leads group critiques for each assignment, which assists

students in concept development-another postmodern strategy of teaching and learning as

well (Lawson, 2007). Professor D exposes students to conceptual ideas so their works

reflect a conceptual foundation. Professor D is most interested in finding out what

motivates her students and how to help them access their vision.

Professor D studied art at the Art Institute of Chicago where there was an

emphasis on installation and postmodern art. She went to Florence of Academy of Art to

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study classical realism, especially the style of French Beaux-Arts, which provides an

interesting contrast in educational background and application. Professor D is a new

professor at Florida State and has seven years of teaching experience.

Professor D tries to help the students facilitate their ability to develop a concept,

and then to have the materials and techniques they are using to reinforce the concept so

that their intent, their subject, their content, and the materials--all of the elements work

together reinforce the integrity of the project.

Professor D is most interested in finding out what motivates the students and to

help them access what their vision is. PD wants the students to have their own individual

voice, even though she believes that her students must have a very strong foundation.

This is reinforced by her requirements of students to do some assignments that

purposefully disrupt their understanding of what they have learned, so they start to have

an original voice and move beyond prior learning experiences. Despite this rigid nature of

foundational emphasis, she thinks the most important thing she teaches her students is not

to give up, as she said in the interview, “Failure is part of success.”

At the Painting I and Drawing I level, Professor D is very interested in how the

students are connected with the materials; are fighting the materials, that they are learning

to analyze and strategize for having successful composition and observing the world, and

to have the hand-eye coordination? At the Painting II and Drawing II level, Professor D is

more interested in what students have to say with the media and expects students to have

some exposure or mastery of the media, and to refine their technique. Students begin to

have ideas or concepts they are expressing, and are willing to experiment and even

experiment to the point where they fail.

Professor D is very passionate about the need for skill and mastery and is

especially dedicated to exploration of the old master’s techniques. As she mentioned in

the interview:

If you don’t maintain the knowledge base of how the masters made paintings, you

lose this knowledge. And with the death of each master painter, it was like a

library burning down because very rarely they passed on their process of their

techniques. They would just go out, and it would be a mystery and then we would

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go through a period of time when no one kept this knowledge alive. (March 6,

2008)

Professor D deems that studying the old masters’ materials and techniques is

becoming a new trend in higher education system and thinks teaching painting and

drawing in American higher education experiences a swing between a dogmatic

standardized method and a more loose, and free unstructured method. As she stated in the

interview:

I think we’ve been in the dark ages. I think it had been medieval and entirely

unstructured. So you can have the best and the worst, but there was no standard.

And the standard is coming, and it turns to old master techniques, really, in the

last ten years. Under postmodernism they disregard the structure, while even

maybe under the guise of Bauhaus. Pretty much it was under the teacher. If you

feel it, do it. You know, kinesthetic, very loose, and very free. I think that depends

on a swing the other way. We will go through a period of being much more

dogmatic. The downfall of that will have an enormous amount of mediocrity,

without the highs and lows. But it will be standardized. And then it will fall apart

again. (March 6, 2008)

Professor D also thinks that there is a tension between maintaining what was in

the past and responding to what will be innovative in the future. Along these lines,

Professor D believes that with art one have to be daring, one have to be strategize, one

have to problem solve which creates innovation and willingness of persevere, saying: “As

an educator, I may not create artists; I think I do create better thinkers.”

Generalized Synthesis of Four Faculty Participants’ Responses and Observations

All of these four professors’ teaching styles and philosophies reflect certain

aspects of the goals of the painting and drawing program, the philosophy of the art

department, and the values of the School of Visual Arts. Professor A’s teaching

reinforces both the fundamental drawing techniques and new concepts of applying

variable mediums, which is same as the chairman’s rationale of using fundamental

principles to build for undergraduate students’ innovative ways to express themselves.

Professor B’s teaching style emphasizes student’s personal insights and independent

visions through the medium of paint, which reflects one of the values of the School of

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Visual Arts. Professor C’s teaching particularly reflects one of the goals of drawing

program, which is the need to be experimental and playful, but most importantly

presented in a manner that allows the student to discover the exciting possibilities of

expression in a relatively short period of time. Professor D’s teaching style and

underlying philosophy especially reflects one of the values of the visual art school, in

which both old master’s materials and techniques and contemporary arts have been

studied. In short, all of the professors emphasize care and attention to the needs of each

student by providing individual guidance in one or more of the stated goals or values of

the Art Department. The painting classes embrace a critique-based curriculum that

stresses fundamentals, materials, conceptual and analytical process and the drawing

classes serve these same ends, albeit with a different medium and skill set. In the painting

classes, all the faculty members adopt group or individual critiques to develop students’

critical thinking. Professor B showed students how to stretch a canvas, how to varnish a

finished painting, Professor D showed students how to prepare a toned canvas, how to

painting with special old masters’ techniques. In drawing classes, Professor A and

Professor C arranged group and one-one-one critiques to get the concept cross,

meanwhile, they showed students how to achieve certain effect by manipulating variable

drawing mediums. The sum effect of this attention to detail and process has been that

students are made to feel that they are a part of the entire construction of their work rather

than “sponges” who take in instruction and provide examples of what they feel is

expected. This encourages creativity and involvement and emphasis one of the most

positive aspects of painting and drawing instruction at Florida State.

In the next section, the major and supporting research questions are answered.

The supporting research questions are addressed first.

Supporting Question One

What is the philosophy of the department and what are the goals of the painting

and drawing program in the visual arts department at Florida State University (FSU) as

represented by official documents and websites?

During the interview with the chair of the art department, when asked what the

general philosophy of the Art Department at Florida State was, he said:

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If you can think it, you can make it. That’s my own personal perception,

but the core philosophy of the department is crossing boundaries, is

interdisciplinary thinking, cross disciplinary thinking. Thinking outside of

the box. Coming up with innovative ways to express oneself. It would be

to continue asking questions, continue building on tradition, using

fundamental principles to build up for undergraduate students, so we

enhanced our foundation program a lot these past two years with a new

foundation program director that is giving our students technical and

conceptual skills they need to be successful in art and design. We are

trying to build a solid foundation of technical and conceptual information

and let them really explore a lot of ideas and a lot of different disciplines

immediately after that. (May 29, 2008)

Therefore, according to the Chair of the Art Department, the goal of painting and

drawing program is focused on cultivating studio artists with both solid skills and a talent

for creative innovation. From the art department’s website, drawing and painting at FSU

art department is described as follows:

Drawing is a fundamental skill that all artists use in varied forms, from

preliminary sketches for a painting, sculpture, installation, or animation to a small

or large-scale autonomous drawing. Drawing can be experimental and playful, but

most importantly it can allow the student to discover new and exciting

possibilities of expression in a relatively short period of time. Drawing is for

everyone. Painting embraces a critique-based curriculum that stresses a strong

background in painting fundamentals, materials, conceptual and analytical

processes needed in order to build technical proficiencies in painting. The goal of

the faculty is to develop artists with personal insights and independent visions that

can then be fully realized through the medium of paint (n. p.)

The goal of drawing at FSU is a fundamental skill for all students to explore more

possibilities in other disciplines in art, meanwhile, as an independent medium for

exploration. The goal of painting is emphasis on students’ individuality through technical

proficiencies in painting mediums.

Supporting Question Two

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What are the pedagogical rationales and methodologies of the faculty as they

represent them through interviews, documents, and in practice?

In order to most accurately represent the answer to this question, it is useful to go

through and highlight some of the most salient aspects of the methodologies, teaching

styles, and pedagogical principles each professor interviewed and observed. This will

allow for a greater sense of synthesis among the varied ideas about approaching to teach

and will permit for a more focused analysis based on the key points.

Professor A

Professor A expressed the belief in the need to provide a strong foundation of

technical and critical thinking before moving on to conceptual work, so that students have

the tools necessary for expression. However, once those tools are in place, Professor A

tries to provide critical support to students so that their ideas are developed to the fullest

extent. She considers it a mistake when an instructor, especially in the beginning, teaches

too extensively about ideas and abstract concepts, and instead, tries to encourage students

to build the conceptual aspect alongside the technical as basis. Professor A thinks it is the

most important thing to teach in drawing is how to see and adopts the motto, “if you can

see, you can draw.” To Professor A, it is critical to provide a structure, to give hallmark,

to teach the basic building blocks and rules, and to teach how to use different materials.

With all of these aspects, there can finally be a union between the two philosophies in

terms of framework and foundational requirements.

Along the lines of technical instruction of the foundations, Professor A contends

that the order in which she introduces concepts can have a significant impact on the

outcome of the class, thus she structures the class in the sense that she has a definite

ordering of conceptual principles and how (and when) she introduces them. Furthermore,

although there is some degree of structure in this sense, she considers it is important that

the students develop their own paths to a certain extent. To this end, she tries to work

with each student’s strengths and ideas and encourages her students to express

themselves freely. With this in mind, it is worth noting that Professor A herself is also

very open and communicative, thus she sets the tone and communication standard by

example and considers it.

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Professor A wants to make sure that students have an understanding of historical

precedents, cultural contexts, and theoretical dialogue relating to their individual projects

and personal interests and encourages her students to read art theory and criticism, visit

museums and galleries, and look to their own personal history, investigate fields that are

not art specific, and tap every available resource in order to gain as much knowledge as

possible. She believes that this often broadens the scope and provides source material that

is honest and often charged.

As observed in Professor A’s class, the component of discussion, critiques

(individually and in a group context) are integral to the creative process, both during and

post production. Critiques are held to allow students to explore ideas, discuss techniques,

and gauge reactions to their work. As a part of the critique process, she encourages

students to ask questions about what they do not understand, challenge that with which

they do not agree, and most of all, be open to the ideas that they hear. Although the

nature of these critiques and discussions is often critical (for better or worse) there is no

admonishment for mistakes as Professor A adheres to the principle that making mistakes

is an essential element of the learning process.

Much of what has been generalized about Professor A is in alignment with

statements made in her syllabus when Professor A describes that her goal as an educator

is to provide students with the basic knowledge and skills necessary to assist them in

developing a defined personal aesthetic by the time of their graduation. She thinks that as

part of being a good instructor, the teacher should be really familiar with what’s going on

in the contemporary world and to keep abreast of current events and changes in society

and the art that is influenced by it, she spends a lot of time reading articles, magazines,

and monographs about different artists.

Professor B

Professor B’s primary objective is to teach students how to take advantage of their

own individuality, how to allow themselves to think differently, and how to, as he puts it,

“trust the solution.” Professor B tries to respond to what the students are really interested

in, to figure out what they really want to learn and work toward that direction. Professor

B also believes that the history of the painting is very important to teach and encourages

his students to think about the reasons for painting and to consider its persistence as a

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form of expression across the centuries. In short, he thinks it is important to teach

students to understand the uniqueness of painting and drawing, and to grasp the lofty

notion that there is only the one of that piece of painting or drawing.

Professor B feels the students are used to instant gratification due to their society

and culture of computers, television--anything that serves them in terms of short term

interests and brief focus points. With drawing and painting, the skills have to be built up

over years, including thinking, observing, and learning and it is a source of frustration to

him that this is not aligned with the youth culture of his students. Unlike the other faculty

members interviewed for this study, Professor B seemed the most inclined to, rather

paradoxically, put great faith in the creativity of his students while at the same time

feeling as though they were not completely original and were not trying hard enough to

be creative or to move past that which they had learned in the past. Professor B was the

member with the most emphasis on offering students the opportunity to guide themselves

and have free expression.

Professor C

Rather than viewing himself as simply an instructor, Professor C imagines himself

more as a facilitator, or one who distributes their idea of exploring, experimenting, taking

chances, not always sitting comfortably, but being just on the edge, falling off, sometimes

jumping—all of which is embodied in his statement during an interview that students

should “dare to be stupid.” Although he places great emphasis on experimentation, for

Drawing I, Professor C expressed that it is of critical importance for students to have the

fundamental skills with concepts of line, shape, volume, color, and perspective and he,

like many of his colleagues, feels that students must step through those elements before

understanding can occur and true creativity happen. In Drawing II, he encourages

students to use those fundamental skills to explore, to experiment, and to take chances to

a greater degree. This echoes his belief that drawing is a balancing act between the

content, the concept and the technique.

Professor C thinks that teaching students to have confidence is the most important

thing in his drawing classes and allows for free exploration, an aspect that is aided by a

firm grasp on the vital foundational skills of drawing. In the drawing assignments,

Professor C likes to encourage the sense of free exploration and confident expression and

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to this end, will occasionally disrupt the routine of the class and leads students to do

breathing exercises, mind drifting, and improvising drawing under various conditions,

such as candlelight or with a background sound of classical music. Like Professor B, he

has two main focuses, the first of which is an emphasis on the necessity for students to

have the basic skills and secondly, that to be free and open to new ideas, students must be

willing to learn from mistakes and build confidence.

Professor D

Professor D tries to help the students generate a concept and to have the materials

on hand and encourage techniques to reinforce the concept so that their intent, their

subject, their content, and the materials all reinforce the integrity of the project. In short,

Professor D’s approach to her students’ work is integrative and multifaceted, as well as

more heavily based on concept than simple execution or free-flow of ideas. She likes to

expose students to conceptual ideas so that their work is about ideas as much as a

demonstration of techniques. During the observation period, it was she stated on more

than one occasion that she did not want her students’ work looking or being anything like

her own—this was one of the most emphasized objections she made and she was quick to

repeat this if she thought one student was using her ideas or techniques, although she

does rely on her own work to provide numerous examples. In general, she is most

interested in finding out what motivates the students and then to help them access what

their vision is.

Professor D believes that it is important to start representationally in Drawing I

and then representationally show students elements of design and value. In her Painting I

and Drawing I level classes, Professor D is interested in letting the students connect with

the materials and to fight with the materials in a process of exploration and

experimentation where they are permitted, if not encouraged, to fail for the sake of the

learning process. Thus, they are learning to analyze and strategize for having successful

composition sand observe the world while accepting mistakes and moving along,

strengthened due to them. At the Painting II and Drawing II level, Professor D is more

interested in what the students have to say about the media and that they have the

opportunity to explore and endure mastery of the medium. By the time they get to

Painting II, they are able to refine their technique and are really beginning to have an idea

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or concept to express or be willing to experiment. They may be willing to experiment

perhaps to the point where they fail and then they learn why it doesn’t work. They learn

how their ideas can be expressed through painting or drawing, and automatically they

will learn that painting or drawing weren’t the best media, or perhaps all of the ideas

were not the best.

Overview of Methodologies

The purpose of the following overview of core methodologies of each professor is

to look for existing parallels and to offer the reader a quick-glance perspective on some

of the most influential ideas grounding teaching methods and techniques. Following this

brief overview of their methods, a more coherent and universal picture will begin to

emerge and broad conclusive statements can be made and supported using the methods

behind this research.

Professor A’s Methodologies

● Professor A repeats herself over and over in different way. She also presents

herself loudly.

● Professor A also is accessible to the students; she attempts to close the gap

between the instructor and students.

● Professor A does student evaluations individually as one-on-one in class. This

exchange lets her know what areas are going well and which areas might need

improvement.

● Professor A tries to present the ideas to the whole class and then go around

talking to each individual student and check on his/her progress.

● Professor A asks the students to touch themselves in order to feel their body

structure and to feel the three dimensional volume.

● When students are working on shadow, Professor A asks the students to stand

up and see the drawing from a distance in order to articulate the shadow.

Professor B’s Methodologies

● Professor B draws or paints for students to demonstrate an idea, such as how to

get this shape, how to get this form, or how to get this color.

● Professor B sometimes shows videotapes to students to expose them to other

artists.

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● Professor B shows art books to students as a reference when he wants to show

student some ideas or techniques.

● Professor B gives individual advice to each student based on each student’s

personal problems.

Professor C’s Methodologies

● Professor C shows a Power Point presentation of previous students’ works as

examples before each assignment.

● Professor C encourages students to explore and to experiment within a

constraint theme, but with unlimited possibilities.

● Professor C uses topical issues in the assignments, such as important social,

political, and aesthetic issues in the context.

● Personal critiques and group critiques are the main methods Professor C adopts

in his Drawing II class.

● Professor C leads students to museums and galleries to see the exhibitions.

Professor D’s Methodologies

● Professor D uses the computer and internet to show students certain art works,

artists, galleries and museums.

● Professor D shows art books to students and she also uses Power Point

presentations to show old masters and contemporary artists’ works.

● Professor D is willing to pick up the materials and demonstrate for students, and

she demonstrates Flemish School, Rembrandt, and Van Gogh’s technique.

● Individual or group critiques are major methods to stimulate students’ ideas.

● Professor D provides a new open door policy and invites students or even

graduate students to have infinite exposure to whatever materials they want to

work with, just to provide them an environment in which to experiment.

● Professor D plans field trips to Ringling Museum in Sarasota and museums in

New York City next year to see paintings in an archived context.

To summarize, these four professors’ teaching rationales and methodologies are

all trying to build a solid foundation of technical and conceptual information of technical

and conceptual information and let the students easily explore a lot of ideas. They are

congruent with the goals of the painting and drawing program and the philosophy of the

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art department. Professor A‘s several assignments stressed the experimentation with new

mediums, such as using tree branch with charcoal to draw in order to achieve

uncontrolled effect. In another assignment, PA asked student to create a piece of skeleton

drawing by using mixed mediums to experiment with variable materials. PB

demonstrated how to paint a self-portrait, how to do it which gave students a directly

visual clue before they began to paint. PB encouraged his students to develop their own

style and to avoid painting in his style or along the lines of other artists. PC always

pushed his students to take risk, to try new ideas and new techniques. PC’s class hinged

upon the value of critiques for this the purpose of developing new concepts and ideas. PD

provided her students with both the old masters’ techniques and the contemporary artists’

websites, and her teaching emphasized “push and pull” which seeks to achieve a balance

between maintaining what was in the past and responding to what will be innovative in

the future. By simultaneously encourage free range of expression while emphasizing the

critical need for a firm grasp in the basics, all of the professors seek to offer an integrated

approach. However, as many of them note in their interviews, these goals are far too

often subverted by a lack of a quality base of foundational skills.

Supporting Question Three

What are the faculty’s issues and concerns as represented in interviews?

Professor A felt strongly that in teaching drawing, it is a little disconcerting that

advanced-level drawing students were struggling with basic concepts and techniques. She

constantly wrestles with making sure her students have a strong foundation if she is in the

beginning stage of the teaching. She teaches Drawing I and is also teaching Figure

Drawing, which is considered as an upper-level drawing course, but if she was teaching a

beginning drawing course, she would make sure that her students know their tools,

understand perspective, understand composition and form, and value and light and finds

that these issues are not being addressed in the students’ previous classes or experiences,

which changes her desires for the outcomes for her classes. In the past term, she had so

many students within the class that didn’t have the core skills necessary for her to adhere

to her curriculum. In the interview PA stated that she felt 95 percent of the class didn’t

meet her expectations regarding basic skills. Consequently, she had to go back further

than she would normally in a figure drawing class and drill students on the basics—the

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core fundamentals, including how to look at a composition, how to choose a composition,

how to lay it out, and how to develop a drawing. For Professor A, this was a challenge

and major concern with the program.

Professor B feels frustration with his students in their expectations for instant

gratification. He laments that they do not realize the amount of time and energy that is

involved in painting with certain degree of competency, as expressed in his interview:

They just don’t grasp the amount of the focus that it takes. Because to think about

it and just take to somewhere … they think they have a vision in their head, and if

it doesn’t become that vision, they feel like they failed instead of listening to what

the image was evolving into and going with that. They tend to be a little

frustrated. (November 18, 2007)

Varying from student-based issues, Professor C took most issue with the physical

space, stating that the studio space is the most pressing issue been countered in teaching

drawing. He feels that the institution and the art department are always financially

distracted. For instance, Professor C wants to install an innovative and useful type of

lighting called floating lights, however, the ceiling is so tall, no one is sure how to do it,

and so the classes don’t have the necessary light source. This lack of lighting is a

complication in figure drawing.

For professor C, issues surrounding a proper studio environment are very

important. The other issue in drawing is the lack of a strong foundation from the students.

If students go onto interior design, sculpture, graphic design, video production, painting,

or drawing, then they should have had the fundamentals that are so important but these

are lacking and cannot always be addressed in the advanced classes.

Professor D thinks that students take art for granted and don’t understand what

they have inherited, what their mission and potential is, and how art can expose people to

new ideas or change people’s lives. He wants his students to understand how powerful art

is and how many different ways one can be creative. Professor D is interested in

biography and teaching the context in which art was created because so many things were

done in the same context but she also feels the previous structure of the program is failing

and the students have a weak foundation. They didn’t meet her expectations for their age

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level, a sentiment that is echoed, sometimes directly, other times indirectly, by her

colleagues.

All of these issues and concerns represented in the interview were also mentioned

in the interview of department chair, Joe Sanders. The enhancement of the new

foundation program during the past two years is aimed at giving the students the technical

and conceptual skills they need while implementing a sequential curriculum to build

towards greater professional development. With budgets cut in the state of Florida,

historically, art programs were the first to be eliminated, however, the chair is optimistic

about the direction the department is going in and believes that art is the most important

thing to keep because visual arts builds in students the skills they need to become free,

open-minded thinkers, technical learners, visual learners, and creative problem solvers.

Art gives many, many different strengths and skills. Art also gives appreciation for

cultural history and heritage. Part of the role of the Art Department is not necessarily

always just to create professional artists, but to create people who are appreciators, who

have an experience in art, who support art, continue to support art in our community. It is

a much broader issue than just creating artists. With the issues and problems discussed by

the professors, however, it appears there is a gap between projections that are optimistic

and the current reality of a divide in student expectations and the possession of an

adequate studio environment.

Supporting Question Four

What are the faculty’s influences as they present them?

All of the professors were influenced by their teachers from their undergraduate

or graduate school careers, their friends, and/or contemporary art movements or artists.

Professor A was influenced by installationist Ann Hamilton by the way she works

with materials conceptually. In her undergraduate education, Professor A was influenced

by Mark Majesky, her painting teacher who pushed her to go into art; and in graduate

school her teacher, Funs Facter, who gave her a steady influence by asking her a lot of

hard questions.

Professor B was influenced by his first painting teacher in his community college

by his magic way of demonstrating how to paint a lantern. He was also influenced by his

teacher in the last two years in undergraduate school who taught him how to appreciate a

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great painting. In his graduate school career, Professor B learned from his professors

what it takes to be a professional artist.

Professor C was influenced by his painting teacher TD Fairs at the Memphis

College of Art through talking and exchanging ideas about social and political issues. He

was also influenced by Ed Love who taught him “teaching is coming from your heart”.

Situationists and Dadaists also influenced his teaching in the sense of experimental

quality.

Professor D was influenced by Julie Heffernan, who was doing old master

painting techniques. PD learned from everyone including her ex-husband, a conservator.

PD was influenced by old masters, such as, Holbein, Vermeer, and Mumbling. Daniel

Grave from Florence Academy of Art, and Hilton from University of Delaware are two

teachers who influenced her.

All of these influences are reflected in their individual teaching styles and

foundational philosophies. For example, based on their experiences with mentors, both as

students (at the undergraduate and graduate level) as well as with professional artist past

and present, Professor A encourages her students to work with materials conceptually;

Professor B leads his students to listen to the painting since painting tells what’s going

on; Professor C cultivates his student to dare to be stupid, to experiment; Professor D

valued the study of old master’s materials and techniques. While each of the professors

discussed in this research brings a host of vastly different perspectives and influences to

his or her classroom, one salient point remains; all of these professors were greatly

influenced early on in their careers as students, many of them by faculty members. This is

of incredible importance because it demonstrates that, in line with Florida State

University’s mission to create practicing artists for both the world of studio and

educational art, university faculty have the possibility to help students create their

careers. Far from being seen as mere teachers or instructors, all of the professors

interviewed have backgrounds where they felt strongly connected to a teacher or mentor,

which means that in turn, they all realize the true value of having such a relationship with

their students. In other words, with each of these professor’s commitment to helping their

students find their own unique voice while also taking care to guide them without

emphasis on what is right or wrong per se, these professors are using their experiences

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with positive influences in their own classroom. It would appear then, that the value of

these professors in having mentors at the undergraduate level might have an impact on

how they seek to connect, even on a personal level (as some of the professors cited here

say they do try to do) with their pupils and form a relationship that extends the mere

didactic.

Supporting Question Five

What is the extent of agreement or disagreement across the faculty regarding the

teaching of painting and drawing courses required of all undergraduate art majors as

presented in practice and through interviews?

All of the professors agreed that it is important to teach the foundational

techniques and skills first at beginning level of drawing and painting and then to move to

conceptual exploration or experimentation at the advanced level. In addition to this more

structured point of agreement, all of the professors encourage students to develop their

own individual styles and all of them combined traditional, modern and postmodern

teaching methods. Furthermore, far from being a traditional correctness-based approach,

all of the professors in his study actively encourage students to take risks, make mistakes

and learn from the mistakes, considering the process to be essential to learning and

working toward the ultimate goal of confidence-building and the student’s own unique

voice.

Regarding teaching skills, techniques, and creativity, Professor A thinks that it is

critical to teach techniques and give the students the tools and foundational ideas in the

beginning; to initially teach them the rules, and teach them how to use different materials,

thinking that creativity is inherent in the task, and the act of making is very creative all on

its own. Professor B thinks the skills are easy to teach, but that students just need to be

exposed to the skills and can then absorb the skill sets quickly. He also thinks techniques

are individual choices based on individual student’s needs and he attempts to help

students learn certain techniques based on these principles. Professor B feels creativity is

the hardest part to teach because today’s educational system is only good at training

students to memorize information instead of inventing new concepts.

Professor C thinks skills, techniques and creativity overlap. Professor C thinks it

is important to have a good foundation in Drawing I and in Drawing II and to encourage

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students to take chances with those skills. Professor D is very passionate about old

masters’ materials and techniques and she believes that there is a tension between

maintaining what was in the past and responding to what will be innovative in the future.

She believes art does create better thinkers.

In terms of concepts and ideas, Professor A thinks it is very important to allow

students’ ideas to have some presence in the work as soon as they start to express

themselves. Professor B tries to cultivate students’ creative thinking and individual ideas.

Professor C thinks of himself as a facilitator and that he should facilitate the whole idea

of exploring, experimenting, and taking chances. Professor D likes to expose students to

conceptual ideas so their works are about ideas.

In terms of the relationship of drawing and painting, Professor A thinks drawing

is central to the ability to paint. Drawing helps a student understand how to build the

composition, know and how forms relate to each other, the scale, proportion and energy.

Even the way you make marks directly affects the way you paint, the way you hold the

brush, and the way you move on the canvas. Professor B thinks drawing and painting in a

way are so well related, in a way they are well apart. Professor B thinks painting has a lot

more in common with sculpture, such as the ideas of adding things, layering things,

building of surfaces. Professor C thinks historically drawing and painting are related to

each other, while some painters think drawing is a way to get to their painting or as a

preliminary study for their paintings. Professor C thinks drawing could be something that

simple stands on its own. Drawing helps him relax more, it is so instantaneous.

Professor D thinks drawing and painting are interconnected and they have a wonderful

dialogue. Drawing provides structure for painting.

In terms of her view about the relation of drawing and painting with other

disciplines in visual arts, Professor A feels that drawing is a strong foundation for

everyone and it is a quick way to illustrate ideas before you spend a lot of time making

them and that painting is fairly separate. Professor C thinks drawing and painting can be

interchangeable with other disciplines, and it’s so broad and is more interwoven together

today. Professor D suggests that exposure to other media is great, but at some point

students have to specialize; to become an expert.

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The discussion about textbooks provided some points of difference among the

instructors. Professor A and Professor C do not require their student to buy a textbook but

do bring in books to show to their students as the situations warrant. Professor B feels

there are no “cookbooks” for painting and he doesn’t require his student to buy any

textbooks and also shows different art books to students. Professor D would like her

students have Pix Moore’s painting book because it is short and concise, and she would

like to have a library close to the studio for students accessing the books they need.

Aside from the textbook variances, there are also some differences, although

many more similarities in terms of the grading structures preferred by each participant.

Professor A has the most concrete grading criteria of any of professors and gives a two-

part grade: one part is purely technical and another is on the effectiveness, such as

participation involved in critique and working hard. The final grade is an average of the

two. Professor B’s grading of students’ works depends on where they started and to

where they evolved, how much information they are willing to absorb, and how they

synthesize the information they gathered throughout the course of the class. Professor C

grades according to the student's attention to the drawing assignment's context. In other

words, the students understand the limitations of the assignment and within those

limitations produce a fantastic drawing. That results in a "fantastic grade." However, if

the student for instance does not pay attention to the limitations of the assignment, the

grade suffers accordingly. Critique participation is an integral part of the final

assignment grade too. Professor D is interested in having clear expectations and

outcomes and students must fulfill certain requirements and feels that students can self-

evaluate how they achieved the assignment; as Professor D puts it, he tries to “water the

flowers, not the rocks.”

The interviews were one of the most revealing components of the research used

for this study as they offered clear, irrefutable verbal evidence as to what each of the

subjects considered to the most important and, for that matter, the most problematic.

What emerged in the course of these interviews was the fact that each of these professors

is quite like the other in terms of the foundational aspects of teaching art at the university

level and additionally, all of the professors believe that students at the levels they teach

are equally as capable of expressing amazing creativity and originality while at the same

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time being beholden to traditional ideas and a lack of technical skill to truly express their

concepts. In fact, all of these professors were in agreement with the fact that there is a

lack of technical foundation in their students and throughout the course of the interviews,

there was a definite sense of frustration among the faculty that they were not able to fully

realize their teaching objectives due to these performance and standards-based shortfalls.

Another component of the interview portion that was revealing was the amount of

emphasis placed on traditional modes of teaching art though classical works by masters

(as opposed to relying more on the personal creativity of students to guide the direction

of the class). While all there was some degree of agreement in terms of the necessity for

students to understand art from a historical and broader conceptual level (in terms of its

status as one of the branches of the humanities extending as far back as recorded time)

only a couple of the professors truly emphasized this historical aspect to a great degree.

The other professors, while not at all disparaging about introducing formal historical

topics as the context of classroom discussion and projects, were more inclined to allow

the students to aid in directing the content of the class. This lessened emphasis on

traditionalism or formality leads to a lessened use of textbooks and a greater emphasis on

actual practice and even, for some of the professors, technology in the form of websites,

for example.

Answers to the Major Research Question

What is the character of the painting and drawing program at Florida State

University? In particular, what are the goals, strategies, and outcomes envisioned for

undergraduate student learning as articulated and modeled by the permanent faculty?

The painting and drawing program at Florida State University is the largest

discipline area in the art department with five faculty members. It as a primary focus on

developing studio artists or future graduate students. Drawing is considered an essential

skill for each student, and it functions both as the basic skill for any other medium in

visual arts such as preliminary sketch for painting, sculpture, installation, and as a

independent medium for experimentation. Painting starts with the fundamentals, the

materials and techniques; meanwhile, it stresses critique-based, conceptual, and analytical

learning process.

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The painting and drawing classes at the art department of Florida State University

are based on individual assignments. Within each assignment, foundation information

was introduced about technical procedures, historical and contemporary references,

aesthetic concepts, and creative process for the students to create their own works in the

studio environment. Meanwhile, the whole class was engaged in group critiques to

discuss their own and others’ work and to receive the professor’s feedback. By viewing

examples of previous students or other artists, by watching the professors’ demonstration

techniques, by talking with professor and peer students, and through individual hands-on

practice, students learn how to create drawings and paintings. Traditional academism,

modernism, and postmodernism teaching methodologies coexist side-by-side in the art

department. The technical proficiency of the traditional academy, the individual

creativity of modernism, and the critical method of postmodernism (Anderson &

Milbrandt, 2005) are combined together in teaching and learning by the faculties.

The professors work from skills level to concept level. All of these four professors

agree that, for undergraduate students, having a solid foundation is very important at the

beginning level of drawing and painting study. After students mastered the basic tools

and techniques, the teacher might emphasize more ideas and concepts into teaching and

learning. This supports one of the goals of the philosophy of the art department-using

fundamental principles to build up for undergraduate students, giving students technical

and conceptual skills they need to be successful in art and design.

Group critique and individual critique are primary feedback strategies employed

for studio teaching and learning by the professor in the art department at FSU. Through

critiques, students can exchange ideas and receive feedback both from the instructor and

the peer group, and it helps them to rethink their own works. All of these four professors

apply this method in their teaching. This supports one of the core philosophies of the art

department the chairman mentioned: “If you can think of it, you can make it. Think

outside of the box and coming up with innovative ways to express oneself. Giving

Students the technical and conceptual skills they need to be successful in art and design.”

Another type of instructional feedback is demonstrating how to do something. It helps

students understand the procedure of art making. For examples, Professor A demonstrates

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how to use hatching techniques to create 3D volume, Professor B demonstrates how to

paint a self-portrait, and Professor D demonstrates how to prepare a toned canvas.

The professors engage in theme-based instruction, which can stimulate students to

do research on a concept or an issue, and students can better understand their objectives

for different assignments. Furthermore, it allows students to be creative while still

adhering to the structure of the class and the desired objectives, especially if their class is

a bit more open-ended in terms of content.

Across the interviews and observations, it emerged that the professors’ teaching

styles and methods are based on the students’ lives and needs. Professors always

considered the students’ lives when they started to design the curriculum. All of these

four professors design their assignment based on students’ interests and choices. This

supports one of the values of the School of Visual Arts: emphasize care and attention to

the needs of each student by providing individual guidance (n. p.).

Experimentation is an effective means for cultivating creativity in art learning. All

of these four professors encourage their students to experiment with both the materials

and new concepts. With that said, study of old master’s materials and techniques is a new

trend since it was faded away from the curriculum during the past 80 years. In particular,

Professor D values the importance of studying old master’s materials and techniques.

These support one value of the School of Visual Arts: respect the full range of the arts

and scholarship, from old to new and from mainstream to highly innovative (n. p.).

Power Point presentations are an effective way to show student the examples

either from a previous class or other artists’ works. Professor C and D adopt this strategy

in their teaching. Other technological innovations have made their way into the

classrooms of these art instructions, most notably the internet and the host of resources it

can provide. Internet is the fastest media to acquire information and visual images in a

postmodern technology society. From Professor D’s teaching standpoint, this method is a

very convenient mean to show students the visual images. These support one of the

values of the School of Visual Arts: Put students at the forefront of all efforts and prepare

them for successful academic and professional careers (n. p.).

In sum, the most important aspect that was granted attention was the need for the

instruction of drawing and painting at Florida State University to be in synch with the

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expectations of the instructors. In order for all of the subjects of this study to realize their

goals as educators, a greater emphasis on the development of technical skills is deemed

necessary. Far too many of the problems encountered by the faculty interviewed for this

study revolved around a lack of general skills to serve as a jumping-off point for greater

levels of creative exploration—thus making this one of the most fundamentally disruptive

issues these faculty members face. While all of them use slightly different methods to

encourage creativity (some with emphasis on free exploration, others with a slightly more

formal approach with specific assignments and a more exhaustive grading rubric) these

methods are complicated by a perceived lack of foundational skills in their students. The

suggestion can thus be made, based on this research,that Florida State’s program can be

characterized by emphasis on finding one’s creative self and artistic identity, but that

relies on the students’ prior grounding of certain essential skills in order to best succeed

and benefit from the program.

Conclusions

The painting and drawing program at Florida State University is in its transition

from a more loose and free structured program to a structured interdisciplinary

comprehensive program. The faculty members who teach painting and drawing courses

all graduated from top schools and received their terminal degrees, the Master of Fine

Arts Degree (MFA), with different training backgrounds. Their teaching philosophies and

methodologies were influenced both by their previous teachers and contemporary

movements and artists. They all attempt to implement their personal teaching rationales,

methodologies compatible with the departmental goals and college’s values.

The research findings suggest that there are four major issues in teaching drawing

and painting which are addressed both by the faculty members and the drawing and

painting program in art department at Florida State University. First, building a solid

foundation for the beginning level students which refers to the fundamental skills and

techniques in drawing and painting. Second is the development of individual student’s

concepts and ideas through critical thinking. Third is the encouragement of innovation

and creativity. Fourth is studying both traditional and contemporary arts.

In the process of teaching, all of the faculty members emphasize the solid

foundation for the student at the beginning level, and from the basic to advance level.

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Through demonstration, power point presentation, the basic technical knowledge is

introduced by the professors; through hands-on practice, students master the skills and

techniques and achieve proficiency.

Individual student’s ideas and concepts are valued by the faculty members.

Students’ interest becomes the most important objective in teaching and learning.

Individual student’s progresses are stressed through individual and group critiques.

Individual style is cultivated by the professors.

Creativity and innovation are encouraged by the faculty members.

Experimentation with new materials and techniques are encouraged by all the faculty

members. Through group critiques and one-on-one individual critique, critical thinking is

placed as one of the most important components in teaching and learning.

Studying both old masters’ materials and techniques and contemporary artists are

valued by the faculty members. Through Power Point presentation and internet, showing

art books and magazines or video tapes, visiting to museums and galleries, both

traditional and contemporary artists’ works are presented to students.

A general conclusion based on the cited interviews and observations of the

professors who took part in this study reveals several positive aspects of the drawing and

painting program at Florida State University in the sense that the ideologies that support

the teaching methodologies and practices are in clear alignment with the stated goals of

the Art Department at FSU. Despite some fluctuations in terms of the actual methods

used to present, analyze, and critique material produced by students, there is almost a

sense of unanimous agreement that the goals stated as core principles by the Department

of Art are correct and acceptable. The following are seen as the most salient aspects of

the Department of Art with all of the material and resources considered: 1) Foundational

skills development. 2) An emphasis on personal creativity versus rigorous adherence to

particular artistic styles, practices, or ideologies. 3) Direction of courses are more based

on the students as opposed to a rigid lesson plan on the part of the professor; thus further

emphasizing creativity while at the time leaving the course(s) open to further areas of

exploration. 4) A stated goal of allowing students to mistakes in order to best teach them

through example and 5) A diverse integration of elements of art history and new

technology (as opposed to textbooks) to teach conceptual ideas.

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What has emerged from this picture is a coherent and stable department view that

is in alignment with its purposes, albeit plagued by a couple of particularly persistent

problems. Despite the union between the ideal and practical teaching, there are a few

notable problems that should be addressed by current and future faculty as well as

departmental heads. Interestingly, these problems are not difficult to solve and frankly,

the responsibility and future accountability for the correction of these issues is

department-wise and might result in a shift in the statement of purpose or mission

declaration on the part of the Department of Art. These two weak areas include a lack of

full preparation on the part of the student body for the foundational skills/techniques and

a lack of updated and/or adequate studio space for faculty to best practice.

Connections and Implications for Teaching Practice and Further Research

These findings do reflect the major trends I generalized in chapter two of the

historical salient literature review that suggests that teaching painting and drawing in

American higher education experience a swing between structured dogmatic method and

a loose, freely unstructured method.

These findings also testify to the contention I presented in chapter two that in

today’s university art department, traditional academism, modernism, and postmodernism

typically exist side-by-side. The technical proficiency of the traditional academy, the

individual creativity of modernism, and the critical method of postmodernism are

combined together in teaching and learning by the faculties in art department at Florida

State University.

From this case study, implications for researching teaching practice in higher

education in United States emerge. I present select questions which might be considered

as research topics for future study:

1. What is the role that a foundation program plays in the teaching and learning at a

college art department studio?

2. What is the role of studying old master’s materials and techniques in teaching

painting and drawing in a contemporary studio classroom?

3. What are the methods and techniques adopted by college instructors for

cultivating students’ creativity in studio art learning?

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4. What is the relationship between drawing and painting in contemporary college

studio teaching?

5. How do instructors adopt technology such as computers and the internet as a new

teaching resource in studio art instruction?

6. How do professors apply group critique and individual critique as primary

teaching strategies in studio teaching and learning to cultivate students’ critical

thinking?

7. How do college instructors adopt themes in instruction in studio art teaching?

8. How do the professors design their curriculum relate to students’ actual lives and

needs?

9. How does the funding and facility affect the studio art teaching?

This study is focused only on one case, the teaching phenomena of one academic

program in a national research university in the United State. For future study, some other

painting and drawing programs within other type of institutes in the United States could

be included. For example, a private university, (Yale University’s Art School, or

Stanford University), a professional art college, (Savanna College of Art, Massachusetts

College of Arts, Memphis College of Art), or a liberal arts college (such as Smith

College, Hendrix College) to offer a broader range of practices, philosophies, and sets of

core values.

I also plan to conduct similar research in China in the context of teaching drawing

and painting in the national research universities (Qing Hua University, Nan Kai

University, Ren Men University), or professional art colleges, (Central Fine Arts

Academy, or China Fine Arts Academy). Aside from this, a cross-cultural comparative

study of teaching painting and drawing in higher education between China and the U.S.A

could be investigated to see what parallels and differences emerge and if they are

culturally based or rather influenced by disconnected artistic traditions.

Future research also could describe various aspects of teaching and learning, such

as student learning, teacher and student interaction, and peer study would help in-depth

qualitative research in this area as well. In this study, interviewing and field notes were

used as the primary and secondary research tools. The use of student artworks as a

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research tool in interpreting teacher’s instructional rationale can be a rewarding area for

further research.

Finally, as an art educator myself, I would implement some of the teaching

rationales and methodologies acquired from this study into my own teaching practice.

The methods these four faculty members used for cultivating student’s individuality and

creativity, the group and one-on-one critiques for cultivating students’ critical thinking,

and the new technologies, such as adopting computer and internet, as new resources for

teaching and learning, or theme-based assignments will provide new inspiration for my

own teaching. One of the most valuable insights this research has lent to my future

practice is a firmer understanding of some of the challenges that lay ahead, particularly

when I find that there is a lack of foundational skills or openness to exploring new ideas.

I have seen through both my firsthand observation and through the in-depth interviews

that these sources of frustration, while difficult to overcome, can be managed if an

instructor is aware of these issues and can plan a curriculum that is based on these

weaknesses. Nonetheless, it will be essential to stress in my own classes, as well as to

other instructors who emphasize basic skills, that we cannot expect students to reach their

creative potential if they are not given the appropriate tools in the beginning.

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APPENDIX A

FIELD NOTES FROM THE PILOT STUDY

Observation Two Professors Teach Painting at FSU

Professor A: Color Theory Course

Observation 1

8/27/03 3:35-5:05

Location: ATL 01

I arrive in the art class at about 3:00 P.M. The class starts at 3:35. The studio

classroom was an old church before. Also because the ceiling is a triangle shape, the students call it “the church house.” Inside the front door, on both sides, there are two offices for two faculty members. Behind these offices is the studio. In the studio there are four wooded shelves which were located at the left side of the wall used for storing student’s artwork. On the right side wall there are four metal cabinets for the TA or instructors store art supplies. There are also three large metal cabinets filled with still lifes and various light bulbs. In the center of the studio, there are many easels chairs, small cabinets for setting art supplies, a couch.

Professor A is preparing for the class. He sets up several easels and put several portable lamps (one green, one yellow, one red, one blue, two transparent and a bold bulb) on three metal easels. Between each easel there is equal distance and the easels are laid out in front of a white wooden board on which a square piece of red paper was hanging.

There are 22 students in this class and an observer from France. One student arrives late.

Professor A begins his lecture: “We spent all our life observing colors. Before age 2, we began to recognize colors. The red board on the wall looks like red. It’s ‘red’ in your head. It may not the same red actually. It’s additive or subtractive color.”

“In landscape, artists add relative values and colors in it. Color multiplies each other.”

“How do you paint? We do use light a lot.” Professor A calls rolled and the students’ names. One student is absent. Then he

introduces the required textbooks and supplies. “An adjustable color wheel which you can order from Reaver Fine Art Supplies

store is also the main textbook.” “Josef Albers’ Interaction of color (the brief version, the real book cost $200) is

one of the recommended readings.” Professor A shows the book to the group and mentions, “The same color on different backgrounds looks different.”

On the cover paper of this book, there is a color picture which illustrates a basic color effect. The same yellow ocher was juxtaposed on two different backgrounds, a light blue and an orange background so that the same yellow ocher looks quite different. The former looks warmer and brighter, the latter looks darker in value.

“Another book is the elements of color written by Johannes Itten, the famous German Bauhaus color instructor who was Josef Albers’s teacher. He published an international series books on color theory. This book was printed well and very clean. Color defining each other, interacting each other.”

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“Any problem and questions?” Professor A then turns off the light in the classroom and begins his lecture. He

turns on the full light bulb on the easel. “See the red square, it is a little pink. It’s 100 watt.” Then he turns off the full light bulb and turns on the bold bulb yellow. “Not much yellow?” Then he changes another bulb, “this one should be normal.” It’s a yellow day light bulb. “It hurts.”

“See color light hit the red square reflect back to our eyes. See things differently. Let’s play.”

“The red spectrum is long wave. Put red on red reinforces of the paper you get double. The light gets more powerful red.” Then he turn on the full spectrum bulb, “Artists do that a lot.”

“What will happen, shut down the red, turn on the green. Now we get the gallery light. It neutralizes. The red is not very much. The red paper absorbs the green. They are complementary colors. We like opposites. In terms of light it absorbs and reflects. ”

Then he turns on the blue bulb, “I got it from Home Deposit. It’s not the real blue one. It’s glowing is weak.” Then he turns on the yellow one, “It’s pretty good. Warm.”

“In full spectrum under the sun, color will be more complex when light is good. I suggest my students take their slides in the open shadow under the sunlight. Few of them were over tone.”

“What you should do for your home studio is get a good light source. You only spent 15-20 dollars for a light to work under it. It’s soft and nice.”

“Morning is more blue. Evening is yellow, orange, and red. The sunlight never looks the same. It refreshes your eyes.”

Then he shows a new brand white large standing lamp which he just got. “It’s $170. It’s cold, soft and nice. Light always looks blue.”

Students ask questions: “What’s about the north light in the studio? What’s about the south light?” Ray answers: “The north light warms up your studio. The south light cools down your studio light.”

Then he introduces the GE fricen light. “Not really rich, but it’s ok, still good quality.”

Then he turns on two white long tube lights, “It’s your typical garden light. It’s cold. It’s little harsh cold and that’s my opinion of it.”

He gives the assignment for next week. “Play with variable light in your own studio so that make your home light

situation better.” Additive color: “I’m adding yellow, blue, red and green.” Professor A begins to

turn on yellow, blue, red and green bulb and all of them are hit the same place on the white board. “Too green.” He adjusts the green light.

“Let’s go to a test. I use four colors. Try all the colors in the center and make white.” One the white board, now, there appears a white area in the center around which are the four colors.

Then Professor A asks one student to put her hands in front of the light and says: “Look at the shadow!” Now, the shadow appears blue, yellow, red, and green.

“Here is one of my favorite painter, Wayne Thiebaud’s. He is a pop artist. The New Yorker magzine’s cover shows one of his painting ‘Ice Cream Man’. Look at the

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shadow he painted. Now you begin to understand how he did it.” Students pass around the magazine.

Then professor A begins to introduce the art materials to students. First, he shows the paint. He uses same four colors of paints: “the more you mix it, the grayer it is.” He shows students his color palette. Yellow, red, blue and green mix together, you get a brownish color instead of white. It’s called subtractive mixing.”

“I buy large tubes, such as, cadmium yellow light, cadmium red light, cobalt blue, and emerald green. You can buy Raw Sienna or mix your own brown from these four colors. I make my colors in jars, and I put a number on it. Such as this one, number 12. Why? Because it’s the same color of number a 12 color pencil.”

“It’s usually a little dark from the tube. When I paint the leaves, I don’t use green directly. Use blue and yellow to mix your green.”

“You need a color palette. Don’t buy the expensive one, just use a piece of wood board, and sand it smoothly. You also need a palette knife, rag, and water container. I like the big drink cup from McDonalds.”

“Brushes. Three of them, flat, round and fan brush. I like big brushes. They are still stiff. Look at the cheap one, how thin it is.”

On a table, he shows all of these painting materials. After class, many students continue to look the materials and ask questions. Comments (Interpretation): 1) Additive and subtractive colors. They are the main concepts introduced in the class. 2) Color wheel is as the main textbook. 3) Josef Albers’s book Interaction of Color. Josef Albers was a former German Bauhaus art schools’ student and teacher. After the dissolution of the Berlin Bauhaus in 1933, Albers was the first of its artists to emigrate to the United States. He taught art at Black Mountain College in North Carolina. In 1950, he became a professor at Yale University. He was an color expert in color theory field. 4) Johannes Itten’s book The Elements of Color. Johannes Itten, former Bauhaus’ instructor, who taught color theory class based on seven contrasting pairs: the contrasts of color-in-itself, of light and dark, of cold and warm, the contrast between complementaries, simultaneous contrast, and qualitative and quantitative contrast, and subjective color values. Itten was influenced by his teacher Holzel. Holzel was influenced by Goethe’s Farbenlehre. Itten developed a teaching method which released completely new creative potentialities in the student. 5) German Bauhaus was the most important art school in the Nineteenth century. The teaching method of Bauhaus was adopted by many American art schools. In 1913, the Armory show in New York was also the watershed of traditional and modern American art. 6) Home studio light source. In the West, the light source was studied as science since the Renaissance. The knowledge of light was the key thrust in Western art through art training. Many artists have their own studio light sources. 7) Wayne Thiebaud’s painting was mentioned by Professor Ray several times in class. 8) Demonstration color mixing. Teacher’s demonstration is very important for college students in studio art. Throughout the demonstration, the professor shows the whole process of color mixing.

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Professor A: Observation 2

3:05-5:05 P.M. 09/3/03

Location: ATL 01

Light level

Professor A carries a couple of art books into the classroom quietly.

First, he takes students’ attendance. He calls each student’s name and the students raise their hands, then he writes down their names on a piece of paper. There are 17 students in the classroom.

Professor A begins his lecture: “I brought some books, Wayne Thiebaud works with light. I decide to use the book, rather than slide. Some artists work on low level light.” “Some news was reported. A man was blind for 40 years. They did some surgery on his eyes and he got his sight back. He could see a lot of things, face, body, etc. He had to learn to see again.” “In the science world, scientists discovered that eyes could be trained. If a part of the brain was damaged, and couldn’t recognize things, through training, you can learn to see again.” “Life magazine, they gave a subject a pair of glasses, asked him look upside down.” “Training your eye what to see. It’s not simple. It does not happen overnight.” “There is a really limit of our eye. When we look things, we focus the center image. Everything out of the center is blurred. Limits to our eye and focal point of our eye.” “When drawing out of focus, somebody would say there is no edge.” “You can do it in your mind. We see with our mind.” “Let me talk about light level. Your eyes are extremely sensitive to light and dark. In the morning, 6 clock, really dark. You need to find your socks in the closet. You can see different objects, but you couldn’t see colors. You pick out two socks and go to school. One is blue and one is green.” “Make sure have enough light. Standard light will work. Turn on the light one direction directly. You got more light, value, and variable shadows.” “High level light. Go outside, you couldn’t look at the sun. It damages your eyes. Too much.” “When you try to photography your art, you took it under the sun light. It’s hard to work under there. Light is real dirty. It bounces everywhere.” “We always seek normal light. Make sure is not too much, not too little. A lot of artists have light level.” Then, he showed students a book titled “Color, Light, Sight and Science”. “You see with your body not with your eye.” “You can walk out with your eye close, but you still can see the light.” “Little spots. Sensitive. Frog can’t see around. Horse can’t see ahead only on the sides.” “Reflection of the light. Simplified light.” One student was late. “Black is not complete. Nothing is for sure, but we just try our best.” Professor A begins to introduce several famous artists who worked with different light levels: “Wayne Thiebaud studied theatre lighting before he painted. Look at the spiky shadow.”

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Professor A shows one of Wayne Thiebaud’s book and points to a still life of a bowl of cherries. “When I was a student in California, he was teaching at Sacramento, the capital city. He is one of my favorite. He painted still lifes, such as lipstick. He is popular in California.” Then professor A shows Wayne Thiebaud’s figure painting, and landscape painting, “ Some of his landscape paintings were painted in San Francisco. I’m a California painter.” “Up and down hills. Car chase. Road is so stiff. Interesting guy. See this painting, Pies and cakes. He used really thick paint. Make you hungry.” “There are very few artists work on low light levels night scene.” “Fredric Remington. I love this guy. Very interesting guy. Really western life scene. He lived from 1869-1909. Look at the color of night. In this book there are 70 paintings that are all of night scenes. The old stage coach. Low light blues and greens. Winter snows, whole book of color on night. He painted at night. A lot of his paintings were really sad.” “David Caspar was born in 1819. ‘Boston Harbor’ was painted in 1850. This painting was in an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum in New York in 2001. Ships in low light. He was one of the Hudson school painters.” “Another Boston artist, John Stobart, who was born in 1800. He did research of old pictures. In 1825, He painted the Fennel Hall, we can see the water filled under the hall.” Professor A shows another book to his students, which is the American Maritime painting of John Stabart.” “Friedric was called moon watcher. He traveled to a lot of this space.” “Good work does take more time. Working with do not fight with.” “Color and vision come together.” After the lecture, professor A sets up two tables and students begin to work on their assignments. “First assignment. Draw a diagram of your home studio. Show me the light feature. Where is the window, where is your table, where do you work. You can do a perspective drawing and show me your studio situation.” “An 8” x 11” sheet will be fine. It’s really no big deal.” One student raises her hand and said: “I lived in a dormitory and I have no space to work.” “You could show me your table where you do your home work.” Professor A answered. “Second assignment. All color is relative. Color is a hue. Value is light and dark.” “Color effect can be changed by background.” Professor A shows a picture where one small size red square is juxtaposed to a white background. On another picture where one small size of a red square is juxtaposed on a black background. The former looks darker and the latter looks lighter in value. “Surround a color, primary color, green and red, orange and blue can be changed by background. Make this color change. Take a little square, put it on a different background. You choose your background. The value differs. They change the color, even balance the value. A little bit of value change. That’s your assignment.” “No fixed color. It varies with different situations. Use your color paper. Be logical about it.” Students begin to work on their assignments. Comments (Interpretation):

1) Professor A first takes attendance.

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2) He introduces recent scientific research on eye and sight. 3) In this class Professor A teaches color theory which focuses on variable light

level, from high level light to low level light. 4) He introduced four artists: Wayne Thiebaud, Fredric Remington, David Casper,

and John Stobart, who painted under different light levels, morning, dawn, night, etc.

5) Finally, he assigns two homework assignments. The first assignment is to draw a diagram of the student’s own studio light feature. The second one emphasizes color relationship. Same color on different backgrounds looks quite different in value.

Professor A: Observation 3

3:35-5:05P.M. 9/10/03

Location: ATL 01

Color Vibration There are 15 students in the classroom. Four students are late.

Professor A begins his lecture: “I’ll grade the assignment. Don’t get behind in your assignment. Keep cell phones off.” “Monday we began to study collage. I introduced the collage, the history of collage. Picasso invented the collage. I also introduced photo collage. You suppose to do one collage. It’s due next Monday.” “Today I’ll talk about color vibration. I brought tons of books. Next week is simultaneous contrast. Some people have trouble with that.” “All kinds of commercial art use colors to get someone’s attention. We have an emotional response. They drive us to be excited; we’ll buy their stuff. They use bright colors, red, and yellow… Men have sense to blue and women to red. Come and go. Men have a hard time shopping in the mall. It’s nature and nurture theory. Women love shopping, grocery stores. It’s a pretty interesting thing.” “When you buy a car. You want to buy a red car. Sports cars attract man. It’s an aggressive color. Longer wave length attracts exciting color, short wave length attract soft color.” “The police know silver blends with the gray road. White is the most reflective color. Black is the most absorbing color. Some pigments fade more than the other colors. Blue is cooler. Fire engine is still red. Under normal light, red is very obvious color. Under night red is not red. Red makes the gray (a little gray in there) simultaneous contrast. My fellow student found a job in Detroit in a car company as a graphic designer. We always learn.” “Let me take attendance. I lost my sheet, now I just found it. Pick up on your assignment.” “Go back to the old days. 1900 they came up with the idea of a collage. During the pop Art movement, Robert Rausenberg, Jesper Johns, and Andy Walhor, etc. Andy Walhor picked upon advertising: his soup can is art. Jesper Johns’ white on white paintings. It’s impossible such pure white. All these guys they understand the color issues. Andy Worhol spent 8 hours put the video on when somebody was sleeping. Stenciled on. Abstract expression. Roy Lichstein was interested in old cartoons. Chuck Close’s 6 feet

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tall photo-realism paintings used big dots. Popular images, brush strokes, make sculpture. Raushenberg 1955 goat, tire, pop art, color entered sculpure. Color and sculpture get together. Color can move ahead 2D.” “Here is another one. Artist, Ellsworth Kelly, he does a lot of collages. The newspaper, the black letter, all color are there.” Professor A shows the works from Red Groom by Ruckus Manhattan in which small color squares was arranged.” Then he shows students David EM’s works: “Very simple drawing. It shows sensibility. They are electronic computer paintings, and looks like collages. It’s a monogramtic collage. Only one color.” “I keep talking about the limitation of your vision. Now I talk about color vibration. When we look at two colors side by side, we don’t really differentiate from green and blue. It’s an optical mixing. Color confuses your eyes. We supposed there are 32 images. When the images flash in front of you, there are not images anymore. Impressionism used it, and it makes color bright, cleaner, and brilliant. Art in the San Francisco Bay Area are extremely vibrate and bright. They were very beautiful.” Then, Professor A shows several examples to the class. The first one, a small red square was set on a large area with green background. Second, the black letters on a white background from the Art News cover. Third, black and white mixed, the cover of Optical Art on which, the black stripes and white background were interacting.” “You can put vibration in your art work. Be careful, small units that you put into your work. It’s powerful.” “I’ll do it with great care.” “Choose two colors that opposite each other, white and black, red and green, blue and orange, yellow and violet.” Moritz Zwimpfer’s “color, light, sight, sense” Professor A helps students to choose their colors, adjust cards. Comments (Interpretation):

1) Professor A introduces new media, the collage. 2) From commercial art to pop art, he uses different examples to show students how

the artists deal with color issues. 3) Then he introduces a new concept, color vibration. 4) Notion and concepts: collage, photo collage, color vibration, simultaneous

contrast, and commercial art. 5) Artists were mentioned: Picasso, Robert Rausenberg, Jesper Johns, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichstein, Chuck Close, Ellsworth Kelly, Red Groom by Ruckus Manhattan, David EM.

6) Art styles: Pop art, Impressionism.

Professor A: Observation 4

3:45-4:50 P.M. 9/17/03

Location: ATL 01

Simultaneous Contrast

Professor A carries a portfolio into classroom. He sets up two large tables. He

brings color construction papers, black, gray, red, yellow, and blue.

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He begins to talks about the assignment: “Someone asks me: Can I do it over?” “Yes, you can. Put something at the back and redo it.” “I’m not really concerned about this assignment.” “I brought some new books to help you. I talk about these books.” “What are the implications of the collage? A lot of artists just take off the idea of collage. James Rosenquist, abstract expressionist, had an exhibition at the F.S.U. Museum. He supports himself and finds a job as a muralist. He uses scaffold to paint his murals. He just takes small drawing to large mural. It’s so big, so huge. He just took the paint tube to paint. You are in front of it, you couldn’t see the whole. It’s life size, interesting thing. He uses billboard. Put them together. Long long way. 30 feet. He is just a commercial artist. He has painting in capital building in downtown.” “West coast painter, Robert Hudson, San Francisco, California painter who painted deers, so junky. “There are chairs on the floor, there are chairs on the wall, they are really stuff, they are collages. Start from Rembrandt’s portrait and work reactive to interactive. That’s pretty West Coasts, vibrant colors.” “Have you heard about Gee’s Bend?” “I have seen this show.” One student answers. “Most artists are educated. The uneducated artists do quilt. It’s folk art by using fiber, patterns. They put them together. They are so well done. This quilt is 72 inches and created in 1935. Isolating the red with white and black.” “From east coast to west coast, now we meet at South Alabama.” Professor A reads an article from a newspaper about Gee’s Bend show: “Gee’s bend quilters are gaining fame… University of Nebraska-Lincoln has the world’s largest quilt collection…” “Cézanne used aero perspective. His landscape painting use orange and green makes the foreground and the middle ground come forward. He used lighter cool color for the sky in the background. By outlining mountains, he created the illusion.” “Van Gogh, he took the background yellow. It’s way too light too bright. He makes the background battle with the figure, the negative shape. It’s a color war. That’s his feeling. Some of his paintings are arranged with complementary colors, the starry night, the background is blue. Traditional artists saw impressionist painting, they say: ‘this is not art.’ He was a smart guy, he know how to manipulate the color.” Professor A shows the Famous Sunflower and asks,“ This flower looks weird, they are lonely. Is it about flowers? What’s it about? It’s for loneliness.” “Look at Monet’s Water Lilies. Very nice. That’s not the way Van Gogh painted. Painting is not only about the technical part, also its about ideas and concepts.” “I really want to show some slides. It’s better than books. That’s why I brought in many books. I want go back over something. I’ll take attendance.” Then he takes students’ attendance. “Now I talk about your assignment. ‘Itten’ book-simultaneous effects. Look at opposite colors. Present in your vision. You have an orange background, just look at the three blue squares. There is no blue. They play a game. The left one looks gray blue, the middle one looks plain blue, and the right one looks orange gray blue.” “The third one you should choose is a little opposite color with background. Keep the value close. Successive contrast.”

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“Opposite color contrast. Successive contrast. It’s a very subtle thing.” Then professor A shows an example. He chooses a small gray square of neutral No. 5 gray and sets the gray square on three different backgrounds. Then he explains the different color effects: “the first one is set up on a blue background. The gray looks orange, the second one is set up on red background, the gray looks green. The last gray was set on the yellow background, it looks violet.” “It’s only in your head, the longer you look at it, the stronger it is.” Then he shows another example. “Juxtapose three small squares of gray on white, gray, and black background. The first gray looks light, the second gray looks larger, the third gray looks darker, and the white push it in.” “In different situations, everything changes. As an artist we need to control it. You can work it intuitively. You can work it technically.” Comments (Interpretation):

1) Professor A introduces the artists who took the ideas of collage and applied it into their art creations such as, James Rosenquist, Robert Hudson, and Gee’s Bend.

2) Then he uses Cezanne, Van Gogh, and Monet’s paintings as examples to illustrate how they combined simultaneous contrast.

3) He talks about simultaneous contrast and gives students their assignments. 4) Artists mentioned: James Rosenquist, Robert Hudson, San Francisco, Gee’s Bend,

Cezanne, Van Gogh, Monet. 5) Art styles mentioned: abstract expressionism 6) Concept: simultaneous contrast

Professor A: Observation 5

3:45-4:50 P.M. 9/24/03

Location: ATL 01

Color Transparency

Professor A reviews the color wheel. “Primary colors: yellow, red, and blue.

Secondary colors: orange is red and yellow. Violet is blue and red. Green is yellow and blue. In and between those primary and secondary colors are tertiary colors: violet +red=violet red…” “On the back side of the color wheel is tint and shade. It’s a whole color system. It removes the barriers between color and us.” One student is late. “When I look at magazines the artists live in New York, colors are different there. We should glad we are here in Florida.” Then professor A takes attendance. He brings a lot of books. “Consider illusion of transparency. One color going over another color is color transparency. We can look through the colors. It’s real to people as real transparency.” Professor A shows a book titled Design’s Principles and Problems to students. He chooses two examples from it. One is purple triangle through orange square. Another one is same color but different shapes.” “They just put the mixing color of these two. It must be strong shape. Lots of integrity.

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Geometric, squares, and triangles. So they will maintain transparency. One color going over another color. It’s a logical result. It can be total a fiction. 3”-4” size. Try to neutralize the background. Questions?” One student asks: “How many different colors are you overlapping?” “I like the first one, the orange over several colors. Good questions.” Ray answers, “you can put in your painting just as a technique. You get interested in depth and quality.” “People always really neglect it. I got an example for you. There are all kinds of ways that artists do transparency in their art. Pointillism, Impressionism.” He uses one of Monet’s painting titled Walk to Poppies field, “The poppy on the green ground. Shadow is perfect done.” “Degas went to Italy and visited his family. Look at the Line. His father was relaxed. His mother was strict, stiff, and straight. The two draughts, one is towards to her father, one is towards the mother.” “Do you know how old he was when he painted this? 22.” “This is my book from the Art Institute of Chicago. Seurat, dots, pointillism. 1859, Sunday afternoon on …Like holo around people. Dividionist illusion of life shadows. There is a butterfly just past there.” “Another book titled The Artist in His Studio written by Alexander Liberman. This is his postgraduate work.” He compares two paintings created by same artist, “Random House is famous for his bathroom painting. He likes paint his wife. His wife likes to bath there. It’s a fantasy bathroom. The next one, it is transformed from ordinary bathroom to imaginary color room.” “Alexander visited them in their studios.” “Do you know what is CMYK?” “It’s a way of printing with only four colors. M is Magenta, Y is yellow, C is Cian, a blue green, then put black and print. Why do they only use three color print?” “Cheap and easy.” “Another interested artist in New York is a contemporary painter, Chuck Close. He uses same kind of divisionism.” “He does finger print, self-portrait. He is sick. He works from photography. It’ called Photo-realism. The whole painting made by the little abstract paintings. Comments (Interpretation):

1) Professor A reviews the basic color concepts on the color wheel. Primary colors, secondary colors, tertiary colors, color tint and shade.

2) He takes attendance. 3) He introduces color transparency. 4) He uses Monet and Degas and Seurart’s paintings as examples to show students

hoe they applied color transparency. 5) He also uses Random House and Chuck Close’s paintings as examples. 6) Concepts and notion introduced: primary colors, secondary colors, tertiary colors, tint and shade, color transparency, and CMYK. 7) Art styles and movements mentioned: Pointillism, Impressionism, Divisionism,

and Photo-realism. 8) Artists: Monet, Degas, Seurart, Random House, and Chuck Close,

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Coding: 1) CT: color theorists Josef Albers, Johannes Itten, Edith Feisner, Charles LeClair 2) CTC: color theory concept Additive color, subtractive color, low level light, high level light, collage, photo collage, color vibration, simultaneous contrast, monogramic collage, primary colors, secondary colors, tertiary colors, tint and shade, color transparency, CMYK, 3) AC: art school Bauhaus school, Hudson school painters, 4) AM: artists mentioned Wayne Thiebaud, Fredric Remington, David Caspar, John Stobart, Picasso, Robert Rausenberg, Jesper Johns, Andy Walhor, Roy Lichstein, Chuck Close, Ellsworth Kelly, Rucks Manhattan, Bavid EM, James Rosenquist, Robert Hudson, Gee’s Bend, Cezanne, Van Gogh, Monet, Dega, Seurar, Random House, 5) ASM: art styles and movements Pop Art, Commercial Art, Impressionism, Art in San Francisco Bay, Abstract Expressionist, Pointillism, Divisionism, Photo-realism, 6) CTB: color theory books

Color wheel, Interaction of color (Josef Albers), The elements of color (Johannes Itten), Color Studies (Edith Feisner), Color in contemporary painting (Charles LeClair), Color, light, sight and science, Design’s Principles and Problems, Artist in His Studio (Alexander Liberman)

7) ACT: assignments of color theory “Play with variable light in your own studio so that make your home light situation better.” “First assignment. Draw a diagram of your home studio. Show me the light feature. Where is the window, where is your table, where do you work. You can do a perspective drawing and show me your studio situation. 8” x 11” sheet be fine. It’s really no big deal.”

“Second assignment. All color is relative. Color is a hue. Value is light and dark.” “Color effect can be changed by background. Surround a color, primary color, green and red, orange and blue can be changed by background. Make this color change. Take a little square, put on the different background. You choose your background. The value is different. They change the color even balance the value. A little bit value change. That’s your assignment.”

8) SE: studio environment The studio was an old church before. Also because the ceiling is a triangle shape,

the students call it “the church house.” Inside the front door, on both sides, there are two offices for two faculty members. Behind these offices is the studio. In the studio there are four wooded shelves which were located at the left side of the wall used for storing student’s artwork. On the right side wall there are four metal cabinets for the TA or instructors store art supplies. There are also three large metal cabinets filled with still lifes and various light bulbs. In the center of the studio, there are many easels chairs, small cabinets for setting art supplies, a couch.

He set up several easels and put several portable lamps (one green, one yellow, one red, one blue, two transparent and a bold bulb) on three metal easels. Between each

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easel there is equal distance and the easels are lay in front of a white wood board on which a square piece of red paper was hanging.

9) TM: teaching method The structure I invented for color theory class is not only theory-based, but also technical knowledge and skill-oriented. Connect color to art making, color becomes meaningful. In the first part of the class I introduce color theory. Through making collages, students resolve the technical problem. In the second part, it turns over. We paint paintings with acrylic, and students support their own ideas by using color system. We paint monochromatic painting, and they practice their own color system. From interview:

1) PD: personal domain Professor A have 32 years teaching experience at FSU and 41 years painting experience. 2) TD: teaching domain All colors are relative. I go over and over with different approaches to emphasize color relationship. First skill is able to see color better and manipulate color. Later student learn how to select color and mix color. How they are arranged. The context they put color makes color meaningful. Teaching art skills, techniques and creativity just cannot be separated. The one thing we can teach much better is technique. You can be better with training. You can see more values, colors. Before me, there were two professors who taught this class both were failure. They just taught theory. There was no practice. As a result, the class became smaller. I just start teach this class five years ago, and my class continue strong. Some students came from painting major, some came from graphic design major. Bauhaus system was international known contemporary art education system. It changed the structure of art and influences all over the world, such as Japan and United States. Color theory is much German. Johannes Itten was Swiss. He taught at Bauhaus. Most of the color theories were influenced by Europeans.

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APPENDIX B

INTERVIEW WITH PROFESSOR A

FROM THE PILOT STUDY

9/24/03 2:40 PM-3:10 PM.

Location: Professor A’s office

1. How long have you taught painting (or color theory) class? How long have

you taught painting at FSU?

I have been here at FSU for 32 years. I got my first job here in 1970 after I graduated from the University of California at Berkeley. 2. What’s your training background? Where did you study painting?

I began to study art when I was young. I focused on drawing first, then I began to study painting. I spent six years for my B.F.A at the Cleveland Institute of Art from 1962-1968. At the beginning I painted with black and white and limited my colors, then I started with colors.

3. How long did you study painting?

I studied painting at the Cleveland Institute of Art for six years and at the University of California at Berkeley for two years. 4. What’s a normal day like? How many classes do you teach?

This semester I teach one color theory class on Monday and Wednesday afternoons from 3:35-6:05 P.M. Before, I taught Painting 1, which included still life painting, self-portrait painting, portrait painting, and landscape painting.

I also teach 12 graduate students. I am member of a lot of committees. I teach critique class for second year graduate students at M.F.A warehouse on Friday. I am the coordinator of the B.F.A. program and work for 40 students of the program. The B.F.A. warehouse is located at Railroad Square. I’m a busy guy!

5. What teaching method do you use for your teaching?

The structure I invented for color theory class is not only theory-based, but also requires technical knowledge and skill-orientation. When you connect color to art making, color becomes meaningful. In the first part of the class I introduce color theory. Through making collages, students resolve the technical problem. In the second part, it turns over. We paint paintings with acrylic, and students support their own ideas by using the color system. We paint monochromatic painting, and they practice their own color system.

6. What do you think is the most important thing you teach your students?

All colors are relative. I go over and over with different approaches to emphasize color relationships. 7. What’s the main textbook do you use for your color theory class? Why you

chose them?

Edith Feisner’s Color Studies is a popular book for color theory. Josef Albers, Interaction of Color; Johannes Itten’s The Elements of Colors; Charles LeClair’s Color in Contemporary Painting are good books as well. I still like the color wheel. It’s my main textbook.

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8. What do you feel are the basic skills that students need to master? And how

do you incorporate them in your class?

The first skill is ability to see color better and manipulate color. Later students learn how to select color and mix color. How they are arranged. The context they put color in makes color meaningful. 9. Do you think it is important to be a practicing artist in order to be a good art

professor?

Yes. Good artists are humble and struggle. The same problem that your students faced. So you understand their problems. I paint on weekends and my studio is located in the B.F.A. warehouse. As an art professor, exhibition is equal to publishing in other disciplines. 10. What do you have to say about the importance in teaching art skills,

techniques and creativity?

They just cannot be separated. The one thing we can teach much better is technique. You can be better with training. You can see more values, colors. Before me, there were two professors who taught this class. Both were failures. They just taught theory. There was no practice. As a result, the class became smaller. I just started teaching this class five years ago, and my class continues to become strong. Some students came from painting majors, some came from graphic design majors. The Bauhaus system was an internationally known contemporary art education system. It changed the structure of art and influences all over the world, such as Japan and United States. Color theory is very much German. Johannes Itten was Swiss. He taught at Bauhaus. Most of the color theories were influenced by Europeans. Comments (Interpretation): 1). Question 1-4, I focus on the personal domains. I asked Professor A’s educational and training background, and his teaching experience. 2). Question 5-10, I focus on the teaching method domain. I asked professor A the basic teaching methodology of his class, the main textbooks, and the most important element in his class. 3). The structure Professor A invented for color theory class is not only theory-based, but also technical knowledge and skill-oriented. Connect color to art making, color becomes meaningful. 4). Professor A believes that color relationship is the most important thing to teach to his students in his color theory class.

5). Professor A’s color theory class was influenced by Europeans. Several authors of the textbooks in Professor A’s class were instructors in the famous Bauhaus Arts School in Germany. The Bauhaus system was an internationally recognized contemporary art education system. It changed the structure of art and its influence was felt all over the world, in places such as Japan and the United States. It emphasized the craftsman model for cultivating artists. The students explored variable materials as much as possible through personal experience instead of following the teacher’s instruction. Creativity was highly valued at Bauhaus.

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APPENDIX C

FIELDNOTES FROM THE PILOT STUDY

Professor B: Figure Painting Workshop

Observation 1

3:30-4:30 P.M. 8/ 28/2003

Location: ATL 01 Professor B prepares the light and set the chair. Adjust the height of the light.

Turn on the second green light as reflect light. Students move the easels adjust the view. Prepare the paint. The studio was an old church before. Also because the ceiling is a triangle shape,

the students call it “the church house.” Inside the front door, on both sides, there are two offices for two faculty members. The left on is professor B’s office. Behind these offices is the classroom studio. In the studio there are four wooded shelves which were located at the left side of the wall used for storing student’s artwork. On the right side wall there are four metal cabinets for the TA or instructors store art supplies. There are also three large metal cabinets filled with still lifes and various light bulbs. In the center of the studio, there are many easels chairs, small cabinets for setting art supplies, a couch.

Outside, it begins to rain. Several students are wet. Noisy sound of moving easels. Several painting set around corners.

The model is late. All of the students are waiting for the only model. Students walk around.

“Make sure you have a good view.” Professor B mentioned, “Lyann will be here today, and she will come back Tuesday.”

“Think about where you will work on before you start.” Students adjust easels and choose a spot. Professor B adjusts the light and lowers the light (reflect). He talks with students

about composition. Students begin to paint. One student use yellow, and green paint on the

background. Another student use charcoal to begin the preliminary drawing. The studio is quiet. An older student who looks like Rodin begins drawing with black paint. Two

students use pink to start painting contour lines. One student uses a waste canvas and start to paint over it.

“Have any questions? I’ll be back in 15 minutes. I’ll go cross street to the art office.”

One student use white to paint over the red background. Another one uses a palette knife to paint. She mixes paint with palette knife.

3 students use small size canvas to paint a whole figure. Several of them use a larger size to paint. One student paints on a small black panel with orange.

One student is late. Among the 19 students, there are 3 left-handed students. The classroom is quiet. The Older man paints over the black color with orange.

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One student uses red to draw the figure. One uses green for the drawing. 1 hour later, first break. In professor B’s office, on the bookshelf, there are skulls of animals, a bottle of

brushes, and many drawing and painting books. The drawing books include: 1. The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Edwards Tarcher Putnam 2. Drawing-a contemporary approach 4th edition 3. Drawing by Janet Allen 4. The Art of Drawing by Chaet 5. Drawing Dimentions by Cynthia Maris Dantzic 6. Figure Drawing-the structure, anatomy, and expressive design of human Form.

5th edition Goldstein 7. Drawing Lessons from the Great Masters (Hale) 8. Peterson First Guide to Anatomy The painting books include: 1. Vuillard Abrams. 2. James Mcneill Whistler (Maria Costantino) 3. The Unseen Van Gogn Muhlberger First Glance books 4. Van Gogn Face to Face The Detroit Institute of Arts 5. Mattisse R 6. Andrew Wyeth: the Helga pictures (John Wilmerding) 7. Christian Schad.and the Neue Sachlichkeit NEUE Galerie Museum for

German and Australian Art, New York. 8. Soutine Taschen 9. Raphael 10. The Shock of the New (Robert Hughes) 11. Oskar Kokoschka NEUE Early Portraits from Vienna and Berlin 1909-

1914 12. Gustav Klimt Susanna Partsch 13. Lucian Freud Willian Feaver (Tate) 14. The Fauves (The Reign of Color) 15. Edward Hopper Goodrich 16. Gauguins Nirvana (Zafran) 17. Degas’ Drawings Dover 18. Jennifer Bartlett 19. Bonnard Abrams 20. Bruegele Excalibur 21. Techniques of the Great Masters of Art (Quantum books)

Comments: 1) Art book on shelf drawing and painting books. 2) Textbooks 3) Basic knowledge of painting. Color, anatomy, composition, drawing.

Professor B: Observation 2

3:30-4:30 PM. 9/4/03

Location: ATL 01

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Students have set up their easels and are ready to paint. The new model (female) has laid on the couch. The couch is covered by a black cloth, and the model is under an orange light (two lights from different directions.) 18 students here in 2 circles around the model, and more students are arriving. Some students use green color to paint the contour line, some use pink or purple. Professor B comes in and said: “Are you all doing alright?” Then, he helps one student adjust the easel and move the table closer to the model. “It’s a little crowded, maybe do a couple quick one.” Professor B critiques one students’ work. Professor B goes back into his office and brings back another new canvas. He gives it to this student, and the student start a new one. It’s too crowed in the studio, one student can’t see the model. Professor B suggests one student do some small researches on small sketches close to the model. She erased her first draft with rug on the canvas. Professor B critiques one graduate student’s sketch for composition. “Probably draw the table down a little bit.” Professor B adds several pieces of masking tape (about 5” long each) on the painting and changes it with different directions and angles. (There are variable compositions between the model and background.) Then professor B begins to give personal advice to each student while they are painting. “I think that chair blocks the spot.” “You still need some objects to function that break.” “Something helps to drag that space back.” “This color is weird.” Two students came in late. “Interesting color. Think about what color you use. How realistic do you want to be? Be aware what will be done, such as, a certain color to paint, the relationship of the colors, simple shapes. Start to think about it initially. There are a lot of different options.” The French student uses a lot of pink and yellow in her painting. She wears a pair of gloves when she is painting. One student sets the canvas too low. Professor B helps her adjust the easel: “The canvas will be set at same eye level.” “Think about an interesting option. You can attach two pieces of canvas together and paint on them as one piece.” “I like the darkness and the soft manipulation. You might paint this one thicker than the last painting.” “Keep trying, kind of orient yourself some reference points. Higher the figure, make the body more horizontal. Think what effect might cause that; think what you want to do, also think about background. Paint that cloth.” “I’ll see what I can do it”, student answers. “That’s nice. Nice start. Almost like a landscape. Keep interest involved. Keep that elbow down. Raise her hand more.” “Challenge yourself. Think about overlapping of the legs. This one goes behind, so thin a little bit. Sometimes it looks so complicated, the slight angle here going back a little. Also figure out the background.” “Purple and orange mix together, you get a nice middle dark tone.”

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“Little small the leg, little big the head. Pretty stable, easy to think about.” Mark uses a bamboo stick to parallel with the leg’s angle: “Maybe there is something wrong to cause that.” Comments:

Professor B uses his personal experience to direct students. He critiques students’ paintings with color, proportion, composition and technique problems.

Professor B: Observation 3

3:30- 4:30 PM. 9/11/03

Location: ATL 01 The Model has not arrived yet. Students set up the easels and adjusts their spots.

(music on) There is one painting that looks good. Large size. He catches the feeling of the model. Students’ works are in progress, they added more details and colors. Model comes in with green velvet robe. She has long hair. She poses in the same manner as the last class. “Today is the last day you work on this painting. She will out of town this week. Figure out thing under certain circumstance, and seek them out.” “Shadow, shading…” There are two graduate students in the class. Professor B gives students personal advice while they are working on their paintings, “Make the hand resting on the floor. Paint the hand again, do not make it too differently with the body.” A student adjusts the light. The classroom is quiet. “Good job on the light and dark value.” “Accent of lines. Purples and yellows, vertical plane and invent a shadow on the floor. The continuation of the floor.” Professor B helps one student change her easel to another angle so that she can observe the model easier. “Might be some links between these two colors. Figure out where the feet go.” “Pick up the back edge of here. A piece of shape, or color, start to work on it, organize your painting.” “Think about intensity of those colors and contrast of colors.” “Look at whole painting. Organize the shape of the body. Feel the light across the body. Just think of the color. Something just gradually changes. Color change, the orange pink reflects by the light. “Think about warmer colors. Sometimes put down the painting, then go back later and work on it.” “Change a dry brush or watercolor brush.” He goes to his office and bring several brushes give them to this student. “Some time not quite right, just work on it.” “Use the background to trim off the body.” “The oldest student ‘Roden’ works on the body, he paint the background with blue, foreground dark blue, the body light yellow and pink. The graduate student works on a sketchbook with pencil.

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Professor B brings a bamboo stick, shows one student how to use it to paint the details. “The face is good, the ear is good as well.” “Think about the variation. Use complementary colors. Use green and Venetian red. Pretty intense color. Sometimes weird color in shadow. Pink, orange, ocher works on middle tone.” “Please write your name, social security number on this paper. Studio open on Saturday 11:00-5:00, come in, and keep working on background or…”

Professor B: Observation 4

3:30-4:30 PM. 9/25/03

Location: ATL 01 Draw the same model. Set the new model (male) model. (Music on)

Adjust easels. Two graduate students. Model (John) lies on a table, left arm support the head. “Everything looks all right? Does John look like he is in the same spot as last time?” A piece of black cloth covers the table. Two lights were set up from different directions. One warm orange light and one cool yellow light. Classroom is quiet. One student comes late. One student paints on light blue background canvas, one paints on light green background, one paints on a black background. Students are working on the torso, limbs. “Put some darker colors, purple orange.” “Interesting color. Nice face you got there.” “Body and face. Make paint mark similar from the face and cloth.” “Be careful of drawing line, consistency, style, some variation instead of one color.” Broke up, distort organize signify space. In scale. Orange.” “Keep working try to find variety.” Coding: 1) CN: composition. Professor B critiques one graduate student’s sketch for composition. “Probably draw the table down a little bit.” Professor B adds several pieces of masking tape (about 5” long each) on the painting and changes it with different directions and angles. (There are variable compositions between the model and background.) “I think that chair blocks the spot.” “You still need some objects to function that break.” “Something helps to drag that space back.” “Think about an interesting option. You can attach two pieces of canvas together and paint on them as one piece.” “Keep trying, kind of orient yourself some reference points. Higher the figure, make the body more horizontal. Think what effect might cause that; think what you want to do, also think about background. Paint that cloth.” “That’s nice. Nice start. Almost like a landscape. Keep interest involved. Keep that elbow down. Raise her hand more.”

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“Challenge yourself. Think about overlapping of the legs. This one goes behind, so thin a little bit. Sometimes it looks so complicated, the slight angle here going back a little. Also figure out the background.” Professor B uses a bamboo stick to parallel with the leg’s angle: “Maybe there is something wrong to cause that.” “Accent of lines. Purples and yellows, vertical plane and invent a shadow on the floor. The continuation of the floor.” “Figure out where the feet go.” “Pick up the back edge of here. A piece of shape, or color, start to work on it, organize your painting.” “Look at whole painting. Organize the shape of the body. Feel the light across the body.” “Use the background to trim off the body.” “Body and face. Make paint mark similar from the face and cloth.” “Be careful of drawing line, consistency, style, some variation instead of one color.” Broke up, distort organize signify space. In scale. Orange.” “Keep working try to find variety.” 2) CR: color relationship: “This color is weird.” “Interesting color. Think about what color you use. How realistic do you want to be? Be aware what will be done, such as, a certain color to paint, the relationship of the colors, simple shapes. Start to think about it initially. There are a lot of different options.” “I like the darkness and the soft manipulation. You might paint this one thicker than the last painting.” “Purple and orange mix together, you get a nice middle dark tone.” “Good job on the light and dark value.” “Might be some links between these two colors.” “Think about intensity of those colors and contrast of colors.” “Just think of the color. Something just gradually changes. Color change, the orange pink reflects by the light.” “Think about warmer colors. Sometimes put down the painting, then go back later and work on it.” “Think about the variation. Use complementary colors. Use green and Venetian red. Pretty intense color. Sometimes weird color in shadow. Pink, orange, ocher works on middle tone.” “Put some darker colors, purple orange.” “Interesting color. Nice face you got there.” 3) PN: proportion. “Think about overlapping of the legs. This one goes behind, so thin a little bit. Sometimes it looks so complicated, the slight angle here going back a little.” “Little small the leg, little big the head. Pretty stable, easy to think about.” “Make the hand resting on the floor. Paint the hand again, do not make it too differently with the body.” “In scale.” 4) TE: technique. “Change a dry brush or watercolor brush.” He goes to his office and bring several brushes give them to this student.

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Professor B brings a bamboo stick, shows one student how to use it to paint the details. “The face is good, the ear is good as well.”

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APPENDIX D

INTERVIEW WITH PROFESSOR B

FROM THE PILOT STUDY

4:10-4:40 P.M. 9/18/03

Location: Professor B’s Office

1. How long have you taught painting?

I have been teaching since 1985 here at FSU. 2. What’s your training background?

Teaching studio art, there is no training. If you are a good artist, you can teach. I went to a community college in St. Louis, Missouri for two years, then I continued my studies at a college in St. Louis. After that I went to Indiana University at Bloomington for graduate school. 3. How long did you study painting?

Back in community college in 1974, I began to study painting. 4. What’s a normal day like? (How many classes are taught?)

I teach figure painting classes on Tuesday and Thursday 3:30-9:30. Before this year I had taught life drawing, drawing classes, also I taught methods and concepts class, a design class. 5. What’s the teaching method you use?

It’s hard to say. Every student is different. So, I gave them verbal directions that are based on individual situations. Based on the same problem the student had, I’ll take examples from famous artists and give student visual solutions. 6. How do you combine anatomy, color theory or art history into your

teaching?

There is consistency and variety from one person to next. To a different person, I might use a different way. 7. What do you think is the most important thing you teach your student?

Thinking and looking. There is no preconcerned idea for what reality should look like. The model supports information to you. Paint itself suggests the meaning. Most students don’t know what the most important thing is in their painting. I teach them to think and to look at. 8. What’s the main textbook do you use for painting class?

There is no textbook. I use the master painters books to show my students. Most of the common painting books in the market are pretty bad. They are dry. There are no cookbooks for painting. 9. What do you feel are the basic skills that students need to master? And how

do you incorporate them in your class?

There are traditional techniques; such as composition or color harmony that a student should know. However, there is no perfect solution. There are nice paintings or interesting paintings. Sometimes I work with students with unexpected effects because I want them to find their interests and create special paintings. What they are doing is to try to find their personal, unusual painting style. 10. Do you think it is important to be a practicing artist in order to be a good art

professor?

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I agree with it on some level. As both a practicing artist and a professor you can teach as much as you know and avoid whole classes that look exactly the same. 11. What do you have to say about the importance of teaching painting? (1)

Creativity (2) art skill and technique (3) critical thinking.

Creativity is most important. It accesses individual thought and sets your own goal. Skills hinder yourself. You use your skills to make repetitions, which is like a robot. Critical thinking is used in art education or art history. For artists, they just create and I call it creative thinking. Comments:

1). Professor B emphasizes cultivating student’s personality and creativity. Thinking and looking are the most important things he teaches his students. His teaching method is based on the students’ personal needs, and supports their unique solutions.

2). He also mentioned that there were traditional techniques such as composition or color harmony that student should know. However, there was no perfect solution.

3). His class still uses a model as the main subject of study. All of the subjects are nude models, female and male. This exemplifies the traditional western studio art training method, such as the teaching method of the 19th century French Academic of art, where the nude model was adopted by artists in the studio environment as the main research subject for painting and drawing. However, here the model was used only as visual information, and students use their own creativity to convey meaning in their paintings.

4) Verbal direction (teaching method) 5) Only a nude model was used in this class, there is no clothed model. 6) If you are a good artist, you can teach.

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APPENDIX E

INTERVIEW QUESTIONS

Interview Questions for Instructors

1. What’s your training background/where did you go to art school? 2. Did you study painting/drawing? 3. What courses did you take in painting and drawing? 4. What was the focus/emphasis of your training in relation to painting and drawing? 5. How long did you study painting/drawing? 6. What classes do you teach at FSU? 7. How long have you taught painting/drawing class overall? 8. How long have you taught painting/drawing at FSU? 9. What’s your teaching load? 10. What’s a normal day like for you at work? (Describe your routine.) 11. What’s your teaching philosophy? 12. What’s important to be taught in drawing? 13. What’s important to be taught in painting? 14. What do you feel are the basic skills that students need to master? And how do

you incorporate them in your class? 15. What are your instructional goals for your painting/drawing classes? 16. How do you motivate your students? 17. What do you have to say about the importance in teaching art skills, techniques

and creativity? 18. Describe three of your most effective teaching methods do you use for your

painting/drawing class? 19. What do you think is the most important thing you teach your students? 20. What are the textbooks you use for your painting/drawing class? Why you chose

them? If you don’t use a text, why not? 21. What artists or movements have influenced your practice as an artist or teacher? 22. Are there any artist-teachers influence you on your career? Describe them and

their influence. 23. What are the most pressing issues and concerns you have encountered in teaching

drawing and painting? 24. What are the biggest frustrations in your teaching? 25. What do you think will be your greatest rewards in teaching painting/drawing? 26. What strategies do you use for evaluation or grading student work? 27. Do you think it is important to be a practicing artist in order to be a good art

professor? 28. What do you think about the relation of drawing and painting? 29. What do you think about drawing and painting in relation to other disciplines

within visual arts? 30. Do you have discussions among your teaching colleagues about teaching drawing

and painting? 31. Do you collaborate with other painting and drawing teachers? How? Give

examples. 32. Is there anything else you want to say?

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APPENDIX F

HUMAN SUBJECTS APPROVAL FROM FLORIDA STATE

UNIVERSITY

Informed Consent Form for Instructors

I freely and voluntarily and without element of force or coercion, consent to participate in the research project entitled, “Teaching Painting and Drawing at Florida State University: A Case Study”.

This research project is being conducted by Liu Nan, a doctoral student at Florida State University, under the direction of Dr. Tom Anderson. I understand the purpose of his research is to better understand the process of and characteristics of teaching painting and drawing to college students in Florida State University. I understand that if I participate in this study, I will be asked questions about my teaching practices in a college painting/drawing studio environment and about the meanings this practice has for me.

I understand I will be asked to answer questions about my teaching experience, my teaching philosophy, and teaching methods.

I understand that my participation is totally voluntary and I may stop participation at any time. All my answers to the questions will be kept confidential to the extent allowed by law. Although quotes from my lectures and interviews may be reported in the research, my name, or any other identifying characteristics, will not appear on any of the results.

I understand that I may contact Liu Nan at 850-321-9422 or his directing professor, Dr. Tom Anderson, at 850-644-2331 for answers about this research or my rights. Questions may also be referred to the Human Subjects Committee at Florida State University. The committee may be contacted at: Human Subjects Committee, Mail Code 2742 or P O Box 3062742, Tallahassee, FL 32306-2742.

I have read and understand the consent form.

______________________________________ _______________________

Participant’s Signature Date

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Informed Consent Form for Focus Group

I freely and voluntarily and without element of force or coercion, consent to participate in the research project entitled, “Teaching Painting and Drawing at Florida State University: A Case Study”.

This research project is being conducted by Liu Nan, a doctoral student at Florida State University. I understand the purpose of his research is to better understand the process of and characteristics of teaching painting and drawing to undergraduate students in Visual Arts Department, Florida State University. I understand that if I participate in this study, I will be asked questions about my learning experience in my college painting and drawing studio class and my impressions and feelings about the painting/drawing instructor’s instruction in this painting/drawing class.

I understand I will be asked to answer questions about the painting/drawing instructor’s teaching methods, the subject matters, and my feeling about this painting/drawing class. Also, my artworks created in this class will be photographed for research.

I understand that my participation is totally voluntary and I may stop participation at any time. All my answers to the questions will be kept confidential to the extent allowed by law. Although quotes from my interviews may be reported in the research, my name, or any other identifying characteristics, will not appear on any of the results.

I understand that I may contact Liu Nan at 850-321-9422 or his directing professor, Dr. Tom Anderson, at 850-644-2331 for answers about this research or my rights. Questions may also be referred to the Human Subjects Committee at Florida State University. The committee may be contacted at: 2010 Levy Ave Bldg B Suite 276 Tallahassee, FL 32310.

I have read and understand the consent form.

______________________________________ _______________________

Participant’s Signature Date

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APPENDIX G

INTERVIEW WITH PROFESSOR A 11/10/07

1. What’s your training background/where did you go to art school?

I went to the University of Alabama, Birmingham for my undergraduate and I started in electrical engineering and math. And I switched to art, and got my degree probably in two years going straight through with all studio art and art history classes. I was completely immersed in art for the last two years of my training. And I applied for graduate school. I received my degree at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where I was in the painting program. And it was a very interdisciplinary approach, so that’s where I got my MFA. 2. Did you study painting and drawing?

Painting and drawing, yeah. 3. What course did you take in painting and drawing?

In graduate school, it’s very open, the structure of the program was very, very loose, so it was more independent study. You had painting studio, and for that we all owned individual space. They were 15 by 20 feet. They had private entrances, so you could go there 24 hours a day. What you did was you sign up to work with two faculty members each semester, and you stayed with the same two faculty members for all of the painting studio. This rotated each semester, and they will come to your studio for an hour each week and talk to you about what you are doing in your work. Basically … your progress, they just talked about idea. They would critique some of your work. They really would just do idea generation. And if you have trouble with something, a lot of the time it was like ... “Oh, I found a great artist. You should look at her. I went to this exhibit. You should go check this out. Make sure you see this person. It’s related to your work.” A lot of just idea exchange which I think is really useful.

And then the only other class I was required to take in graduate school was seminar. It wasn’t art history. It was the studio faculty that did it. So one of the studio faculty would have a seminar. It maybe was like … one was on selling, one was on collecting, and sort of this consumer culture. They were sort of different aspects of art making or different sorts of theories or ideas that tend to run through contemporary art. They gave you some articles to read. You look at contemporary artists. We watched movies. We talked. We sat around and talked. Usually we would have an artist project, and we made something. A lot of times, at the end of class, we would make a book as our final. You can write a paper or make a book. Pretty much everyone made a book. So it was very weak on writing and art history. But we did have an art critic who taught there because it was so close to Chicago. We had art critics come down to teach seminars. So there were writing seminars you could take. So that had a little more art history. But it was also very contemporary based - how you would write about your own works, how would you critique other gallery exhibitions. So it was very sort of “hands on.” 4. What was the focus/emphasis of your training in relation to painting and

drawing?

I’m not sure what exactly you mean. In my work personally I did a lot of installation, sort of soft sculptures, sewn fabric sculpture, a lot of dealing with architecture and space. I did it separately. That was part of my final product. I would

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make these creations within a painting program because our program was varied. Even though it was a painting program, they didn’t care at all. You could take anything. You could do glass, ceramic or metal, and jewelry. I would take other things, I took other classes just to learn techniques and as sort of nice diversion. But pretty much was just reading and creating. 5. How long did you study painting/drawing?

A total of two years in undergraduate, and three years in graduate school. For undergraduate painting and drawing I actually took a very interdisciplinary study, we didn’t have a BFA program, so they didn’t really direct you. You just had to have a certain number of hours in studio courses. 6. What did you learn?

Specifically just those two. It was a pretty weak program to be honest. For drawing I remember taking just a couple of classes. It means they teach you still life, there were a couple of outdoor assignments, they talked about chiaroscuro, and lighting, and different things like that, a little bit. But it was a really small classroom. We drew on tables, so it was a wrong format. And they encouraged like tracing, and copying. And then in painting it was completely open. I loved those classes but not because they did a lot of teaching. It was completely open. You had a little section in the classroom. Just a table divided your space from others. You could just set and paint anything at all you want. We never painted still life. We had very few things like technical instructions about. I didn’t know how you mix when I was first took a painting class. I had no idea that you mixed anything with paint. You know.

So in painting, you could paint anything. I remember on the first day of the class, he just sort of introduced painting very openly. He didn’t care if you sew grass together and painted on grass, or painted on wood. You can paint on canvas, you can paint on anything you could find, just paint. And I remembered him saying that. He didn’t tell us how or what or weather oil or acrylic, or how to clean a brush, nothing. If you wanted to learn that, you would basically wait. So I remember I was asking a lot of questions like why was my paint like this? “You’ve got to mix it with something.” I remember like … “Huh? Do you want to tell me what?” I did a lot to learn painting by myself. I checked out books - sort of “how to.” Then I asked questions. I sort of visited other people who took other classes, or I learned from different means with all of that. But he was fun. 7. How long have you taught painting/drawing class overall?

Six years. This is the seventh year. I started in graduate school. I didn’t take a fellowship, I took a teaching assistantship. And I really wanted to do that because I knew I wanted to teach. So at UIUC you could teach your own class. You didn’t teach with another professor, you had your very own class. Yeah, they give you a class to teach. For some people it was a disaster. Some people were successful. They figured out pretty quickly. If you taught really badly, they would give you a fellowship and pulled you away. I taught drawing I, drawing II, and 2D design over the course of the three years. I did teach one figure drawing class while I was in graduate school. After that I took a year off, lived in Chicago, and did a lot of freelance work. Then I got a job teaching full time at the University of Alabama at Birmingham where I was teaching painting and drawing. There I taught from drawing I to drawing 4, and they have four level sections of drawing. And they also had an art education graduate program. So I taught graduate drawing for

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them. Then I taught intermediate and advance painting as well. And I taught 2D design there. That was three years before I moved to California. And then now at FSU. 8. What’s your teaching load?

I teach 3 and 3. So I teach 3 in the fall and 3 in the spring. Right now I am teaching one 2D design class, and two drawing classes – figure drawing. And in the spring I will teach the same. 9. What’s a normal day like for you at work? (Describe your routine.)

I don’t really know, everyday sort of changes. But basically I spend a lot of time outside of class reading. I feel like … as part of being a good instructor you should be really familiar with what’s going on in the contemporary world. I spend a lot of time reading articles, magazines, monographs about different artists. But also preparing hand outs, preparing lectures, looking back through previous notes, just to make sure. Like if I’ve written notes about different assignments that I’ve done in class once, and it worked better. One thing that I think is really important about teaching is making sure about the order in which you introduce certain techniques and certain ideas. I think that can really have a huge affect on the outcome of the class. So I try to structure the class in that way. So typically I wake up, I read email, and I respond to email. I spend some time reading about artists, and looking at work. I grade papers. I teach, obviously. I have a fair amount of meetings. I do some one-on-one individual meetings with students, just looking at their works. A lot of time, even just graphic design, not even drawing. Just sort of giving them an idea about what I think their strengths are, and so forth. Faculty meetings, we go every Friday to the MFA warehouses, and then once a month we go to the BFA warehouses and talk to the BFA students. 10. What’s important to be taught in drawing?

A lot of things. I think the most important thing to teach in drawing is how to see. And within that I try to teach them a little bit about why they see things the way they do. How color works, why it is important get a full value range, what we can actually draw on a paper versus how many, you know, white. We see a lot more than we can actually draw. So to teach them about that. I think it is really important to teach mass and volume, so drawings have depth, and value and space. When I teach a typical drawing class, I don’t let them use lines at all. No lines at all. I ask them to make drawings that are absent of line. If they want to make a line, they only can put one value next to another to create an edge.

So I make them do that for two weeks before I let them use line at all to try to break. Because most of the students want to come and draw contour line drawings, and that keeps your drawing so flat. So and I think I’ll probably introduce that in figure drawing next semester just because I still feel I struggle with it so much within this class. So we start out with volume and mass, then introduce line, so they understand how the two work together. 11. What is your teaching philosophy?

I think that it is important that the students develop their own path to a certain extent. I don’t try to have a homogenous class where everybody is the same. And I try to work with each student’s strength and each student’s ideas. I think it is important to allow their ideas to have some presence in the work as soon as they start expressing. They have conceptual wants. But I also think it is hugely important to provide a structure. I think it is important to give hallmark, to give feedback. I think students want to know why we

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make them do certain things. So I try to provide objectives. So I try to say I want you to do this because you are going to get this out of it. So they understand how things relate to each other. I’m very, very open. I would let my students tell me anything at all. Probably, like, “You are the worst teacher in the world.” “Why is that?” I will have a conversation with them on that level. They can start a discussion anyway they want to. So I want them to be very open to express themselves. I want to be open to receive that information. I feel like for students to learn you have to urge a group of students to learn. You have to be able to express any ideas you have or you’re already trying to convey. And like, three hundred possible ways. So I try to say things, even if they think they’ve heard it, or they’re tired of me saying things. I repeated myself over, and over and over. Because for some of the people, it helps them think. For others, they’re just sort of thrown out … stop and think … certain aspects of that. 12. How do you motivate your students?

That’s a lot more difficult. It really depends on the situation. A lot of people come to figure drawing class. They usually come in two different groups. One really enjoys drawing figures. They really like that. And one just has to take the class, and they have no desire to learn, and they hate creating a drawn figure. Typically I just try to explain how it will help them grow, whether or not they are going to graphic design, or photography. That’s the answer they hear all the time. Beyond that I just try to encourage them on the individual level, even the student making barely mediocre or bad work. At some point, I try to encourage whatever strengths there are. I try to point out the most interesting drawing, parts of their drawing, whatever’s successful about that. I try to free up different media. So if they are really bad at one technique, they’re probably brilliant at the other. And when I know what it is, they do have a shift. They do succeed with something. “Woo, look how good you did! This is great!” Just try to give them some optimism, but I don’t think I try to encourage them overly; like try to tell them things are good when I don’t think they are. They ask me is this a great drawing. This is not. I try to be honest with them. Because then when I do say something positive, I hope they do respect it. They understand that in a general way. 13. What do you have to say about the importance in teaching art skills, techniques

and creativity?

I think that it is critical to teach technique, and give them the tools. I think it’s a mistake when teacher, especially in the beginning, teaches a lot about ideas, and tries to get them to build the conceptual without the technical as a basis. Not that it’s wrong to teach concepts early, I think that’s great. But I really think that’s a mistake. A lot of instructors make that mistake. You’ve got to teach the basic building blocks, teach them the rules, teach them how to use different materials. I think creativity is sort of inherited in the task, even if it’s just using the technical instruments making something. I think the act of making is very creative all on its own. But I do definitely want to build idea-based work and have the students become aware of what it is they are trying to say. I first teach them the vocabulary, which is sort of technical material skills, and sort of help them develop the discussion. What is it there? Whether it is narrative or conceptual, I help them to build that. 14. Describe three of your most effective teaching methods which you use for your

drawing class?

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I don’t know if I narrow down to precise methodologies, but I think that one thing that I do very successfully and is very helpful is … I try to repeat myself over and over in different ways. I try to say the exactly the same thing in as many different ways as possible so that students try to connect with different people and their different learning abilities. And that sort of probably makes me sound like an idiot because I just say things over and over. But I think that is really important. I am even saying three or four times, and they still sometimes don’t hear. Several students will not hear you. But I also try to really be loud. If that make any sense, I try to present myself as a very loud person. And someone who struggled on my own, so that they understand they shouldn’t just be brilliant from the very beginning, that it is a struggle and you can really learn a lot from your failures. So I try to give sort of self deprecating illustrations of personal experiences with what it is, so that anybody who would be discouraged, might sort of feel encouraged by that. And also be more accessible to them. I don’t like creating a division between instructor and students. Obviously there is a division, but I don’t like them to feel like they can’t approach me with just the most pending question. I’ll pretty much entertain anything they want to ask. I made that open. And three, I try to do student evaluations, even just individually, with students one-on-one in class. I try to present the ideas and sort of give an overview. Then I go around and try to talk, to talk each individual student and check on their progress. It’s really difficult at FSU because the classes are too large and the studios are too small. I feel like it’s too much to really do that effectively. And the class period is too short, and only 2 and half hours. I miss the three hour studios. So I struggle with that a little bit, but I do try get one-on-one. 15. What do you think is the most important thing you teach your students?

To make mistakes. I honestly do. I mean you teach them concept, you teach them to …actually, you know, to make mistakes and to learn from the mistakes, not just to make them. But to really pursue understanding, not just brilliance. So I think that through making mistakes and taking risks, they actually understand more. They understand what failure is and how to turn it around. So I try not let them make mistakes and throw it away. I try to encourage them to work through it, and try to figure out a way to incorporate it. Sort of move beyond. So it’s not just about perfection. 16. What are the textbooks you use for your drawing class? Why do you chose

them? If you don’t use a text, why not?

I don’t really use a text. There are several really good ones out there. My reason for not using a textbook is purely sympathetic. To the students I feel like we ask them to buy a lot of materials and it gets really expensive. So I don’t require a textbook. I do, however, always recommend a textbook on my syllabus and I think that there are several, depending on whether I am teaching figure drawing or beginning drawing or whatever. But the ones I particularly promote are the ones call the Experimental Drawing, which just sort of once again lets you have a experience, try technique, and engage your creative side versus your analytical side. And I do always encourage people to look at anatomy books, so they understand the structure of the human form for figure drawing. Just sort of how the artists may look at the body as opposed to purely from scientific structure. But typically I try to stay away from books entirely and provide something slightly different. 17. What artists or movements have influenced your practices as an artist or

teacher?

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There are several key artists that I really like. Ann Hamilton is one. First of all, she makes incredible, beautiful works. What I really like about her is she is an installation artist for the most part. But even though she is an installation artist, she is also a sculptor, she also does printmaking, and she does drawing. She sort of has such an incredible grasp – her conceptual – that she uses the materials necessary to express what she is doing. And I really appreciate that about her work. In addition, I like her ideas, what she works with is conceptual, but I think she really seeks out the most important materials. And often she will start with materials, she will have an old warehouse, she will research the history of the building, and try to figure out what it is used for, and that sort of dictates the material. Then she lets the materials sort of speak to the art project. In a way she sort of works from reverse. A lot of time I sort of like how she has this push and pull, how she lets the work inform her. And she informs the work simultaneously. I really like that about her. I would say mainly I’m really interested in installation artists. But also people who just sort of explore personal history. When I was very young, when I first went into art, I was in electrical engineering and math actually, and I just took a class. I went to a school which was not great in art by any means, and I remember sort of talking with a painting faculty member, who is Mark Majesky. He was just really encouraging, but not in a non-direct way. He just talks about what it was. He was also very straightforward. He painted a non-glamourous picture of the artist which I appreciated. You know it’s about work, tenacity, sort of staying perseverance. But I really appreciate that. Then when I got to graduate school, I worked with Funs Facter. While my work was completely different, the ideas were fairly distinct. He is a really good mentor, he asked a lot of hard questions. Really makes you think about your work in a way. He pushed me in ways I wouldn’t push myself, so I think that was important. One from my undergrad, sort of pushed me into going into art. And the other was a subtle push, that’s not like he wasn’t a monumental figure. It was a steady influence in my graduate program. 18. Are there any artist-teachers who have influenced you in your career? Describe

them and their influence.

In my graduate program you came in as a graduate student. If you have a teaching assistantship, you are given your own class. And the university was very good, and they sort of gave you a list of guidelines for the objectives in the classroom. How you should conduct yourself kind of thing, but they didn’t really tell you the content of your class – what you should teach. But over the years, just having talked to me, I can’t really name anyone. But having talked to people you know everybody just tends to give you a little bit of advice, and you collect together, you sort of build your own. But I think I have been very fortunate to have had very good mentors. I think you can learn from just about anybody you encounter. That’s the beautiful thing. Everybody probably has something to give. 19. What are the most pressing issues and concerns you have encountered in

teaching drawing?

Well, I think that in teaching drawing … depending on what level of drawing, it is a little disconcerting if you get advance level drawing students who really are struggling with basic concepts and basic techniques. I think that I struggle with making sure they have a really strong foundation, if I am in the beginning stage of the teaching. I teach drawing I, this time I’m teaching figure drawing considered as an upper level drawing course. But if I were teaching a beginning drawing course, I would really make sure that

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they know their tools, they understand perspective, they understand composition and form, value and light, and these were some things I really struggled with this past term. I had a lot of students within the class that didn’t have these. I felt like I had a certain level of expectation. I would say 95 percent of the class didn’t meet that level of expectation. So I had to go back a lot further than I would normally in a figure drawing class to try drilling the basics. You know … how do you look at a composition, how do you choose a composition, how do you lay it out, how you develop a drawing. So I think that concern I have right now in this program. It’s in fluctuation. We just had a new foundation director who is changing the structure. They used to take drawing 1, drawing 2, 2D design, 3D design, and that was it. Now figure drawing is actually a requirement to foundation. So it’s actually required at FSU now, which we are working on changing. So right now we are working towards having a 2D design, 3D design, and 4D design (with time based and digital), drawing 1, and then a success strategy seminar class, sort of to teach them, like how to approach collage. You know basically students sometimes think it is everyone else’s responsibility to give them an education. So this class sort of teaches them it is their responsibility to get an education, and really, what can they do to promote that. So it is a seminar workshop. And then we are working on a bridge class, after you take those. Right now you would normally take a figure drawing, but we want them to be aware they can then go in a color theory class, a figure drawing course, a drawing concepts course, or story board narrative drawing course. So there will be options for that final foundation course. 20. What are the biggest frustrations in your teaching?

There are several. I really enjoy teaching. So I think that I am really lucky with that. I like doing it, I like going there. But once again, specific to this university, I feel that the student body has a long way to go. I was sort of taken back by how loose they were. They seem not to be as serious as I would want them to be. A lot of talking, a lot of disruptive energy in the class, so I guess my frustration is really being able to engage the group. I think that’s my responsibility, to engage students. But I also think it’s their responsibility to accept that. I think the class size is too big to effectively engage students, and the studio space is too small to effectively, you know … we don’t have the right tools. We don’t have the right space. We don’t have the right lighting system to set up the model, to light them up properly. We have 19 to 20 students. It’s too many. 15 would be great. There is not enough space really to get them around there. They get close to the figure to see it. So you know there are a lot of these sort of situations because of the studio, and because of the lack of lighting. Because of the numbers, the students aren’t effectively engaged, so I think it’s a little frustrating. 21. What do you think will be your greatest rewards in teaching drawing?

You know, you see them every semester. You have students who really enjoy the process, are really sort of developing. You can see the progress. Usually you aren’t going to see each student from beginning to end, you just see a marked change. That’s really rewarding But it’s especially rewarding when students enjoy it enough to where they want to pursue it, and get excited and talk to you about what are the other artists I should be looking at, and are there people you would recommend. They just get that energy and that excitement.

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That’s a thing that’s really rewarding. But on top of that, you know I always find my work grows every time I work with them. I research other artists, I discover somebody new, and it is important for my own studio practice. Excitement! 22. What strategies do you use for evaluation or grading your students’ work?

It’s difficult. I think I try to present the project so there is a clear objective, so that I can just say, you know, did you or did you not meet the objective. And then I rank them based on information they should have gained through prerequisites of the class. I rank them on the information that I know I have given them and I have talked with them about. A lot of time I rank them on their motivations. That’s sort of an arbitrary one. I think a lot of times, you have a weak student who is not very skilled. But they try new things. They put a lot of time, energy, and dedication into it. Maybe it doesn’t come out to be as good as somebody who has really strong talent, but didn’t really put much effort in it at all. But as long as the person who is the weaker student tries really hard and is making progress, and making important discoveries, I definitely reward them for that. So it is a little bit subjective. Motivation definitely plays in, dedication, experimentation, not just unfruitful experimentation, but really investigating. I give them usually a two-part grade. That’s A, A plus, A minus, B, B plus, B minus. Each assignment should have a score, usually split into two parts. One is purely honest, technical, whether or not they did a job creating the piece. And then the second grade is sort of just on the effectiveness. Is it just really beautiful? Is there conceptual strength to it that very clearly presents itself? Did they just follow the rules or did they put a little more into it? For the final grade I average everything. I do turn the A minus into numerical grades for that average. The way I do that, say A plus is a range, it goes from 96 to 100 in the point range, or 97 to 100. And then if they have been really strong in class, really done a great job in class participation, involved in critique and working hard, I’ll give them the benefit of a high end number in that range. If they are sort of distraction in class, they’re fairly lazy, I will give them the lower end of that. So, they end up B plus. And it is a great student who really makes the class a better class. I will give him consistently an 89 score for that B plus. While, versus someone who is constantly leaving the classroom, or talking, or not paying attention. I will grade them instead of an 89, I’ll give them the lower end, which maybe is an 85 or 86 point value. So I like class participation coming that way. I allow 3 absences, no matter what, and after that I start to lower their grade a letter. 23. Do you think it is important to be a practicing artist in order to be a good art

professor?

I do. I think you need to have a studio practice of your own. Do I think you need to be the most brilliant artist? Definitely not. I think some of the strongest instructors, strongest teachers probably don’t have the most successful, sometimes even the most interesting art, but I do think they actively engage in the process of making. 24. What do you think about the relationship between drawing and painting?

I think drawing is really crucial to all of them, but I think drawing is central for painting. Even if you are working in pure abstraction, and non-objective work where you don’t have to have a true likeness of anything. Just to understand how to build the composition, knowing how forms relate to each other, and scale, proportion and energy. All that you want from drawing. I think also just the process of the way you make marks

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really, really very directly does affect the way you paint, the way you hold the brush, the way you move paint on the canvas. 25. What do you think about drawing and painting in relation to other disciplines

within visual arts?

I think that painting is fairly separate. But I feel that drawing is just a strong foundation for everyone. For everything whether it is photography, whether it is graphic design, sculptures. Painting helps those disciplines as well, but I think it’s less direct. But I think drawing teaches you about layer, about putting information next to each other, about process, all those things are hugely important in other disciplines. Plus it’s really a quick way to illustrate ideas before you spend a lot of time making them. Make sure those ideas fit in your conceptual frameworks. 26. Do you have discussions among your teaching colleagues about teaching drawing

and painting?

Oh, yeah, quite a lot. We have meetings. We do have meetings about it. Less frequently about specifically teaching and how to teach. Sometimes we do meet with adjuncts sort of to observe different classes. I haven’t done that here at this university, I have at others. But very informally, meeting with other colleagues, just sort of talking. A lot of times just about a specific type of student. You know what you do if you have a student talking all the time. How do you approach this? What becomes of this? Probably you have to deal with it, or ignore it. You know I definitely had people say how do you illuminate them, how do you really teach them about this concept. What is prospect do you use if someone is struggling with something? People are fairly open about asking, and getting influence. So, definitely, definitely. 27. Do you collaborate with other painting and drawing teachers? How? Give

examples?

Not formal collaboration here yet, but in the past I’ve taught collaborative courses with the History, English, and Music departments where we’d collaborate between all of them. So I taught class for two weeks. We would sort of take historical references, literary references, musical references, and art references, and pull them together, and sort of have this creative artistic class where students could choose to work. And from that there would be a period where students would reach out, sort of choose work with one of the foreign instructors on a more extended project based on what their persuasion was. Whether they like art, music, or…or just want to experiment with one or the other. So, I’ve definitely done that. But I also taught collaborative classes within the arts, which are really typically usually exciting. They are difficult to get through the administrative process because of who gets credit for teaching. You know it’s a little bit problematic, but I think in this period of cooperation the two instructors just have really great ideas, they usually figure out a way to make it work. That can be very useful just because you expand the knowledge base. The students get to see how two different people approach a similar topic. It’s really important and exciting. I think it’s an important thing. 28. Is there anything else you want to say?

I don’t know. I get to talk all the time. I just think that teaching is really something that’s incredibly important. And it’s nice when an instructor is there because they want to teach, as opposed to just the job that gives the paycheck. And it’s an opportunity to make art, and protect the environment, which I think you do find. But I

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think it’s just, you know, you learn from the students. You live in this space. I think that a good teacher is probably someone who is learning as much as they are teaching.

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APPENDIX H

INTERVIEW WITH PROFESSOR B 11/18/07 7:00pm

1. What’s your training background/where did you go to art school?

I went to a community college for two years. I was going to study botany. That was like, gardening plants. Then I got involved with the science, the Latin, the memorization, and terms. It started to lose some of its interest, a certain magic that I was interested in. I’ve always liked doing art, so I took a painting class. I really enjoyed it. So I got a two year degree at a community college studying art. It is called Mera Mec Community College in St. Louis. Then I went to another small college in St. Louis called Fontbonne College and got my, I guess, it was a BFA, a bachelor degree for painting. Then I went to Indiana University for two years to get my Master’s degree. 2. Did you study painting/drawing? 3. What courses did you take in

painting/drawing?

Yes, mostly a lot of art classes. So many painting classes! I took a lot of sculpture classes. I liked doing a lot of sculpture, but after some point I got to where I didn’t enjoy the process of sculpture, making molds, and the extra labor intensive work. I didn’t actually make any artwork. It’s the fabrication of structure to make the work. I got kind of tired of that.

So, most were painting classes. A lot of them were figure painting, figure drawing. That’s about as specific that I got with any of them. 4. What was the focus/emphasis of your training in relation to painting and

drawing?

Mostly figure painting, just in relation to terms of specific subject matter like that. 5. How long did you study painting/drawing?

I really start painting probably about 1974. 33 years, I guess. 6. What classes do you teach at FSU?

I teach painting class. Right now it is a Painting I class. The class I first taught was a self-portrait class, so, the idea of what self-portrait might be about, maybe just physical likeness. It is difficult for the students because they only know painting as a pictorial reference to themselves. They don’t really grasp the notion of self-portrait beyond a physical likeness. It’s been interesting. 7. How long have you taught painting/drawing class overall? 8. How long have you

taught painting/drawing at FSU?

I started teaching in 1985 here at FSU. It’s been about 23 years. 9. What’s your teaching load?

Right now it’s two undergraduate classes, then graduate students on top of that. 10. What’s a normal day like for you at work? (Describe your routine.)

The first class starts at 12:50, I paint in the morning usually, and then I get to school about 12:00. Get stuff ready. Check the mail in the art office, and have a Painting I class for two and half hours. Then another class in the same room, so it’s a pretty easy transition. Sometimes we have faculty meetings. 11. What’s your teaching philosophy?

You know, it really is to try to find what the students are interested in in their own mind, cause I don’t need to teach anybody to be like me. There is no reason why anybody

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should try to teach somebody to be like them. So you have to try to get into students’ heads and figure out what they really want to learn, even if they don’t quite know it. So you end up piecing together a lot of little clues, almost, and try to help them to figure out where their own personal insights may be. Sometimes it’s hard work like a detective story, adding parts of clues and figuring out the answer. 12-13. What’s important to be taught in drawing and painting?

There are so many things. Some of it just may be the history of it, and why people do it. Or it may be why, even more important, people do it today. And why humans do this thing. Particularly with painting and drawing, there is a notion that there is only the one of something. There are not like multiple produced or computer produced things. There is only one of that piece of paper which that drawing is on, or one piece of canvas. I think students don’t really understand or appreciate the uniqueness of what they do sometimes. 14. What do you feel are the basic skills that students need to master? And how do

you incorporate them into your class?

Sometimes they have to realize that it’s a lot of work. They’re used to instant gratification …the computers, anything … are short term interests and focus. With drawing and painting, the skills have to be built up over years, of thinking, of observing and learning. You have a lot of mechanical processes you have to learn. Particularly with the painting, you know how to build a canvas, how to build the stretcher. There are a lot of physical, mechanical skills, and that takes a long time for one individual to start to get a handle on. 15. What are your instructional goals for your painting I class?

For painting I class, a lot of it really is a first exposure to painting. So sometimes it’s just get them to comfortable with that, knowing that they can do it. You don’t have to worry about the styling of it. And give them some insight into the history of painting, so they can maybe appreciate it and enjoy looking at paintings. 16. How do you motivate your students?

Motivation is kind of a strange thing. Some people you can never motivate, so you don’t spend a whole lot of your energy trying to motivate. Other ones tend to be self-motivated, you just keep them focused and engaged. You have to get a sense for when you feel the project is dragging too long, so you find a new project. Or you build on a current project for the future. And you have to figure out sometimes what are the students’ paces. They don’t work on the same pace. One class doesn’t work with the same pace as the other class. I always end up being in a fairly loose structure. The schedule is produced depending on what that particular class has done and how far they get, when they are ready to move on. So we transfer to something completely different. 17. What do you have to say about the importance in teaching art skills, techniques

and creativity?

Skills are pretty easy to teach. Once they understand the mechanics, maybe how to work with a saw or figure out how to get the canvas square, you know those things maybe they just need to be exposed to, they can absorb that really quickly. Techniques are really kind of individual choices, and again I am trying be responsive to what that student seems to be really enjoying, whether it is really thick paint, really thin paint, loosely interpreted subject matter, really tight realistic, … I try getting a sense for what they are really interested in thereafter, and I work toward that direction. Creativity is

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probably the hardest part. Because they haven’t been exposed to art that much, they don’t really have to… Going through the education system nowadays, the students are bright. The students learn how to memorize things really well. They are not really asked to create anything or invent anything. So it is really difficult for them to come up with some interesting ideas. They come up with an idea, usually it’s a fairly solid idea, but it’s not very inventive. It’s hard for them to think past their initial idea where it could just become something much more different than anybody else might come up with. That’s probably a hard thing, just teaching somebody maybe a process to becoming creative. Just take your first idea, and think you are genius. I try to see what I can do to make more of a difference than if I thought personally that they are just lazy or they haven’t exercised that part of the brain. 18. Describe three of your most effective teaching methods which you use for your

painting class.

I do a lot of work particularly when they start on their drawings. You can explain thing to them, but you’re dealing with a visual language. So if you are trying verbalize things, sometimes it’s a difficult way to get the point across. So I just draw on their drawings, or show things: “Why don’t you do this? Do you see this?” They tend to say, “Oh yes, I see that!”

Same thing with paintings a lot of the time. It’s so easy just to demonstrate this idea of how to get this shape, how to get this form, how to get this color. Sometimes I show videotapes to them just to get them exposed to other artists. Particularly they are relatively unconventional artists. They have a preconceived notion of what art is or what a drawing should look like, and they really haven’t been exposed to other or more recent options for the visual arts, painting and drawing. In Tallahassee, you can’t go to a museum. You can’t point out something on a painting and say, “Look at how this artist did that.” So you end up using a lot of books, as good as you’ve got. Certainly you deal with the reproduction, the small scale. You lose the texture. That’s really the only resource you have to work with here in Tallahassee. 19. What do you think is the most important thing you teach your students?

I don’t know. It’s an interesting thing. I don’t know if there is a single most important thing. It’s hard to say. They never had to be very creative for the most part. So, maybe just inside, how to take advantage of their own individuality, and how to think differently, and how to trust the solution. A lot of time you trying convince them there is no correct answer, but there are a lot of boring answers. You don’t want one of those, you just want something new and different and individualistic. Maybe just how to be confident and individualist. 20. What artists or movements have influenced your practice as an artist or

teacher?

One of the things that I always try to do with the students is to break with the more art historical understanding of the sequencing of art and artists. Try to convince them or try to explain to them that they might not need to think of art chronologically, and to think of other artists as sort of non-time referenced. So you look at somebody who was painting in the 16 century perhaps, and try to have the same insight and same perseverance as them, and you might have somebody who is working now. I’m not trying to stick them in historical archives some place. You can certainly get stuff on books for hours of just inventing and imagining anything going on now. Sometimes again they are

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good for understanding information and memorizing things, but it’s hard for them to shake that structure of education. Things have to be chronological. No they don’t, when you talk about art! Good artists make specific time periods. 21. Are there any artist-teachers who have influenced you in your career? Describe

them and their influence.

There are a couple of teachers I guess that had a certain influence me. When I was in community college, the first painting teacher I had. He was an old guy, he was an adjunct. He probably retired, he came to teach painting class. We had still life set up. I didn’t really know anything about art. I didn’t really know anything about painting. So I am taking this class. We were studying still life. He came over, he did this painting of a little kerosene lantern. It was kind of magic to watch this thing. Just sort of happy. It wasn’t like you sketch it out or diagram it. You just look at it and kind of painted it. Just in a kind of magic way. I thought, “Oh, people do that.” It’s not like an engineer that has a blueprint. You look at something, you just interpret it. It’s a sort of enlightened moment. The other one is a teacher I had at the last two years in undergraduate school. He started talking about interests in other artist. He read other artists and trying figure out the larger painting significance. How to look past, maybe, just the subject matter of the painting and figure out why it’s a great painting, and maybe just why it’s a great story. So, you know it’s about … I hate to say … “interpreting” anything, but “appreciating” I guess. When in graduate school, you know the teachers are a little different. I didn’t learn anything specific maybe from them, but learned what to be like, or the expected avenue if you are going to be a professional artist. So you see these people working, you see these people exhibiting. There is another aspect to this whole art thing I never really contemplated very much. 22. What are the most pressing issues and concerns you have encountered in

teaching painting?

The students expect things to be done quickly, or they don’t realize the amount of time and energy that is involved in doing that stuff with any certain degree of competency. I don’t mean to say they are lazy, but they just don’t maybe grasp the amount of the focus that it takes, you know. ‘Cause to think about it and just take to somewhere … they think they have a vision in their head, and if it doesn’t become that vision, they feel like they failed instead of listening to what the image was evolving into and going with that. They tend to be a little frustrated. 23. What are the biggest frustrations in your teaching?

Most of my colleagues. The students for the most part are conscientious, they may not work hard as they should. But never much in the way of difficult students. I guess you have higher expectations of your colleagues maybe, in general, across the board. Some of them just… they might be ineffective teachers, they might be disengaged, they just don’t care. They might not be willing to pursue their own career very far. They do their own research. I often wonder what a lot of them do when they are not teaching. Obviously, they are not working on the career, not making art works. I guess they sit around and watch television or something. I don’t know what they do. 24. Do you have conversations with your colleagues?

Just the one I like. The ones I don’t like or don’t respect, I just tend not to talk with them.

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25. What do you think will be your greatest rewards in teaching painting?

It’s an interesting question. There were what probably comes down to maybe a few dozen real good students that you have over the years, but you can at least say that you maybe helped to get them to where they wanted to take that stuff. You feel good about that. Have the goal or have the success. They actually care. You talk to them a little bit. You make suggestions because a lot them just kind of become disappointed. The point when you’re done with college, you don’t know in which direction you are going right now. A lot of them just don’t know. They are in need of advice and suggestions. You feel great about that. 26. What strategies do you use for evaluation or grading student work?

That just depends on where they started and to where they evolved. I don’t have a set bar that everybody has to reach, because not everybody starts at the same level. How much information they’re willing to absorb and do something with. 27. What do you think about the relationship between drawing and painting?

While in a way they are so well related, in a way they are well apart. I am trying to, a lot of time, convince students painting really has a lot more in common with sculpture in a way. The idea of adding things, layering things, building of surfaces. Drawing tends to be kind of about a containment of information. In most of the cases, it’s a line around something. There is not that physicality of building up a surface of a column on a column. Probably the important thing I am trying get them to understand is that painting really isn’t as close to drawing as they think. But all they share in common is the 2 dimensional surface. It’s hard for them to understand that for a long time. They want to draw things, and fill them in. I tend to try to not let them do that, because that’s again the first thing coming into their head, “Oh I can draw, so I fill in. Oh, I’m painting.” In most cases, it’s a completely different world. 28. What do you think about drawing and painting in relation to other disciplines in

visual arts?

It’s way superior. I don’t know. The singularity of art, at least drawing and painting extend to the rest of them. Even sculpture, people have no problem. A lot of sculptors in most cases, making multiple images make images off their original. Every museum in the country got one of Roden’s Thinker at sometime. It’s another thing, it seems, to do that, to accept that idea with paintings and drawings. I did a lot of sculpture in school, I enjoyed it. It wasn’t as magical as painting. Painting is all about illusions. It’s always flat, whether you dealing with the illusion of space or you accept that flatness. It’s all flat. There’s a kind of magic to that. It’s a very limited possibility, but at the same time, an endless possibility. In sculpture you always make something. It’s like making a coffee table or making a chair. I mean there is a room. It’s a 3 dimensional thing, and has weight and mass. There wasn’t any magic to that I guess so. 29. Do you have discussions among your teaching colleagues about teaching drawing

and Painting?

We share sometimes ideas or projects that succeed. 30. Do you collaborate with other painting and drawing teachers? How? Give

examples.

No. I really don’t. Some faculty members do or enjoy doing that. I guess I don’t really do or probably wouldn’t want to do it. I don’t know. I think I just like the sort of

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one-on-one interaction with the students. We have a group critic or something like that, a lot of time you try to be on a committee with people with whom you have a sort of shared ideology or shared notion of approaches. Sometimes you don’t. Sometimes you get on one, but the discussion ends up being between the two faculty members, and the students just sit there, relatively disengaged. 31. Is there anything else you want to say?

I always enjoy the job. I always kind of enjoy this, You know, watch and help out all the students at one level or another. Sometimes I think about someday when I’m retired. You kind of wonder how much you miss it. You know probably I’ll miss some interaction and problem solving with the students about their works. At some levels I guess. 32. And do you plan to retire in 10 years?

I guess maybe like 12 years. The university sets windows of opportunity for retirement. They make economically really work for you well. And they make those windows of departure I guess. I don’t know when that will be. A lot of administrative work you don’t really enjoy. For teaching you are always dealing with the problems that you are interested in.

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APPENDIX I

INTERVIEW WITH PROFESSOR C 11/07/07

1. What’s your training background/where did you go to art school?

For undergraduate school I went to an art school in Memphis, the Memphis College of Art. And then for graduate school, at the University of Illinois. And later, a postgraduate at Harvard University, and then at MIT, Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston. 2. Did you study painting/drawing?

Yeah, while, painting and printmaking. Painting was my major in my undergraduate in art school. And, no, photography actually was my minor. Yes. Because in graduate school, I was also painting, but I had to have a strong minor, and that was printmaking. That’s in late 1970s. To me printmaking was so close to drawing anyway, especially etching, litho, and etching II. 3. What classes did you take in painting/drawing?

Even … do you mean … back to art school, like my undergraduate. There was a difference which comes up now for me with figure drawing, because I teach figure drawing this semester. I’m so upset that I teach it only just 4 hours a week. When I was in undergrad I had some time 9 hours a week. So, it was all about draw, draw, draw, and you went in and out, and you would draw some more. 4. What was the focus/emphasis of your training in relation to painting and drawing?

How long did you study painting and drawing?

So, undergraduate school was four years, graduate school was two years, then the rest of my life. 5. What classes do you teach at FSU?

This semester for instance, is the drawing II, and then figure drawing. Then I guess you can count the graduate workshop, it’s on Friday. It’s not a studio class. It is more like a seminar. But we visit studio, they do. These graduate students actually have three projects to work on through this semester. And they write one paper – one paper on an artist they choose. Then I also have readings. I give them readings. Throughout this semester, we discuss those readings. 6. How long have you taught painting/drawing class overall?

I even taught when I was in undergraduate art school. It’s more like 35 years. 7. How long have you taught painting/ drawing at FSU?

When I started out I was teaching mostly experimental design. But I did teach some drawing I, so that goes back fifteen years or so. 8. What’s your teaching load?

Two classes. Drawing II and figure drawing. 9. What’s a normal day like for you at work? (Describe your routine.)

One thing is preparing. I don’t have any morning classes. My first class at 1:00 … 10 minutes of 1:00 … 12:50, is the figure drawing. Then after that I have the drawing II. In the morning, usually late morning, I prepare for the classes. I like to bring something in, especially for drawing II, but then also for drawing I. I have a library at home, and I bring in examples of other artists. I don’t show too many slides, but what I do is this. Because I have been teaching drawing II for many years … this is the first semester a

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long time with the figure drawing … so, for drawing II I have about five or six years of students’ drawings, examples, digital images, etc. So I project these examples for them. So they get to see those examples. I have to try to make it clear that these, of course, are not to be copied, but sometimes it’s hard. Because I have students come up to me and just get frustrated. And they just ask, “Professor, what do you want me to do?” Usually the answer is not what I want you to do, but what you want you to do. You must do it. 10. What’s your teaching philosophy?

That has to be … no, but I had to qualify it. If it is a fundamental class or a basic class, my philosophy for drawing would be different from drawing II. Teaching art in general, like an umbrella, the whole bottle of glass, is that I try to think of myself as a facilitator first, where I can facilitate the whole idea of exploring, experimenting, taking chances, not always sitting comfortably in the middle of the room, but rather on the edge. In other words, not on the middle of the table, but sitting or standing out on the edge. And all too often I will say, ‘Fall off! Sometimes jump, take risks!’ And I mean this when I tell the students … I mean seriously, “Dare to be stupid!” So what I really mean is … don’t be afraid of take those risks. You are going to feel sometimes that you get egg on your face. This is an American expression. “Egg on your face.” You look like a fool. All of us are usually afraid to look like this. We don’t want to be foolish. So, I mean it’s not to say that my philosophy is to be foolish, it is to dare to take the risk. But sometimes, especially with the young students, the undergraduate students, maybe not so much as the graduate students, if I say “Dare to be stupid” I’ll get up on the table. This is where we all mostly want to be … in a warm bath. You know … a warm bath, taking a bath, very comfortable, in the middle. But what you want to try is to be on the edge, try jumping off some time. But I think it is human nature to be in a warm bath, very comfortable.

Just, the last thing I’ll say … let’s say drawing I compared to drawing II, or drawing 3 or experimental drawing … Drawing I, I think is important to have the fundamentals, line shape, volume, color, progressive … you step through those elements, understanding perspective, two dimensional depth, three dimensional depth. For drawing II, it is more exploration. That’s one of the problems in a good foundation class or course, basic design, or basic drawing, or basic sculpture … that you have the fundamentals of understanding what it takes to make a good solid piece of sculpture or a good fundamental drawing. “Let’s see representational drawing!” I mean, you know from your training. 11. What’s important to be taught in drawing?

Like what I was saying. In a basic classes it is, you know, what grammar is in English. You have grammar in Chinese. You have a strong foundation. From that foundation, is then to take the risk, to explore, to experiment. You know I had a very strict, maybe not as strict as yours, but a very structured drawing and painting background. You know how to draw. I went to a high school, art school. It’s a high school which had a museum in Connecticut, near New York. It’s the oldest art high school in the country. Norwich Free Academy. It’s a city, a small city in Connecticut. It looks like a college campus, it has a museum, and it has an art school. Have you ever drawn with silverpoint? That’s how I learned to draw the figure. 12. Do you have some influence from other teachers? Who’s your favorite teacher?

In all of my time … probably he has passed away. He was a painter at the Memphis Academy, it’s now called the Memphis College of Art. It has an undergraduate

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BFA and a graduate MFA program. His name is Ted Faiers and he did very, you could almost say very flat, paintings but they are very socially and politically smart. He would do paintings about issues of the day, but very seductively. Not abstract, not photographic, not hyper real, almost two-dimensional kind of, not cartoon either, also flat at the same time. He wasn’t a big talker like me. He taught by example in his work. And we would talk about ideas and social and political issues, a little bit, not a lot. I think of all of the years and all of the people I have known, he was the (greatest influence). I was in the undergraduate art school; I was young and impressionable, right? 13. In your career, who was the most influential teacher in showing you how to

teach as a mentor?

I never took any, like, Art Ed kind of thing. But I never took any of those courses, or anything, or sat in. This is a difference with an MFA, the studio, all studio. Of course it is a crab shoot, in another way. You can get some really lousy teachers. They are not interested in teaching, or do not have a training background. So what I know is of course what I pick from colleagues, or from talking with other artists or other people that are teaching. So over all these years, I’ve learned from all these other people.

Someone had passed away. Ed Love who was only here just before he died. Five or six years or so. I got to talk to him quite a bit. Also I was around him with students as well. I guess one thing I picked from Ed was that you can be pretty forceful, you can be very forceful, but it comes from your heart. You can be ….You don’t say, “This is shit.” You can say, “This is the problem with the drawing. This is what I think you can do to make this a stronger drawing. Look this is really beautiful here.” You have these ways of complementing. Complementing another works. Do you know what I mean? There are some things you are doing that are good, but also there is a way going around almost like the back door and saying, “Look! This really needs a lot of help. You’ve got to change this.” Like, the student says, “I really want the table to look three dimensional, it looks flat.” You just say, “Woo! You are in trouble. You’ve really got to get working on this. There are some possibilities. Here’s how to make it look more three dimensional, more spatial.” 14. What do you feel are the basic skills that students need to master? And how do

you incorporate them in your class?

That’s pretty straight forward in drawing, something like a fundamental class, the drawing I. But it’s something I am struggling with the advanced drawing classes, like drawing II or experimental drawing. I like to think that just by the content of the assignment, they are going to learn certain skills, certain technical skills and concepts. That’s important. I like to think that as they go along from drawing I, drawing II, or to more advanced classes, or whatever class it is, it is a balancing act between the content, the concept and the technique. 15. What do you have to say about the importance of teaching art skills, techniques,

and creativity?

Sometimes they overlap. The technical versus the conceptual. I think it’s important to have a good foundation, in case of drawing, a simple stepping from the first part of the semester, line, shade … to gradually go through volume, then texture, and color. So it’s progressive. The fundamentals, the grammars, the basics. With that, then in drawing II like I’m teaching now, to encourage students to use that skill. But then take chances with those skills. To really explore and sometimes I say, you know, “Look I want

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you all … you are being too careful. Dare to be stupid!” Sometimes I use this table as an example of the art world or the universe. Here we are in the middle of the table, right? We never get to the edge. If we get to the edge, we only get this close. I want you to fall off, and then get back up, taking chances. 16. How do you motivate your students?

It’s a good question. All these years I have been teaching, it’s still a challenge all the time. Especially now, I feel that, with all of the competition from media, the computers, the iPods, all of the plug-ins, the cell phone, the digital this and that. For sure, sometimes I think I got to be an entertainer rather than an educator. I have to up on the table, and dance. You know tap dancing. I get their attention, then I deliver the content after I do the dance. I don’t know, I feel that’s unfortunate.

But to keep them motivated, part of it is, you hope, that the assignments, for instance, in figure drawing, which you haven’t been sitting in on, but figure drawing … not only getting different models, but also .. right now my class was doing composition drawings. They are doing drawings from other models and incorporating them into a larger drawing. That’s all they have been doing up to now, up to mid semester. It is always an ongoing endeavor or it’s very challenging. I think of motivation and energy being very similar. I guess one of my favorite words is “challenging.” How can I challenge the student? I think if they are challenged with these assignments or projects that give them not just excitement, but a little bit of self consciousness about that. Seems like we live in an entertainment culture. You have to be entertained to be excited, to be involved. But I guess nothing is wrong with that. To get them involved is also challenging them at same time.

I am hoping by the example that I have from a big library of digital images of student work and other examples … obviously the fruit and vegetables. So within drawing II, for instance, one of the earlier assignments is that of the fruits and vegetable based upon Giuseppe Arcimboldo. So, Giuseppe Arcimboldo was a sixteenth century northern Italian painter. Students bring in their own fruits and vegetables and they draw a portrait. And they set up the lighting to make it look like … you didn’t get to see … I had a display of those in the Fine Arts building. I should have told you that, I just took them down. That one they really seem to get excited about, because they are doing something concrete ---a portrait. And then they’re also using fruits and vegetables that they are familiar with. It’s right in front of them, right? It’s so important that they have their own fruits and vegetables. The actual fruits and vegetables. So I pick up an apple. I say, “You see this apple? I want you not to look at the apple. But I want you to think about an apple and I know you all can think about what an apple looks like. You all know, probably you all think you know exactly what an apple looks like. But I’m telling you this apple I have in my hand, is not like any other apple in the world. And I want you to understand that when you are drawing it. This is apple is as unique as you, so when you drawing it I want to see that personality, the personality in the apple, in the whole portrait.”

It’s a challenge. We can close our eyes, we know what an apple looks like, what a pear look like, what a banana looks like. They are such common symbols. But sometimes I see students. They have the still life in front of them, like the apple or the pear, the banana. Here is the paper, their nose is stuck to the paper because they know what the banana looks like. It’s amazing. You’ve probably seen people do that, even in figure drawing. Sometimes I will go behind him, I’ll tap the, and say, “Look at the model.”

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They are like this. Stop drawing with your nose. They are so close. These are just bad habits.

I have a book that’s actually for children, in other words, the old illustration are very large. I think that is pretty good for illustrations. That excites them. I think that motivates them. Also the unexpected. I like to introduce from time to time to something that is not on the syllabus. For instance, when they come in, what I might do is, once they’ve settled in … they are working on a drawing, let say, or they just look like they are settled in but they are not very motivated. I’ll turn the lights off. All the lights off, dark! I ask them to be perfectly still, not to do anything. First, I tell them to stop. Whatever you doing, stop. I’m turning the lights off, of course they definitely stop. So one technique after I do that is … I have the small vaulted cap candles. They each get a candle which is lighted. They have the drawing boards too, so I have to set that up. And a piece of paper, or sometimes I give them small sheets of 8x10. I wait at least 5 to 10 minutes when their eyes become adjusted. I want them to be very quiet. I want them to be able to hear their breathing, and to try to breath very slowly, and also try to empty their mind. Try to think about either just one thing, a color, or a line, or the absence of it. Just to try to get them to focus on something, but out of the studio, here at FSU, Tallahassee, Florida. All of the other problems, they got a date tonight, whatever is going on that makes their brain busy, right. So they forget that. That, and also the challenge I give them to just breathe slowly. Don’t to do anything. Don’t drift with your mind. Then I say I would like you to draw something. Sometimes they had music, sometimes the music is classical, very peaceful. Maybe like Chopin, not very loud. But not all the time. So if I don’t have the music, then I’ll say, “I want you to draw a line. I want you to draw these lines, but I don’t want you to think about an object. I want you to be very peaceful, I want you to be very quiet.” So, it’s a peaceful and quiet line. They can see the paper, with just a very low light. And I know the blood pressure is low, their heart’s probably not going fast. Maybe there are a couple of them just, pang, pang…, “What the hell’s going on here?” Right?

So it could start with that peaceful music. I might say something that is very coarse, or, “I want you to make some line a little more erratic.” So anyway, this kind of …, so many possibilities. I don’t know I’m talking about the other thing. I’ve got all of these long sticks with charcoal on them. Or again I don’t want them to think about drawing a chair or drawing something realistic. I want them to look at the line and what the line has to give. I want them making lines spontaneously. For some it becomes natural to improvise that way. For others, they are in a way … I guess you can say, natural. In our culture, people like drawing to be on a paper, on a two-dimensional surface, something photographic. That’s what they revere and respect. So clearly to draw photographically is automatically prized in our culture. In many, not all. Some more than others, in some degree. I think it is important to have a grasp of the techniques and craft, to know how to draw. But anyway, the long sticks and charcoal just disrupts the routine. Other times, I just let them have the candle and the paper, and just turn off the light. And I say, “Would you please all stands up? I want you forget what you are doing. So we’ll do some breathing exercises.”

If you driving down the boring highway, and then suddenly there is a light, or an arrow directing you to turn one way abruptly … maybe it generates something in your mind, but you never thought of it before. For one thing, you’ve got to turn right. You’ve got to get off this boring road, right? I kind of hope these little tasks that I assign join

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joint the assignment. You know within the drawing assignments I like to think that there are enough interests in the context within the limitation. They have to use several threads – important social, political, and aesthetic issues in the context. What’s important to them? They might say the war in Iraq. Another might say no parking on campus. Another might say global warming, or the election coming up. So they don’t have to pick out one of those subjects. They can combine them. And then they have to incorporate the person’s name in the drawing as well. It’s a type of contemporary art, I called it topical issues. Issues like those that appear in National Geographic. 17. What do you think is the most important thing to teach your students in your

drawing classes?

Have confidence. To build the confidence. I would always say that everyone is talented. The technical talent varies, but they all like to explore. Sometimes they are afraid to explore. But they can’t come out of my class without the confidence to win, to play, to explore, to take chances, to dare to be stupid. All of those are so important, just being you. So many people are just stuck in routine, or in jobs. It’s a boring life, sometimes. Being an artist, you are a creative person. I think everyone is creative. 18. What art textbook do you use for your drawing classes?

I don’t use a drawing textbook. But I bring in different art books to show students. Like today I brought one. It’s actually on street art, on graffiti art, or painting or drawings in public spaces, or private spaces. The reason why … I haven’t found a book. If I taught drawing I, it probably would be something traditional. For instance, for figure drawing which I teach this semester, I will use a book … but it is not demanded, I will bring it in. And I’ll copy some from the original. I think I bought it at a local Barnes & Noble. It’s a very simplified with the torso and the cube. And how to begin, begin with gestures. But for the drawing II class … I get a lot of works through the mail that the publisher sends. I look through them. But for now I end up bringing in books on artists, design, graffiti artists and sculpture, and painting. I leave them on table, and have them come and look through the books. 19. What artists or art movements have influenced your teaching?

In the early twentieth century, before and during World War I, … the Surrealists. Then later in the fifties and sixties, the Situationists. Then after World War I the Dadaist. So what makes me curious about these movements is why somebody always related to them … because those artists start to look at art with an experimental quality. Experience outside of the studio, outside of the gallery, another world.

I will give you an example of a performance that I did with a student from the Academy of Vilnius where they have a picnic on a landfill, on a garbage can, so outside. Within this landfill with all of this open garbage, there is a beautiful table cloth, beautiful food. These young people sat around eating the food with acres, acres and acres of garbage. I should send you the website. It’s a beautiful image. But you realize what they are doing and where they are doing it. But the point I try to make is … Situationist.

The Dadaist were actually after World War I, one hell of a war. Millions of people died. People just came out and shot at each other this close. “There is a war, let’s go man!” A lot of the artists were really affected by that. Some people felt that this is insane. “How can I paint on canvas, or draw on paper?” So they start in the streets walking, performing. Technically it’s not so much. Mostly just ideas.

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20. What are the most pressing issues and concerns you have encountered in

teaching drawing?

The space, the studio space. The institution. The art department is always financially distracted. For instance, if we want to put in lighting, a floating light. The ceiling is so tall, they’re not sure how to do it. So we don’t have these tripods. That would be very important in figure drawing. I’m not sure we can do that. Issues involving having a proper studio environment is very important.

The other issue is having a strong foundation. All of the students should have it, if they go onto interior design, sculpture, graphic design, video production, painting, drawing … they should have the fundamentals. It is so important. If you have the fundamentals, you can do anything. For drawing I, to me the skills are more important than the ideas. Still side by side, sharing. The core is foundation. Then whatever you want to do in your life, performance, video, sculpture, painting … you can do because you’ve got this range of skills. There are other artists, instructors in other field. For instance, you decide if you want to make not a Statue of Liberty, but a very large sculpture, made out of bronze, You’ve got to learn how to cast, right? Tomorrow you want to do some very elaborate video production performance. You learn the Video Editing software, all of the programs. So some people call these the foundations. I’m talking about as a discipline only. You discover what it is you need. But in this institution, especially in public university, you got so many students. Some are very, very talented. They need to be fair to them. 21. What are the biggest frustrations in your teaching?

One is having a good, well-equipped studio. Maybe that’s just my age too, I wish students could be more motivated. I’m always trying things, other than standing on the table dancing, or strip teasing. So I get frustrated because I think every student is talented. But is every student motivated? Maybe? I’m trying to motive them. You see the talented ones, and just go with that. Life will be beautiful. 22. What do you think will be your greatest rewards in teaching drawing?

When I see students, and just say, “My God! I’m not making them suffer for no reason at all!” I said ‘not making them suffer.’ I give an assignment, it will have limitations. Young people like total freedom, machine gun everything first. Then see if you can learn something or get something out of it. So in drawing II, I have limitations, like with Persona, or whatever it is. What gets them excited is, when they made this unbelievable drawing, an unbelievably challenging drawing, with all the limitations that are given them to kind of focus them. The small area … all the possibilities. They see all the possibilities. They have seen the excitement on the drawing and in them, in the student too.

23. What strategies do you use for evaluation or grading student work?

Grading: In relation to let's say a drawing II class, I grade according to the

student's attention to the drawing assignment's context. In other words, did the student

understand the limitations of the assignment and within those limitations produce a

fantastic, knock your socks off drawing. That results in a "fantastic grade." However, if

the student for instance does NOT pay attention to the limitations of the assignment, the

grade suffers accordingly. Critique participation is an integral part of the final

assignment grade too.

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24. What do you think about the relationship between drawing and painting?

Historically they related to each other. Usually drawing is like the step child of painting. Some painters think drawing is a way to get to their painting, they draw on canvas too. Or as a preliminary. All of that appeared, certainly, historically. In fact, before the Impressionists, before they paint outdoors, artists would go draw landscapes and go into the studio and paint the landscape indoors, from the drawing. I think drawing could be something that simply stands on its own like painting or sculpture. Or it’s about ideas. It is important to be able to doodle on paper, to do a lot of nonsense on paper, and not get very serious of it. Drawing is a help for me because drawing helps me relax more. It’s so instantaneous. There is high art like painting and sculpture. And everything else below that is drawing, printmaking, photo, video. Painting is held very high in West, I think in your culture too, right? For sure. 25. What do you think about drawing and painting in relation to other disciplines

within visual arts?

It can be interchangeable with other disciplines as well. It doesn’t have to be ‘This is painting, two-dimensional. Drawing is two-dimensional.’ You can take inspiration from outside the studio. You can actually do your work, your performance, your video outside the studio. It is important to you as an artist. It can be historically inside the studio. That’s perfectly fine. But it’s so broad. It’s more interwoven together. 26. Do you have discussions among your teaching colleagues about teaching drawing

and painting?

Yes, but not enough. At faculty meetings, probably not, at overall faculty meetings. But two weeks ago, at a meeting of painting and drawing faculty, so there was a discussion, but not enough. I had been to the foundation meeting, there are ideas. So that’s very important. For instance, next semester, in January, we have a retreat, where we go a day or two days, and stay in a hotel. I have been to some of those, where there are more discussions about philosophy, teaching. 27. Do you collaborate with other painting and drawing teachers? How? Give

examples.

I have in the past, but not recently. More recently, what I’ve done is to invite someone into class from either painting or drawing, or a photographer, to discuss their work. So they would come in and show their drawings. Several years ago before Janis Hartwell retired, we did a workshop together based on the environment, our earth environment. And students were to do a project around readings. It could be drawing, it could be sculpture, it could be almost any media. It is hard to do because of the way bureaucracy is set up. But Janis and I would meet together with students. 28. Is there anything else you want to say?

Nothing other than … give students enough information and skills, so they can just be excited about what they can be as an artist, and not get cynical and disappointed. Keeping their confidence, believing in themselves. It’s hard. It’s a hard struggle. Basically giving them tools.

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APPENDIX J

INTERVIEW WITH PROFESSOR D 03/06/2008

1. What’s your training background/where did you go to art school?

For getting a BFA, I went to the Art Institute of Chicago where there was more installation and very postmodern art. And then I went to the Florence of Academy of Art which stressed classical realism, that was in the style of French Beaux-Arts. My masters degree is from the University of Delaware, but I was studying mostly with the conservation department on the materials and techniques of the old masters. 2. Did you study painting/drawing?

Exclusively. And art history. 3. What courses did you take in painting/drawing?

In my undergraduate, I took a lot of figure drawing and figure painting, and figure sculpture in clay, and also welding at the Art Institute of Chicago. At the Florence school, we learned classically how to draw with charcoal from cast and figure studies. One year in Italy, a whole year. Usually that program (the one in Italy was a certificate program) would require like three to five years to complete. So I really just …I did what would have been the equivalent of the first, and perhaps part of the second year. And then graduate school. It was not nearly self-directed study because I had done many painting reconstructions. But the courses that were offered for art conservation were working with contemporary knowledge from spectralisis and X-rays of what old masters used. So it was working from the reports from the conservators about what they had found about the artwork. We did reconstructions of Vermeer, Manet, Canaletto, Cenualiy. 4. What was the focus/emphasis of your training in relation to painting and

drawing?

The materials and techniques of old masters. Not just one focus, but kind of split between the Primitive Northern Renaissance and what would have been Billy Brezai/Grizelle reziled (unintelligible) painting with artists such as Vermeer. I was interested in icon painting, so I worked a lot with egg tempera and gold leaf. 5. How long did you study painting/drawing?

I feel I studied painting for 25 years. But, on paper, eight years of higher education. 6. What classes do you teach at FSU?

Materials and technique. It’s my own workshop, so I have graduate students. And I like to work with students one-on-one, talking about what materials would be best for them to execute their work, and what processes to develop it. And then painting I, painting II, drawing II. I will be teaching a critique course, as well as color. 7. How long have you taught painting/drawing classes overall?

Six years. 8. How long have you taught painting/drawing at FSU?

Since September, so really, it’s been seven months. 9. What’s your teaching load?

This semester three courses, last semester two courses, so 2 and 3 for the whole year. 10. What’s a normal day like for you at work? (Describe your routine.)

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On average I have meetings in the morning or at lunch. And I prepare for my class in the classroom. Prepare the room for the students. And for example, today we had a demo where I brought in another professor who showed us how to do any encaustic process. But generally I would do a demo, and do a lecture, and discuss each course of the assignment with the students. I would focus individually on the students, redirect for the entire class, and then talk about what happens in the next class. Break it down for next class. What is nice is that in the materials and techniques class, I leave many other things out so that I can show my painting II students the same thing the prior class was learning. So that there is bleed through. I like to have an open door policy, so I invite my students from later on in the day. They always come earlier, or there is a special demo. I try to have students from painting II come to catch the techniques lecture. I try to get the students involved and come in, and even with the figure drawing at night. I try to invite other students from other classes. Other teachers know that if there are any students that have problems and need more hours, they can come to my section. 11. What’s your teaching philosophy?

I try to help the students facilitate their ability to have a concept, and have the materials and techniques they are using reinforce the concept, so that their intent, their subject, their content, and the materials all reinforce the integrity of the project. I like to expose students to conceptual ideas so that their works are about ideas. But I am not interested in students’ work looking like my work. I am happy to expose any element of my work in it, when it’s appropriate, I don’t mind using my own work as an example, but I am not interested in having students paint like me. I’m most interesting in finding out what motivates them, and help them access what their vision is. 12. What’s important to be taught in drawing?

drawing, I believe that … to start representationally. And then representationally show them elements of design and value. And how to see, and how to break down reality into a structure so that it doesn’t matter what you are looking at, you can represent it accurately. 13. What’s important to be taught in painting?

Painting with color, is another element of design with the composition. So I try to teach them how color resolves the composition. And that is mostly done at the abstract level, even though, you have to have the drawing, in my opinion, even if you are to unlearn it, and work only abstractly.

So there is a process which is integral. Sometimes you have to unlearn things in order to have progress. I like to have them in a very rigid beginning and foundation, and then do some assignments that purposefully disrupt their understanding of what they’ve learned, so they start to have an original voice. 14. What do you feel are the basic skills that students need to master? And how do

you incorporate them in your class?

At the painting I and drawing I level, I am much interested in that they are connected with the materials, that they are fighting the materials, that they are learning to analyze and strategize for having successful composition and observing the world. If they don’t understand how to perceive it’s very challenging to get them to have the hand-eye coordination, to get the results to connect. And at the painting II and drawing II level, I am much more interested in what they have to say with the media, and I expect that they have some exposure and/or mastery of the media. By the time they get to painting II, they

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are able to refine their technique. They really begin to have ideas or concepts they’re expressing. They are willing to experiment, experiment perhaps to the point where they fail. If they learn why it doesn’t work, learn how those ideas can be expressed through painting or drawing. And alternatively, they’ll learn that painting or drawing weren’t the best media, perhaps, for all of the ideas. 15. What are your instructional goals for your painting/drawing classes?

My goals are to … for painting II this semester, it’s to have a variety of assignments that are based partially on observation and partially off of an abstract concept. That may have some research attached, so it might be advantageous for them to look at other painters, go to library, look at magazines, have political opinions. Or if they are used to being an indoor painter, go outside. There are a variety of ways to start a painting, not only technically, but also conceptually. Are these formal issues that you are trying to resolve or conceptual issues that you are trying to resolve? Come at a painting from as many different directions as possible as a survey. But I want the students have their own voice. 16. How do you motivate your students?

Exposure. I do give power point presentations that show them old masters and contemporary artists. I like to encourage them to be an art person. I am less following through on that this semester. I did take them over to see the students, the older students, the MFA, the BFA students installing their exhibitions. So they knew what they were looking forward to. What the goal was, to have these major exhibitions. But I am planning trips to Ringling in the fall, and one to New York City in the spring. Let students have much exposure to actual art, because it’s very frustrating to realize that some things are digital representations, and quite unlike the actual experience of art. I think, trust motivates them a lot, because they realize very quickly that I am interested in their goals. I’m interested in (unintelligible). So they know that I will be honest with them and tell them which things are working or not working, and I am happy to work with them. I have already given them encouragement and directions towards the idea to do the work. It seems to be a successful practice, you need successful motivation. So I think I am able to provide them strategies for that success. 17. What do you have to say about the importance of teaching art skills, techniques

and creativity?

I have a lot to say. I’m developing a lecture that speaks about the importance of art, teaching art, but also about understanding that inheritance that we have, culturally. Art is a privilege and if we trade perceived freedoms for our abilities to express ourselves freely, it can jeopardize our ability to have art. So I’m very interested in students in general understanding art history, so that they can understand that this is not an arbitrary thing … you can or cannot do art, it may or may not be art. But that it does something very powerful, very influential. And that is a great privilege that could be taken away if you don’t preserve it.

In regards to the skill, and being a technician, my feelings are also very passionate. Which is … if you don’t maintain the knowledge base of how the masters made paintings, you lose this knowledge. And with the death of each master painter, it was like a library burning down because very rarely they passed on their process of their techniques. They would just go out, and it would be a mystery. And then we would go through a period of time when no one kept this knowledge alive.

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Sometimes the workshops could help the situation. Hundreds of people were trained. But it has to be with intent to keep those traditions maintained. It’s just whether or not someone cares enough to share and create other artist educators. For example, Gérôme taught hundreds if not thousands of people, and Gérôme studied with Ingre and David, so he was passing on these techniques. These techniques then passed on to Ekins, Ekins studied with Ives Gammell, Ives Gammell studied with Lack, Lack studied with Daniel Graves, and Daniel Graves is who I studied in Italy. So it like passed from master to master to masters, so that there is some great inheritance in skill.

It also becomes a form of taxidermy which cannot (laughs) be terribly original. You really recreate somebody else’s vision from two to three years ago. So there is a tension, “push and pull” between maintaining what was in the past and responding to what will be innovative in the future.

So lastly, how do I respond to creativity? Which is … Carl Rogers, the psychologist, maintains that it is very important to study art, and important in every pursuit, whether it is science or medicine or any type of entrepreneurial adventure, because with art you have to be daring. You have to be strategizing. You have to problem solving. You have to use the ability to think in less predictable ways in order to solve the problem. And this creates innovation, and honestly, it also creates a kind of willingness to persevere. I think it strengthen your spirit. And while, as an educator, I do not create artists, I think I do create better thinkers. And they can resolve problems more creatively as the result of the education.

So I think that is a qualitative life-enhancing degree, or pursuit of study, but I cannot be wrapped up in the potential success specific to the artist. 18. Describe three of your most effective teaching methods which you use for your

painting/drawing class?

One is horribly contemporary. Either I take them directly into a computer or I show them the picture … “This is what I’m thinking of. Here is the artist, here is the artist’s statement, the artist’s biography.” … all of it. Or, unfortunately second to those … books. There are so many things that I want to show that are not in any books. There is no book on certain topics. So while I have much access on internet, I would prefer to be showing them books. But internet is free, books cost money.

Generally they trust me enough … I ask permission if I may work on their work. I think that it helps them with authorship and authenticity, that I am much more interested in them subverting their desire to have total authorship of their work, I don’t want necessarily to compete or share. It’s merely that I can show them, and they trust me. And by showing them that I know what I’m doing, and I’m willing to pick up the materials. I’m not just going to talk to them, I’ll show them. I’ll demonstrate on other work, but I will work on their work, and I will show them these are the steps that you must take in order to achieve the effect. Demonstrations, but also … early, not later. But early. Just that ability to work with them quite literally.

Ah … one more, let’s see … that I think is very effective … We have this large problem in our Florida State system … where we have access of surplus materials. We have no equipment fee. That’s why we are working in an environment that looks abysmal. It’s less than satisfactory. However, as a result of Florida, I don’t know

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legislation perhaps, each student has money that is allocated out of the tuition toward their supplies.

So we have this money in excess because we almost can’t compete with more supplies to pay for it.

But I can ‘cause I’m a materials and techniques teacher. So what I like is to promote the new open door policy, and invite students or even graduate students, so that they can come in and work with the supplies. This is something I can do only on a small scale this semester, because I just got here. But in the future this is what I want. I want them to have access. I want them to be able come in at any time, and be able to use encaustic, acrylic, or oil, as long as they are not to take the tool home and work with it here. I would like them to have infinite exposure to whatever materials they want to work with, and just provide them an environment in which to experiment. 19. What do you think is the most important thing you teach your students?

Not sure. How to not give up. (laughs) One of the most of important things I tell them is that failure is part of success because it is too easy to be defeated and walked away, and never do something again. Say no. By all means be patient. 20. What are the textbooks you use for your painting/drawing classes? Why did you

choose them? If you don’t use a textbook, why not?

Specifically I would like to have Pixie Moore from Britain. An extremely small book, a primer on painting, formally available in Britain. I am not certain if I can get permission to reproduce it, or if I can just reproduce it. It’s only about thirty pages, and it talks about pretty much everything you need to know about oil painting. And it’s really insightful. And I would like all of the students to have that because it’s short and concise. What is a primer? Sometimes students don’t know what a primer is. What is sizing? You know just these things. How do you put it on? Very simple, not too much information. It’s just adequate, and short. I don’t have it because it’s not available, so I am trying to resolve that. I showed them mine, and they thought it was great. I often read my books.

I have always found books that are available from the internet, but I have never required the students to have the current edition. This is because I don’t know exactly how the scam works. But if you are a teacher, and you always insist that they all have the same edition or the current edition, it costs 4 or 5 times more than older edition. I don’t understand what kind of evil is currently here, making students go get the latest book.

I do show them a book that would be beneficial to help them accomplish their work. I think what is more important is having a library like the one that I am borrowing from, from another professor. I can take a book from their office, and students have access to the books, and have them available. I wish in our school we had a lounge where the books would just be available, and to have those books close to the studios. It is great to have a library, but it is better to have accessible books near the art space. 21. What artists or movements have influenced your practice as an artist or

teacher?

All of them. Julie Heffernan, so many things about timing … she was the first Latino painter who was doing old master painting techniques. I did study with her, but she personally didn’t teach me anything except that going to Yale makes you a jerk.

I’m so interested in materials and techniques. I learned from everyone, my ex-husband (laughs), he is now a conservator. Some bizarre things happen when you get married. XXXX was a great painter. We got married, he never painted again. He was my

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painting coach. So kind of like Bouguereau marrying his best student, she never painted again. You don’t know … she was painting Bouguereaus, probably. XXXX never painted me. I don’t know if that works. I think I accidentally cannibalized potential.

I study from dead artists because they are easy to learn from. After you’ve learned the fundamental Holbein, Vermeer, and Mumbling, it teaches you a lot. Daniel Graves with the French Academy of Art was an instructor who had so much study with the masters as he was studying with three hundred years’ tradition. And I could teach your dog how to do this type of painting because I’m so dogmatic and rote. And you do step A, step B, step C … and it was complete abasement of any kind of personal expression, zero. I had an exposure, but in terms of a really truly personal connection with somebody who mentored me, I have somehow avoided it in general. I am very rebellious, and I think that why I sought out an authority that wasn’t alive. And that is why I purposefully attach myself to those painters who had already deceased.

Brown was one who taught me how to do painting with instruction. And he said I was superb of all in that class, because I was asking too many questions. Why I started teaching was because I had so many awful teachers. Ha ha, ha … I was teaching my high school art class because my high school art teacher was awful. He was hired to coach football, and he was so bad that they removed him from football immediately cause no one wanted him coaching the football team. And they left him in painting to linger for nine years. Every day I looked at him for 4 years because I refused not to take art. I was sitting there and I was teaching all the other students how to draw. And I’ll just do my own work and he will give me my A. All my senior year I wrote a manifesto on why he should be removed and how he wasn’t supporting art and education.

And I reinforced it with all empirical evidence of the numbers of students that would enter his class as freshmen, and how few exited as seniors. And how he couldn’t have worse … you know, these things may have been listed on the books, but he didn’t offer them. And he didn’t offer them, because the numbers weren’t there. But I showed, you know … I just showed his history of neglect, and his inability to provide what we needed.

Hilton was one at the University of Delaware, a formidable teacher. He was very structured, millions of times more structured than I am now. He has been teaching for 30 years. I would say, he was the most influential. He was also such an authority. He also knew that nothing was wrong because no one can be that right. I think it is important to say that you just don’t know something, or that you think this is how it is. 22. Are there any artist-teachers who had influence on your career? Describe them

and their influence.

Yes, I learned a lot about what you don’t do. I am a part and hope to continue to be a part of the think tank that I stirred. I’m still doing that … trying to get national recognition of higher education for art, at the undergraduate and graduate levels, because honestly I think we’ve been in the dark ages. I think it had been medieval and entirely unstructured.

So you can have the best and the worst, but there was no standard. And the standard is coming, and it turns to the old master techniques, really, in the last ten years. Under postmodernism they disregard the structure, while even maybe under the guise of Bauhaus. Pretty much it was under the teacher. If you feel it, do it. You know, kinesthetic, very loose, very free. I think that depends on a swing the other way. We will

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go through a period of being much more dogmatic. The downfall of that will be we will have an enormous amount of mediocrity, without the highs and lows. But it will be standardized. And then it will fall apart again.

I am excited about that revolution. It can occur. It hasn’t in the entire higher education system yet. The last time that education and art were together was in the 20s. Then art and education split, and we need to bring them back together. This is starting at FSU, it’s not national. We will make it national. Not because of me. Mary Stewart is going to build a national institute. I am extremely impressed. She is doing it, so I don’t have to. I support her, but I don’t want to do it. 23. What are the most pressing issues and concerns you have encountered in

teaching drawing and painting?

That students take art for granted and don’t understand what they are inheriting, what their mission and potential is, for what art can be – to expose people or change people’s lives. I just want them to understand how powerful it is, how many different ways art can be creative, and how it has evolved. So I am really interested in biography, and teaching the context in which art was created, because so many things were done in the same context.

Art may not be the same art it was when it was created, because of the mind of the people, if they don’t maintain comprehension, why it was and what it was. If you are a contemporary Jewish woman who has an Asian art collection, and you see the entire collection of religious paintings, you think it all is Christian crap, that is an uneducated point of view. Helga donated the Asian art collection to Ringling thought that. So it just shows that she was very uneducated. It just shows that when you just hear something, you don’t necessarily understand it.

So the more exposure I can give my students … so that they can say, “Yes, this all-black painting by Ad Reinhardt is art.” More than that … “This is why it was known as art in that context.” You might think that it has not been created anywhere. Of course not! Because somebody has already done it. 24. What are the biggest frustrations in your teaching?

Try to create my professional work in addition, to service. In addition to creating my professional work.

I’ve had wonderful students this semester and last semester. Yet, I have had class with horrible students, and it’s partially because I was inheriting the bad structure from before Mary got here.

So we had beyond … beyond the worst structure. It was just a shock to come here from another system, (and I think I have had some students that were challenging in the past) and to end up in a way I would consider to be typical, and not the students fault. And realize that their foundation is totally lacking. It’s devastating, it’s underwhelming. And more than anything, it defied my expectations of what they should been. If I thought they were all planning on working with people who were severely mentally disabled, my expectations would have been different. Or if they were getting PhDs in art education and had never worked with art materials, that what have been a different set of expectations. But my expectations for them, being majors and at their age level, we didn’t meet. So I am hoping that will forever be different. 25. What do you think will be your greatest rewards in teaching painting/drawing?

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I am very much interested in long term personal interaction with my students and knowing that I was able to make their lives more meaningful and more significant, no matter what kind of interaction that is. It is just something I want for my own existence. If we have someone who wants to know, who wants to do art, who wants to communicate, connected, we will make them better. It’s through the power of observation that we can maintain that. To be an instructor that only focuses on the student for one semester and then it’s out of my hands, I don’t want be that person, uncertainly putting people through the program. Now this can’t be with every single student I’ve ever had. However, this is what is meaningful, finding out how much you are changing the world. 26. What strategies do you use for evaluation or grading student work?

I am much more interested in having very clear expectations and outcomes, with the freedom to experiment. But they know they must fulfill certain requirements. And then you need to be able to help them understand how they’ve been evaluated. Then they can self-evaluate how they achieved the assignment. I’m less interested in being a dictator, and more interested in finding how far they were able to bring themselves.

In the end, it was very clear who was achieving the highest level, and who was trying to add to it, and who was marginally covering the assignment, and who was not…

I’m more freely, personally experimenting with giving Fs. Now I realize that during the first seven years I taught, I midwifed the lower third of the class. I was too interested in that, and now I’m not interested in that. I can participate too openly, and they are working and have their goals. I mothered them, and I might as well have done all the work, because I may have kept them in class. I kept them working. But I’m now experimenting with letting that one-third go for the sake of conserving my own energy. While, if they fail, maybe this semester they weren’t supposed to be in this class because they couldn’t handle time constraints. And that’s their problem. It’s more a real life learning than a painting learning. But they didn’t know how to manage their time.

I do have a student on the other hand … and this has nothing to do with intelligence … I have a student that I suspect has very low IQ or severe disability. I’ll collect students who are willing to work hard, from other teachers, but it was an unsuccessful match, and she now comes to my class because I know how to direct her.

I guess I’m more interested in the student that’s not even mine who wants to work, than I am in students who I have to control, and listen to, and make a excuses for, and get in between love and their personal life, and why they don’t have the work done. Now I’m just losing them.

Or there is another 5%, they work better at home. They work better work at home where they actually paint. I am experimenting with making attendance optional. I quit taking attendance for painting II. It’s an experiment. I may never do this again. But I think we are creating a society which is ambivalent. I think we are creating a society of people who unable to be an adult. If you go to work where they are just taking attendance, you just get fired if you don’t go to work. So why am I treating my students like they are in the second grade. This is my philosophy presently. I may change by next semester. But this is my first experience for this semester … so far I have the same number of A, B, and C students. And these students are happy.

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And I checked with other teachers to find out what their numbers are. We start with 16 students, but now we have this many. So it doesn’t seem to be that similar … that just I had a better attendance in the past. But I was exhausted. I don’t think it creates a quality environment. It is not “leave a child behind.” It is “water the flowers, not the rocks.”

If I’m constantly teaching towards becoming a nominator and try to bring everybody, it’s really rough, which I consider to be embarrassing. I don’t have the energy I once did. Something has to go. I guess my feeling is that as an adult, you have to make a decision. How bad is it? My feeling is if you miss a few classes, your works perhaps are already failing. But there is that exception … one student who might have mental problems, or be depressed, or for whatever reason cannot work in the room. They might still – I am still wondering for this exception – if they still can get an A at the end with horrible attendance, if their work is better somehow. If they don’t need me, then the teacher obviously … I don’t know. 27. Do you think it is important to be a practicing artist in order to be a good art

professor?

You not only must be a practicing artist, but also you must practice art in a classroom because you can’t even know what you need to say unless you are doing what they are doing. And you can’t say too much. But I think somehow, in a room, especially with figure drawing with observation, hand-eye coordination is one thing. Then making that communication, you have to process it. This is especially being a professional artist. I don’t know how to do this. To have expectation of being a professional artist, a teacher must have experience. Otherwise, I’m teaching other teachers to be art educators. How many of those do you meet? I don’t know (laughs). 28. What do you think about the relation of drawing and painting?

I think they are interconnected. They have a wonderful dialogue. But students who paint and don’t draw lack structure. Student who draw and don’t paint haven’t been given that authority to represent reality on a canvas surface. I think it’s wonderful to be able to teach, I want to actually teach them both. 29. What do you think about drawing and painting in relation to other disciplines

within visual arts?

I think exposure is great, exposure to other media. So to have exposure to ceramics is good. It could be photography … But at some point you also have to specialize, becoming an expert. So early on there is exposure, then you must become an expert. Or, you become an expert in multimedia, which means you have everything, but are not an expert. 30. Do you have discussions among your teaching colleagues about teaching drawing

and painting?

We have no time to discuss anything because we are so busy trying to hire people and have exhibits, and critique, and grade work. Yes, I would suggest that at the beginning of the year we have more discussion about what is to teach, how to teach. We have a wonderful group of painting and drawing instructors. There is interaction, conversation, and dialogue, and there is just a healthy environment between drawing and painting. I can be social, and just walk in someone else’s class. I’m teach drawing II, and it’s so nice to exchange assignments from the outside. And to find out what their best assignments are, and my best assignments. The more excited we are, the more excited the students are. I’m bored, and they are bored. How awful! Yuck!

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31. Do you collaborate with other painting and drawing teachers? How? Give

examples.

This is my first year, I have not have enough time. But for example there is a new hire, so I am excited for when she gets here. 32. Is there anything else you want to say?

This is my first year here. In my career over the last two years, I have had this new commercial component. And that can be helpful because I have done so much navigating. I can be that much more interesting because I can talk about all of the artists I’ve met and exhibited with, and make the external living art world alive within Tallahassee which is just about nowhere. But I would say I think I might have been a better teacher right out of graduate school than I am now today, because I can do better. So I’m looking forward to being better.

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APPENDIX K

FIELDNOTES OF FOUR PROFESSORS’ DRAWING AND

PAINTING CLASSES AT FSU

PROFESSOR A: LIFE DRAWING

Observation 1

10/04/07 3:45pm-6:15pm

Location: ATL 02

The life drawing classroom is located in the “Church” – an old church that is now

used for painting and drawing classes. The Art Department owns different buildings on campus. The church is located just across the street from the Art Department, and it has two large studio classrooms. Also located there are several offices of faculty members of the painting division. Most of the painting and drawing classes for undergraduate students are held in here. There are two entrances for the church, the front door and the back door. Upon entering through the front door, one sees two faculty offices, one on either side. Passing the offices, there is a painting studio of about 800 square feet. Behind the painting studio is the drawing studio. Upon entering through the back door, there is a hallway with a vending machine at the end. On the left and right walls there are several show cases which display various student works. The first room on my left is the drawing room. It’s about the same size as the painting studio.

Inside the drawing studio, about twenty metal easels and three wooden easels are set around a round table. The table is in the center of the room and covered by two pieces of felt. A wooden stick lays on top of the table. An old cushion has fallen to the ground. The floor is covered with black charcoal dust and looks dirty. About 15 gray drawing horses (benches) are set around the table between the easels. On the wall behind me, there is a blackboard, with a white clipboard hanging next to it. In front of the blackboard, there are five studio spot lights (with stands), and a movable screen, on which is hanging a large life size anatomy poster. Nearby, in the corner of the same wall, there are a couple of white pedestals. Against the wall in front of me there are three metal archive tables with horizontal file drawers attached to them. On the left wall there are 3 large white clipboards, each measuring 8x5 feet, which are usually used for hanging students’ works during the critique. On the right wall, there is a rolled projector screen. A U.S. flag is hanging from the ceiling. The roof is very high and the ceiling is triangular. A white wicker sofa and some metal stools are scattered around. On the right side of the entrance, there is a sink with a trash can under it. A fan is standing near the trash can.

Today there is a new model, a male model in his late fifties. When I arrive there, the model had already arrived, and was waiting for the instructor. Eight students are sitting on the drawing horses preparing supplies.

Professor A (PA) arrives at 3:45pm and she speaks to the whole group: “Today we will move forward. Spend 5 to 10 minutes walking around and setting up your composition. This composition will fit in your 18’x24’ rectangular picture frame. Look at the negative space with the same interest as you would your positive space. Psychologically engage your drawing. Break up the composition. Make contact with the

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format. Keep proportions correct. Draw proportional shadows, and make corrections to your shapes. Maintain the relation between the shadows and shapes. Not like where you sitting, you have Mr. Skeleton here you can see, with your body. Hold your finger up to see angles and relate the picture frame to your paper.” PA set up a skeleton with the model so that students could compare both while drawing.

PA asks students to move closer to the model, and then she begins to move around the room helping individual students, talking to them about their drawings.

“Once you set up the initial composition, start with your darkest value. Set up all of the darkest values in your composition.”

“Work on a large scale. Watch your proportions.” One student gets some oil paint on his drawing board because he just comes from

an oil painting class. PA helps him to clean his board, and says, “I will get more.” PA gets more paper towel for him.

“That’s too vertical. Look at the angle. It comes in.” “Watch the proportions.” “The angle comes up.” “Make sure once you get the initial sketch, you should compare the arm, the belly,

the leg, the knee, and see how far away the relative part is to the whole”. “You got to come closer. Tell me where is it?” “You need to build the shape that can move up anytime.” “It is so zoomed in. The cast shadow is so important.” “Do you have an eraser? You should use it as a best tool in your box.

Different erasers have different functions. The kneaded eraser help you to lighten up the shadows. If you are going to cut or add a highlight or a light area, use the gum eraser. The white or the purple one.”

“Check the angle, see the angle. As you start to put your shoulders in, correct your angles.”

“Your eye will automatically figure out what happens here.” “What’s the distance? Is it an even distance or triangular? The angle of the

triangle here is not quite right. That doesn’t match.” “Note the negative space underneath his arm below his elbow.” “You simplified the shadow. You will see abberation. “Look very carefully at all of the edges.” “Thin here, on the shoulder. Watch the angle. You can’t just bring that jaw

down.” “Wider space, softer shadow. Form. How close they are to each other. The ear is

too close to the hair, I’d bring it down to here.” “Exactly.” “Try to draw the negative shape instead trying to draw the real ear.” “It is so subtle, so soft, the darkest value. Concentrate, get rid of the general icon

in your mind. Try to do this with the charcoal, let the paper show through the charcoal.” “I think this form disappears here.” “Really cool shadow!” “You can’t draw arm like that unless something is supporting it.” “Watch those contours. You are going to add shadow. One form appears in front

of the other. I am just looking.”

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“Yes, this shape is much better.” “The back could probably come back to here.” “Slow down. Trust yourself in getting the basics.” “Is the leg close to the belly, or the belly close to the legs?” “Let your blood flow.” “Tell me where is the thigh, and the highlight, and the shadow?” “Start again. Erase that form”. “So slightly. You can’t draw the knee like that. Slightly bigger.” “If you fix that, this arm is too wide.” “That’s a help.” “Remember the creative side of the brain.” “What if you are in the middle of the two halves of the brain?” a student asks. “I

want you to shift to the right side of the brain.” “Look at the features. They are older. What happen to the knee cap? It comes

behind the arm.” PA helps a girl to fix the knee cap behind the arm. “How fast was that? Two seconds.”

“I want you to spend a couple of seconds looking and drawing.” PA puts in a music CD (the Beatles).

“A break.” “Save yourself some time. Tell me about the shape of the back around the arm.” “Watch the contour.” “Hang on, let’s finish.” “When you get to a point, you stop.” “Highlight and shadow. Little subtle things, but it is there. Does that make any

sense?” There are 15 students. “Think about volume. Stand up and touch your toes.” PA asks a girl stand up to

touch her toes to feel the 3 dimensional volume.” “Move your leg, stand up.” PA asks another girl to stand up and see her drawing

from a distance. “Let’s see. Is there anything? Some shadow is needed for more articulation.” PA starts to draw and helps her articulate some shadows, “You make this line so exact, so precise.”

“Can I borrow an eraser?” PA asks to the group. “Pick up the subtle transition, now you have something to do. Something you can bring back in after working on your shadows.”

“See the reflected light? Look closer. Charcoal is hard to erase. It doesn’t erase easily, just press it in. When your kneaded eraser gets dirty, just stretch it.” PA shows the students how to use kneaded eraser to add some reflected light in the shadow area, and how to add highlights. “Make your highlights pop out.”

The model asks: “Can I take a break?” “Just let me grab some tape. I feel ready for a break.” PA uses tape to mark the

positions of the model’s feet on the background as a reference for when the model resumes posing after the break.

“Guys, let’s have a 15 minutes break. Get your blood flowing. Take a look at your drawing. Stretch your body.”

“Value is your friend.”

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During the break, PA has a conversation with some students. One student asked PA when will be the due date for the last assignment – the self

portrait. PA says: “Today.” “Can I turn it in next time because I did not know today is the due date.” “Have you checked Blackboard (the online class tool) for the due date? The due

date is on Blackboard”. “Make sure you turn it in. If you are late, your grade will be a lower grade.” “If you turn it in during the next class, the highest grade you can get is 90.” After the break, PA holds a group critique for last assignment – the self-portrait.

She sets up a spot light for the self-portraits. 15 self-portraits are hung on the board on the wall of the left side of the classroom.

“I want to spend time talking about these.” PA says. “Are we going to draw more after we talk about these?” a girl asks, “No.” “All right guys.” A boy just put his self-portrait on the wall. “What did you learn from this assignment?” PA asks, “Awful, hard.” Some students answered. “Why is hard? You see yourself every day. You have an idea what you look like.

That one is very elegant.” PA says. “A ‘shift’ is when you draw yourself, and it changes your perception.” says a girl. “You have some elements which are very true, you have some elements are

exaggerated.” “You have expectation of natural detail, and a more hard, accurate

representation.” “How many of you could recognize the person?” PA asks, “Let’s give a number.” “Nine.” says a boy. “Eight.” Says another boy. “Ten.” Says a girl. “Six.” Several students answer. “With ten of them I can recognize the person.” PA says. Then PA moves the discussion in another direction. “Fine. Choose one of your

favorites and talk about it. Then talks about your own work. Why do you like it? Why not? Think about what you want to say about it, something you want to talk about, you know exactly what you want to say.”

“I like Rheon’s.” says a girl. “His head is bigger as compared to the shoulders.” “I like the one on the bottom.” says Rheon. “I have trouble with my self-portrait.

It’s hard to draw myself in the mirror. The image moves.” “Your face needs to be rounder. You cut off your chin.” says PA. “I’m looking down.” says Rheon. PA turns to another girl and asks, “Talk about your ears.” The girl had drawn her ears different sizes. “One of my ears is different when I

see it with my eye.” says the girl.” “This is the psychology of her drawing. In her mind, one of her ears is different.”

PA says. “Cristina, go next.” PA says,

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“I like Elixa’s. I like the eyes. It has details.” Says Cristina. “You have a darker eye. They are very tempting. The eyes have radiating lines.” To another student PA says, “BP, talk about yours.” “It looks angry. I didn’t mean to draw myself angry. I drew without a mirror.”

says BP. “Do you think it an accurate representation of you?” PA asks, “No.” answers BP “If let you redraw it this weekend? What else do you want to improve?” PA asks. “I will draw the shoulder bigger, and add more shadow.” “Make it large.” Says PA. “What would you like to change in order to make it look more like you?” PA

asks. “What do you think?” BP asks. “Your upper lip. Your nose is wider than your chin.” Says PA. “She doesn’t know what to do. I’m asking these questions to help her. There is

something missing.” “Next. Let’s go down the row.” “I think Tyler has done really well. I like the eyes, the nose. I can’t really say

something about it. It’s not really like you.” A girl says. “I really drew it part in parts, not so much on the whole.” Says Tyler. “I think you drew your mouth like your childhood icon.” Say the girl. “I can’t stand it. I hope I don’t look like that.” “You really have the personality in it. I recognize the nose. Soften up the cheek

bones.” Says PA. “There are a couple of things. It’s believable, but something is not right.” “I have different light.” “Your drawing is a three-quarter point of view, one side of the face is bigger than

the other. Psychologically, they are symmetrical.” “The shoulders have to support the head. That’s a common problem. Ratio often

is a little bit off.” “Next.” “I like the third one towards the right. It a little bit cartoonist like. I recognize

your eyes, nose.” A boy says. “Feel your ear. Try to feel the relation to the neck. Here it is more linear, add

more value.” says PA. “I like your forehead. Your eyes are too close together. You should have one eye

space between the two eyes. Widen the nostril, then correct your length of nose.” “Just use the proportion, sometimes not always.” “That one does not look like him. It looks like him five years ago.” “Your nose is not long enough. It needs to be down further. Many people make

the forehead too narrow.” “I’m kind of upset with it. It’s frustrating. It’s nothing like me.” The boy says. “How are the shoulders? How is the proportion?” “I like this shadow under the chin. The jaw is too high, down to the mouth. Your

nose is little too short. It needs to be longer. It happens a fair amount.”

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“It’s about time today, please put your drawing on this table. Make sure your name is on the back.” Comments:

1. PA mentioned negative and positive space, format, angle, contour, form, scale, and proportion.

2. PA emphasized psychologically engaging in your drawing. 3. Relationship between parts of the body or face. 4. Once you get your initial composition, start with your darkest value. 5. Compare how far away the relative part is to the whole. 6. Different eraser, different function. 7. Looking and drawing. 8. See the problem from a distance. 9. Group critique of self-portrait. 10. Parts of the body mentioned: shoulder, arm, jaw, ear, belly, leg, thigh, knee, knee

cap, toes, nose, chin, cheek bones, forehead, nostril. 11. Concepts and new terms: Highlight, shadows, cast shadow, reflect light. 12. Grading strategy.

Professor A: Life Drawing

Observation 2

10/09/07 3:45pm-6:15pm

Location: ATL 02

“Today we will work on a skeleton with different media. I have some charcoal,

graphite, Conte crayon. We will apply mark making. Make a mark over another mark, scribble. Also use your eraser, use the kneaded eraser. If your plastic eraser becomes dirty, it will drag the graphite into next area. Draw your shadow additively, make your highlight subtractively.

“I have a gift for you.” PA brings two bags of Utrecht art supplies. “You get one pack of charcoals. The white charcoal, just the two sticks. Also you get one gray, one black and one valon. I do have paper, I also have a set of oil pastels, we will use it the rest of the semester. I bought everyone a 9B pencil, so you don’t tell me you have no darker value. I got you an eraser. When I call your name, come up and get one of each of those things.” PA calls the roll. “Kateline, Lee, Jason…”

“Today, I’m going to do a demo real quick. You might see what material I use and how I use. I want you draw the same thing. For instance, if you draw the knee cap area, then focus on that area with several different techniques. PA starts to drag the table on which the skeleton was standing. The skeleton falls down on the ground suddenly and breaks. She picks up the jaw and tries to fix it.

The students especially the girls start screaming when that happens. “I saw that on the Health Channel.” says a boy. “I’ll replace it.” PA says with confidence. “He’s done.” says another student. Then PA begins her demonstration.“I’m going to sit here.” PA grabs her

sketchbook and a graphite. She sits on the floor, and starts to draw.

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“Today do not use white. Use your conte crayon, charcoal, and graphite to articulate the forms”.

“Should I do all of my studies on one sheet?” a student asks. “Fill the space first, then move on to next one.” Answers PA. “Zoom in very close. Pick a small area to focus on in one area. Repeat with

different areas. For example, the knee, the feet. Play with different techniques.” Students start to draw. The music is on.

“I want you to think about full value arrangement from light to shadow. Also think about the texture, the bone. Don’t over smooth the bone.” PA starts to critique students’ work individually while students work on their drawings.

One boy covers the whole paper with black tone, then he uses kneaded eraser to lighten it up with subtractive method. He had done one 8B graphite drawing, and one charcoal drawing.

“Use the eraser to play with the shadow. Cold press paper gives you a nice texture. Work on different techniques. Pay attention. You’ve done one. Articulate this form.”

“Graphite only, mark making.” “Charcoal, No blending, Graphite only mark making, no blending.” PA writes on

one boy’s drawing because he speaks Spanish and a little bit hesitant with English. “We see things in different ways. The more you press these marks, the more value

you get. The less you press these marks, the less value you get. Then use your eraser to go back here.”

“Not precisely. Use a loose style.” “Can I use a pen?” a boy asks, “When you get exhausted, you can use a pen.” PA answers. “Against the darker value background.” PA emphasizes the contrast between the

dark background and the light skeleton in the foreground. “Use eraser blending in the other area. Sometimes you just need a little

articulation.” “Do you have a favorite medium?” A student asks. “Conte is nice.” PA answers. “It’s tough, it’s hard to erase.” another student says. One student doesn’t like his drawing, and he scratches it with a cross line.” “That looks good.” PA helps him to erase the scratch marks. “See, it gets so

shining and gorgeous. I’m having fun.” PA adds a few changes to the drawing and encourages the student to continue and finish it.

“It’s so rigid. Come back in a loose way. It still has the visual marks.” PA shows a girl how to use the gum eraser to blend the values. PA uses eraser along the edge, then use the eraser over the edge.

“We all know you can do precise, accurate drawings. I want you to scribble. Have some fun, walk around and see some others.”

“Is that dark enough?” A boy makes whole background black. “I do not mean for you to make it that dark. You over idealize the shadow.” PA

criticized his background. Some of the materials that PA gave to the students are: 1. Woodless graphic pencil 9B, 6B.

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2. Woodless Crayon 9B. 3. Oil pastel (a set) 4. Jumbo charcoal. 5. Graphite

Comments:

1. Students use subtractive method to draw which means using eraser as a drawing tool to erase the highlight, and to lighten area.

2. PA, using the students’ lab fee, bought some art supplies for each student which included charcoal, graphite, Conte crayon, oil pastel, and 9B pencil.

3. PA demonstrated different techniques of mark making with different mediums. 4. PA emphasized full value arrangement from light to dark. 5. PA helped one student who speaks little English. PA writes the assignment

requirement on his drawing paper. 6. PA showed students how to use different kinds of eraser to work on the shadows. 7. Articulation of the forms. 8. Scribble, use loose marks.

Professor A: Life Drawing

Observation 3

10/11/07 3:45pm-6:15pm

Location: ATL 02

“I bring the best iPod.” says a boy, “That’s bold.” says PA. “Today we will do some gesture warm up. Grab a piece of newsprint. 10 minutes

quick pose. It’s a warm up exercise. Do whatever you want.” “I did a surgery on the skeleton. I think he is going to be ok.” PA fixed the

skeleton during the weekend. “We are ready anytime you are.” PA speaks to the model. “There you go. Describe the character of the man, the gravity, volume, cross

contour. Make it large enough. You can cross the entire paper.” “Let’s try a new pose.” The model changes to a new pose. “Central line.” “You’re supposed to drawing. I don’t want to hear any talk. Remember doing the

form underneath the surface. You don’t want to draw a straight leg.” Some students are talking while drawing.

“New pose.” “Try an arm stretch.” PA asks the model to change a new pose with emphasis on

arm stretching. “What is working? Is his waist resting? I want to see relationship.” PA walks

around the group and give some advices to individual students. “New pose.” About one minute, PA asks the model to change to a new pose. “The most central line.” “New pose.” One minute later, model is asked to change to a new pose. “You can relate parts back to the overall form. Gesture is not the contour. Start

from the center of the form and create the volume of the space, not just the edge.” “New pose. Another one minute quick pose. ”

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“Start from center, make your way out, then come back in.” PA repeats the key point of gesture drawing.

“You should have some value. Use the side of your charcoal. Get the sense of the value. Triangulate the leg and the feet.”

“New pose.” “Come into the center of the form instead of staying at the edge.” “Draw the most important lines first. What’s the tension of the body?” “New pose.” “Start from the center, work your way around, add some value, value is our

friend.” “New pose.” “Move your hands from your body. A standing pose.” PA talks to the model. “New pose.” “Bailing water from your boat.” PA asks the model to change a new quick pose. “Throw a Frisbee” “Chop is fine.” “I’ll ask the audience … Would you rather have two poses or just one long pose?” “One long pose.” Several students say. “Move closer. Think about how you separate the space. I want you make the

negative space as interesting as the positive space. I want it to be an interesting pose.” “You are going to break him today?” asks a boy. “I’m going to not break him.” PA says. “You are guys. It doesn’t hurt. It only helps.” “I’ll add some skeleton form into the picture. If the skeleton is in your view, add it

in. The drapery, build an entire composition. Physically move from your drawing. Always check relative proportion. Stand up to look at it. Probably some of you think I am completely insane, but I want you to continue to humor me.”

“Look at the negative space. Just make sure. The angle of the head is wrong. You have to reshape that face because it is not like that. What was going to happen is…” PA critiques one boy’s drawing.

“It is pretty good. You got a slight angle. You really need to generalize the most compelling characteristics, the highlights. As an artist, you need to articulate. Choose what it is. What form is darker or lighter. Make sure you relate certain shadows to certain volumes.”

“When you use cross-hatching, look the underneath forms. This is called surface variation. Don’t just draw a line across the surface. It will flatten the area out.”

“You want to bring that angle slightly up. That’s where you are going to start. So adjust that. Lower the drapery a lot here. Look at your relative proportion. One thing I will say … you don’t just end up at a certain format. When developing these things, you just figure it out.”

“If some of you finished really fast, please start a new drawing.” “It’s a little too high. Keep this in mind. You can do it.” “You will end up with too much negative space. I think it is pretty good. You

don’t have much space here. Just look at the negative space. That will help. This doesn’t make any sense either. So much less to draw.”

“Think about it. Laziness.”

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“First of all. The line of the arm need to go out. Do you have eraser or not. Too much space.”

“Absurd. Can I say to the whole group what you just said? The word you used is absurd.” PA says.

“No.” the girl says. “You have perspective here. You are going to make sure to create that kind of

angle. Is that helping at all?” “Create more curves. Whatever comes out from the edge. Come back with your

eraser somewhat. It is subtle. I see seven deeper shadows there. Those are all sorts of things you need to do. Keep all of the texture behind.”

“I need to stretch my leg a little bit.” The model says. PA put several pieces of tape around the model as reference marks for the break. “Do you want a longer break?” PA asks, “OK.” Model answers. “Take advantage of this opportunity. Working and adding value.” PA suggests

students to add more value during the break. “Full range of tones: mid grey, dark grey, dark dark grey, full black.” “I love charcoal. You want a charcoal?” After a 15 minute break, the model comes back and starts to pose. “Do you have a

towel? My feet need a towel underneath.” The model asks. PA puts a towel underneath the model’s feet. “You were looking at him the whole class. Tell him correct the pose.” PA asks

students to correct the pose which should be the same as before. “They are very soft. That will articulate the form underneath the surface.” “If you have the shadow underneath here, you don’t need the tiny details.” “These hands are great. You might want to fade it back there. Instead use your

whole eraser. Use the small eraser.” “I can see it.” PA says. “I can’t see anything.” says the boy. “The dark value I want to see, it’s right there. I would encourage you to do this.

Not smudge it. Really tell me where the edge is. When you blend this value, don’t over blend it. You are going to have some underneath texture show through. One thing I want to see is … you can’t judge values until you have one thing pop out.” PA erases some highlights for the student.”

“The nice thing about it, the drapery comes from this way. It helps you to redefine the shape of the leg.”

“Don’t be scared of them. Just do it.” “I need some help with the leg.” A girl asks. “Watch the contour here. You have these differences in contours. Start coming

back in here.” “Don’t just look at the lines, start getting the shadows in.” 14 students are here. “All those shadows start to make sense of this big area. It is going to be a darker

line. Keep working it out. The mark making is describing a value shift.”

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“I see just scribbling. All just relative values. I see tiger stripes. I see a lot of shadow here. Reflected light underneath here. Your drawing is little small. If I were you, I would use a bigger eraser, then you can erase a lot.”

“Subtle little things. I took out too much of the value. You can come back and add more. I’m going to erase it out. You are going to figure out where that shadow is. Once you get to this point, you ….”

“Technically you can take a break any time. There is about 35 minutes left for the class.” Comments:

1. PA introduces gesture drawing as warm up exercise. 2. A 10-minute gesture drawing, and change different quick poses about every1-2

minutes each pose. 3. Gesture is not the contour. Start from the center of the form and create the volume

of the space, not just the edge. 4. When you use cross-hatching, look the underneath the forms. This is called

surface variation. 5. Full range of tones: mid grey, dark grey, dark dark grey, full black.

Professor A: Life Drawing

Observation 4

10/25/07 3:45pm-6:15pm

Location: ATL 02

PA brings a box of clips. “Does anyone needs clips?” “What are we doing today?” asks a boy. PA brings a bunch of tree branch sticks and she gives every student one stick.

“What I want you to do is to take one graphite or a large piece of charcoal. To tape it to the end. You want your drawing medium sticking out like this.” PA tapes one piece of charcoal onto the stick and shows to the group. “You need a couple pieces of tape, tight, not waggling when you draw it.”

“So tape this. Go ahead stand up. Use the stick to draw. It breaks your sense of control. This makes it intentionally further away from your body. Some of you have more flexible sticks. Everybody, we are going to draw with the stick. Roughly 10 minutes.”

“Go ahead. Just fill it up. Keep in mind you want to draw from your shoulder. We only use one arm. Here you go.”

“Let’s focus. Try to build the mark. It’s fun. Look at the model. Focus. I’m serious. New pose. You can draw on the floor too.”

“Draw from your shoulder. That looks nice. She’s got a tonalship.” “New pose. Try to impose control. That’s really good. Nice.” “Whether or not you get accurate or representational drawings, some of them are

really nice gestures. Check them out.” “We are roughians.” says a boy. “Let’s start. Just right on top. Keep going. Make sure they are making sense. Let’s

have a whole day of fun. Let’s have change, and new fun.” “Fantastic.” “Let’s do a new pose. Three more of these.”

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“Draw what you can see. If you can’t see him draw someone in your class, they don’t know.”

Music on. The iPod plays pop music which changes the atmosphere of the class. “Let’s do one more pose. Last pose.” “Professor, do we have more tape?” a boy asks. “If your composition is completely full, you can move to another page.”

“I like those, you’ve got plenty of room, now let’s walk around. Most of you have nice gestures. If you want, you can hang on to it. Two forty-minute long poses.”

“We are going to work to longer poses.” “Blacken the shadow. Back figure ambiguity. Across shadow instead along

shadow. Build your value by using eraser.” “Charcoal or graphite, either one.” PA brings a piece of cloth and drapes it over the chair. “This is hard to ignore.”

“Is that ok?” “You can try color. Your shadow may be cool, your bright area may be warm.”

PA draws a basic color wheel on the blackboard to show three pairs of complementary colors.

Then PA talks about the midterm review. “Now, for the midterm review. Your portfolio will include your sketch book and 10 drawings. Put your blind contour on top, then your gesture drawings, model and skeleton drawings.”

PA starts to review first student for his midterm review. They sit in the hallway on an old sofa. The boy opens his portfolio folder which includes some studies he did so far, he also opens one of his sketch books. Several other framed pieces are set up against the wall.

“It’s well done. Blind contour.” “You lost control. Ink and stick The long stick is really taking the level of

control.” PA reviews the sketchbook. “These are five minutes pieces. I just barely start working on it.” says the boy. “You go to library where people are hanging out. I really like these marks. I like it

when you come back articulate it. I want to see more of that. Quick drawings, you have more energy here. Consider those types of things. Eraser. I like it that you use it as a type of drawing tool.”

“Have you done this type drawing before?” “I don’t know what to do. All these marks are linear. When you are drawing

additively, you still draw linear marks.” “It pushes me away from value. It doesn’t create value. Why don’t we create a

midway? In spite of the value you put here, It is still flat because this line. You’ve got to commit to it. Try to work on compressed charcoal and get away from contour. What would happen if you went back and used charcoal to combine them.”

“I like those energetic marks. This one seems more stable. You need more full range value. Push yourself towards that. It articulates the values.

“This is the first day.” “This is really nice. People when they slow down, they lose the energy. They

become static. These are really beautiful. I want you to have a sense of … I like it when you bring smudges in to articulate the form.”

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“This is the eraser drawing.” “What do you think about the techniques?” “I like it that you are trying energetic marks on the drawing paper. Try to loosen

up a little bit. It may take three or four weeks. Make sure to have strong choices. This one is earlier. You’ve got a sense of the structure underneath the skin.”

The rest of the group is working on their own works while PA does individual reviews of student’s midterm portfolios.

“True blind contour. How do you like blind contour?” “I’m messy. I enjoy it.” “You out of your element.” “One thing I think I firmly believe. If you can see, you can draw. The rest of the

technique comes with patience. With your left brain.” “Absorbing.” “Critique. “Just being in the class. Now I look at things completely different.” says the girl. “You do very well with gesture. Practice always helps.” “ The more practice, the more I get it.” “It creates more geometry. It heavy handed. It is over worked. I would enlarge it.”

“Where are they?” PA asks, after she critiques the second students, some of the students had left.

“They are on break.” A boy says. “I am taking the rolls.” Then PA starts to critique the third student for his midterm review. He is a cartoon

artist, and he brings four sketchbooks of cartoon images that he created. “Work outside your comfort zone.”

Comments:

1. PA uses tree branch sticks and tapes pieces of charcoal to them in order to extend the tool and intentionally loose the control.

2. PA reviews students’ midterm portfolios one on one. 3. One thing I think I firmly believe. If you can see, you can draw. 4. The iPod plays pop music which changes the atmosphere of the class. 5. After a 10-minute quick pose, they do two longer, forty minute poses. 6. You can try color. Your shadow may be cool, your bright area may be warm. PA

draws a basic color wheel on the blackboard to show three pairs of complementary colors.

7. Midterm review content. Your portfolio will include your sketch book and 10 drawings. Put your blind contour on top, then your gesture drawings, model and skeleton drawings.

8. Getting away from contour.

Professor A: Life Drawing

Observation 5

10/30/07 3:45-6:15pm Location: ATL 02

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PA brings a brush, a bottle of house paint, and some stencils for students to add textures. There are also some thread and needles, one bottle of Indian ink, and some masking tapes.

This assignment is to combine two pieces of 18”x24” inch drawing paper together to draw a skull and skeleton. Students can explore and combine different techniques into their creation. They can cut and paste the paper, they can sew two pieces of paper together, they can add background or textures with stencils. They can try whatever strategies they wish to create this piece.

“It’s going to be due next class. Any questions about the paper?” “Cut the paper.” “You can thin the paint with water. Use different materials. Experimenting with

different formats.” Students work on their own pieces after PA talks about the assignment. One student sews two pieces of her drawing together. Another student tear his paper into different pieces, then tapes them together

again. A girl adds brown paper underneath her skull drawing. Then she glues them

together. She extends the second skull onto the brown paper, then she adds the hand bone and neck bone with black charcoal and white charcoal. She uses ink brush go over the lower right corner, then she tears several holes on it.

A boy burns part of the edge of his drawing. A boy juxtaposes two pieces of paper. He starts to draw a group of the thigh

bones. A girl uses a stencil with a candle, and then uses ink wash to add the background

texture. A boy uses tape to cover the background, then uses ink and brush go over it later.

After the ink is dried, he takes off the tape. The places which were covered with tape are showing as white stripes. While the ink is still wet, he uses water and paper towel to make textures. Finally, he uses his brush to splash ink on the lower part of the background.

“What color are you going to add?” PA asks, “Red”, the girl answers, “You had to think about it. Take a risk. The more risk you take, the more success

you might get.” “I’m very excited.” “You can leave it in grey scale.” “You’ve got some nice energy.” “You haven’t incorporated overlapping the paper edge.” “Loose. Is that fun? Dirty it up more.” “The type of the surface. This is my immediately impression with the piece.” “Could you add color to the ink?” “Play on a different kind of paper.” “Take some risk.” “It could be anything. Try three different techniques.” “It’s not red.” The girl adds yellow pastel into the background texture. “I kind of like him.” PA says, “Have you seen Chuck Close?”

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“When you work on a larger scale, you can afford messy like this.” “Mark making and articulating.” “Good for you. I like those … bold, rich, dark black. Leave it alone, and come

back and work on it.” “You can glue, sew. Don’t ruin them.” “Should I just sew them as separate pieces now?” “I would sew them as one piece.” “Other than the thread, I don’t know what I want to do.” “You can do whatever you want to.” “I don’t encourage you overwork on the background.” “The finger print adds the quality of the mark. That may not be something you are

interested in.” “Bring one bone. Here is your tail.” “They are not my bones.” says the boy. “It takes longer than I thought.” says the boy. “Ideally it is from the larger bone to the smaller bone.” “The one thing I suggest is the way they are arranged. They are stacked.” “You have a lot of symmetry. Stacking. You can cut this paper out, attach it

somewhere else.” “15-22 mouths in different positions and expressions.” (this is a outside class

assignment.) “A lot of life. An organic, life thing grew here.” “You’ve got two class periods, no excuse.” A boy asks for a one-day of extension

for this assignment. “Think about the uncontrolled part. You let chance happen, you let things happen.

Then you add a whole bunch things to gain control over it. Here is your thing. This is my assignment only for you.”

“I think it is going well. Where is your thread? Come back here and tie the thread. What do you think about the space behind the skull? Slightly unstable. It’s a visual squeeze. Why not add more space behind you, more psychological space behind you.”

“How are you doing?” One girl paints white over the charcoal drawing. “How do you like your color?” “You get a forshortening coming out. You get a placement shift. You get

something coming forward, something coming out at you.” “For this type of thing, you will not get everything articulated.” “It’s not shadow. It’s really dirty. It feels false.” “What’s your overall feeling?” “I have no idea.” “You got a pretty shiny skeleton. Do something. Sketch, draw.” “Looks good. Maybe do a wash with Indian ink.” “You have a weird shift here.” “Because I draw from the floor up.”

Comments:

1. A new assignment with experiments in various materials. More like Bauhaus experimentation with materials.

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2. The cultivation of creativity. Take a risk.

Professor A: Life Drawing Observation 6

11/6/07 3:45pm-6:15pm

Location: ATL 02

“Put them together. For the first 10-15 minutes put your works on the board”. PA asks students to put their last assignment on the wall, and then leads a group critique.

“What do you think about the project?” PA asks. “Awesome. I felt a little bit of freedom.” says a boy. “What do you think about the results?” “Amazing.” A boy says, “Nothing else?” “I love that one because…” PA suggests students to explain why they love this

assignment.” “I love the paper she used because of its brown color. It’s not photo realism. She

tears it up, yet holds it all together.” says a girl, “I also like Kelly’s. She uses different colors which brings out the image of the skeleton.”

“I like that she juxtaposes the industrial texture with the skeleton.” says a boy. “Any other thoughts?” “I like Frank’s. It’s fun. I like the red and yellow marks.” “Input? Thought?” “Each of you approaches it differently. I like it that some of you are taking risks

out of your comfort zones. You’re working on a larger scale. I also gave you a Halloween theme to draw. It’s tempting, and really fun.”

“I will continue throw out techniques at you.” “That’s fine. Take some chances. There are a lot of things to work on. I want you

to leave it on the wall.” “Laying colors. Take some risk. Start with a gesture.” “Lee, why you hang it that way?” PA adjusts light for the model. There is a new model, a female model for today. “Are you all ready?” “One minute.” “Let’s start. Do 10 gestures. Let your pencil move and describe the value. Spend

most of your time looking at the figure. Figure out the mass, the volume of the figure.” “A different pose.” “Tonal arrangement. What muscles are working? What’s the most important part?

What’s essential? Move into the center of the drawing.” “New drawing.” “Make sure you know what’s the most important part?” “You can’t just draw one leg.” “Before you develop the detail, you need to give a shot.” “New pose.” “New Pose. Five more.” There is about one and a half or two minutes for each

pose.

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“New pose.” “There is a weird phenomenon. No one finish your gesture before time.” “I’m sorry. New pose. Remember show me what’s going on in the body.” “New pose. Two more left.” The model is standing on one leg, “you can break

this pose anytime you want.” “New pose.” Most students work on the same paper. “So, let’s do a 30 or 35 minute longer pose. You can work with contour, and

colors. “My suggestion is when you use color, think about warm and cool colors. Warm color comes forward and cool color recesses. You could use blind contour technique with pencil.

I want the entire page, not tons of negative space. I do want you to use the entire format.”

“Remember when you work on blind contour, observe real closely and capture detail. Moving your eye with same speed as with your pencil. Just blind contour.”

“If your pencil goes off the page, just pick up the pencil, and keep working on it. Truly blind. Slow down.”

“Too curvy. Don’t guess, spend time looking. I suggest you slow down, maybe do a couple close studies. Maybe do another one.”

“Change the drawing from horizontal to vertical.” One girl adds red charcoal on top of the black line. “I have the color here.” “If you want to work on colors, but you don’t have the colors here, you can use

them, just pick the color you need.” PA put some color pastel on a small table for some students who do not have the colors with them. PA turns on the iPod.

“We have about five minutes left.” “You can change the medium.” “All that is left brain work.” “All right. A break.” “There is brown craft paper on the stage.” “Let’s get back to work. All right guys.” “You are going to go back and add some cool color on this?” “Let’s simmer down.” There is a new pose, though some students had not finished the last one. 30 minutes. “Use your entire composition, positive and negative space.” “You’re missing a shadow here. Darker tone.” “Use warm and cool colors. Make sure you don’t make the hair stop there. The

angle is a little bit wrong. Just draw right on top. You are going to build up your shadow.”

“Do you have another kind of eraser?” “Use a really dirty one. It gives you a really old photography feeling. It adds

antique age feeling to it.” “Play with the colors together.” “Lay colors on top of each other. Don’t blend them.” “You have so much green in there. Put orange over blue. Put them on top each

other. Vibration.”

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“Looks like you’re having some fun. Use blue. Green on red, then use red on top of green. Keep going like that. You can always go back and lay things in. Just keep working on that.” Comments:

1. PA critiques the last assignment. 2. At the beginning section of the class, PA asks the students to practice gesture

drawing for 10 minutes. Students use the same page and each pose will be 1.5 to 2 minutes long.

3. Then students do a 30-35 minute, longer pose, and they can use blind contour techniques with pencil and color drawing with color pastel.

4. Warm color comes forward and cool color recesses. 5. Lay colors on top of each other. Don’t blend them. Color Vibration.

Professor A: Life Drawing

Observation 7

11/8/07 3:45pm-6:15pm

Location: ATL 02

“I want you to try a different technique, work on figure ground ambiguity.” “Spend 5 minutes setting up the contour. Block in your shadow. Use plastic

eraser. Take several passes to get the final effect. Like antique old photography. You can work on high focus and low focus. Absolute control. Saturate the paper. Use the texture of the paper. Erase across. There will be one drawing today.”

“Start with gesture. Warm up.” PA brings a blue cloth to act as a background.” “I hope you guys are ready. 10 gestures warm ups. About a minute each.” “I’ll turn on some light.” “Draw faster than that.” “New pose. We don’t want to slow down. Loosen up. Get the blood flowing.

What’s the central element? What’s going on in the body?” “New pose.” “New pose.” “Don’t just fill in the blank. You can come back in. Just draw with the side of the

charcoal. That’s good.” “New pose.” “Three more.” “New pose.” “Two more.” PA turns off the light. “Next.” “That’s it.” “Use compressed charcoal. Choose a paper, and have a structure behind it. Use

something a little bit dirtier. Fill in the whole picture.” “Zoom in. Choose an area with good shadows and highlight.” “Use the pink pearl or plastic white.” “Guys, serious. Let’s draw. Good shadows.” “You will need to guess at your contour. You will not be completely accurate, you

have more shadows.”

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“I would like you to try the technique. It’s up to you.” “Sweet.” “I see very clear highlight and shadow.” “I will have a field trip, and do some investigation.” says a boy, and he comes

closer to see the model. “Don’t erase it. Don’t overuse the eraser as an elimination tool.” “That’s way down here. You’ve got a variation in scale. You’ve got the wrist

coming down here. That’s a little bit too much.” “Look. Your angle is wrong. I think it’s the wrong shape. This is vine, use the

compressed. Vine is going to disappear.” “You got to watch the spacing between the parts.” “Try to draw the negative shape. There is so much going on behind there. You

don’t have to widen it. Add a half inch width. Just draw the front, just draw his hip, and butt. Make sure when you draw a line upwards, make sure you have the right angle. Seems I see a bar across your shadow. Erase your highlight. Erase as far as you can. You are going to do it again and again. You block your shadow, and you create the blur. The ambiguity between the figure and back ground. Go back again and again, over and over. Erase across the shadow edge, not inline with your shadow.

“What?” a girl starts over with a new page. “Pull the highlight again. Come back and work on the shadow again.” “Just drag it. Don’t press it.” “Hard. Just have fun.” “Diagonal. The shadow this way.” “Oh.” “Fussy, fussy.” “The dark area has the rich shadow.” “I would like you to put some variation into the background instead of just a flat

tone.” “I’m killing this one.” A boy says, “Now you know the technique.” “I’m hot and cold. Sometime I feel like I’m doing good, sometime I feel bad.” the

boy says. The model is almost asleep. “You can sleep by all means.” “Try it.” “Does this look right?” “I would encourage you to do some drapery underneath the leg. Just make it up.” “I start adding value now. 10-15 minutes break.” “Looking around the classroom, it looks pretty darn good.” “Don’t argue, just finish it.” “Guys break is over, I want you working.” Students come back to work on the

color drawings. Comments:

1. PA introduces a new technique to students … the figure/ground ambiguity. 2. At the beginning, PB asks the students to do a 10 minute gesture warm up

practice. 10 quick poses with 1 minute for each pose.

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Professor A: Life Drawing

Observation 8

11/13/07 3:30-6:00pm

Location: ATL 02

“Today you can work on your old drawings and make them successful. If you do

not finish them, keep working on them. Your portfolio list is online on Blackboard. I posted it over the weekend.”

“Spend 30 minutes or more. Put a large piece and your sketch book in your portfolio. All your work will go into your final portfolio.”

“In your final portfolio, you have to write about why you choose these pieces, and the strengths of them. Type it out, do not hand-write it. I will grade 60 portfolios in one and a half days. It is most helpful for you type it out. Also there are some aspects I might have overlooked. That information will help me read your pieces. It’s a really positive thing. Brown paper or newsprint paper should be placed between each drawing. Try to convince me you really care.”

“Your works must be well presented. Your portfolio is not just a container for turning your works in. Take craft paper to make the portfolio, and staple it. Have things labeled. Put figure drawing information on the label, as well as whether this is the Tuesday and Thursday class. You will have no more or no less than 15 pieces. Talk about where you were at the beginning of the class. You must provide blind contour drawing, the gestures, the in depth figure studies, the study of skeletons, and so on.”

“Any questions?” “When will we turn it in?” asks a boy, “That will be the last week of the class. Thursday of finals week. December 4th.” “The sketch book is part of it.” “Any other questions?” Then PA starts to teach gesture drawing. She asks students to do several quick

one minute gesture drawings. “Don’t drawing outlines, draw the volume of the body.” Then, she switches to long pose, she adjusts the spot light.

“Always think about composition using the entire format.” PA gives some tree sticks and Indian ink to students, students dip sticks into the ink and draw with them.

The music is on. PB uses her own iPod. “Pull out the eye a little bit.” “It is easier to match the size of the head to the size of the body than match the

size of the body to the size of the head.” “You are going to put the light back on that face, aren’t you? It’s kind of dark.” “Take advantage of the model. Draw Jim while you’re here. You can do this at

home.” A boy draws something else, and PB asks him to draw the model. Students work with different mediums: stick with charcoal, stick with rope, color

crayon, graphic pencil, vine charcoal…. “How are you doing Jim, tired?” “No.”

Comments: 1. PA talks about the requirement of the final portfolio. 2. Gesture warm up practice.

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APPENDIX L

PROFESSOR B: PAINTING I

Observation 1

10/2/07 12:50-3:20 pm

Location: ATL 01

The painting studio is located in the “Church”. It’s an old church just across street

from the Fine Art building. Inside the studio there are some wood and metal easels. Some metal stools and small cabinets are scattered around the easels. Paint marks are all over the place, on the easels, stools, floor, and so on. You can smell the linseed oil in the air although the fan has been turned on. The wall in front of me is about 40 feet long, and is used for displaying students’ works during the group critique. On the wall behind me on the left there is a sink and a trash can. Further left, there are three 7-foot metal cabinets in which there are all kinds of objects for still life. On the wall, several pieces of student’ self-portraits are hanging. On the wall behind me to the right, there are three middle size 4 foot metal cabinets which are used for carrying students’ art supplies. On top of them are piles of students’ paintings, stacked in rows. Some are landscape, some are figure paintings, and some are still life. Against both left and right walls there are four big, wooden shelves which are used for storing students’ paintings. In the left corner of the room, there is a big table on which a still life setting is set up. Some glass bottles, plastic fruit, and pots are displayed, and a paper sign on the table reads “Please do not move.”

When I came to the studio classroom, Professor B had already set up an easel, and a small table with a paint box. Inside the paint box, there is a set of palette paper on which oil paint had been prepared. Also two jars are beside the paint box, one with linseed oil as medium, another with mineral spirit for cleaning brushes. A piece of white rag is sitting on the corner of the table. A spotlight with orange light is clamped on the easel. Professor B will teach students how to paint a self portrait. One male student is sitting as the model. He has blonde hair and wears a pair of glasses.

“I got the mirror from Lowes and they are not expensive. Some extension cords there. We plug it in.” PB prepares the plugs and extension cords.

“Put the lamp near your easel. Try to put the mirror at the back of your chair,” says PB,“I will show you how to start the self portrait when everyone shows up.”

PB prepares paint while talking to the whole class. Students move easels around. “Come over here”. PB starts to paint the model. “The first part tests your creativity. Find some photo surface.”

“Start really dark. Stay away from blue and green. Set your palette on your right side.”

“Think about how you orient your canvases. Big things first, small things later. Don’t think about likeness at first.”

“A couple of things you need to be aware of. Think about light from a ping pong ball. Think about nice gradation, highlight, light area, shadow area, core of shadow, reflected light, and cast shadows.”

“Think about reflected light. Paint the nose like a ping-pong ball. Always look for corners.”

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“It’s an angled corner. Use your purple and orange. Add cool reflect color. Work in some kind of dark. Redefine the jaw. Don’t think about the glasses. Drawing the frame is easier than eye balls.”

“Try colors. Variation colors. Get a guess. Illuminating things can be possible. More like sculpture. Catch conversions. Nose and ear warm. Translucent. Don’t paint your face nice and paint the neck like that.” PB paints an elongated neck to contrast with the proportioned face.

Students are standing behind PB and observing his demonstration. One student asks “Which red is that?”

“Cadmium red light hue. Look up sternomastoid. Round up the chest. Tighten up a little more. Don’t start it too light. You look for the corner.”

“Keeping it light, redefine the shapes. You got the idea already?” “Every time you look, use your nose as reference to the chin. Don’t try to be a

camera. Allow yourself a couple of chances.” “Do we make the background on top of it?” a student asks. “Use yellow ocher. Find something you are interested in for your background.”

“I’ll show you books in my office when you work on your background.” “Will our finished project be Picasso-like?” a student asks. 1:19 pm PB finishes the demonstration. Students begin to paint. PB brings several

books for students, and help students set up easels and mirrors. There are 11 students in the class.

“Should be interesting. I missed the critique on Thursday.” A girl was not here last class.

“ Just finish your master copy.” PB says. “I can’t figure out where to put the mirror. Behind me?” the girl asks. “Do you have a clamp any longer?” “Keep your hat on. It has a nice shadow.” PB talks to another girl. “Think about the arrangement of color. The shadow. The purple is always good.” “Do you have some white? A boy asks, and PB finds one tube of white for him. “It is too dark. Should be pink.” PB critiques his work. “Try not to draw your face. Try to build your face.” “It tends to get bigger and bigger.” “Reverse canvas, you can see it.” “I got a Van Gogh book. Van Gogh is kind of good for self portrait.” “The original is smaller than that. He used red and green to build the surface.” “Figure out what that weird shadow is. What that color is.” PB set up the book for the student as reference. “Think of the composition. Look at the mirror a couple of minutes.” “Some adjustment of that. Greenish light pink.” “Don’t think about reoccupying this later. Think about making your face out of

clay. Big thing first, small thing later.” “Cover up. It’s a darker color. It’s easy to paint over the ear.” “Look the cheek bones. Do the hair before the shape of the head. Keep everything

relative.” “Don’t try to draw yourself. Start to block in. A little bit at a time.” “Specially when you looking down, keep the mouse angled.”

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“What will your landscape be? Photography is a good resource for painting backgroud.” A girl wants to add a landscape to her background, and she shows her picture to PB.

“You need to find some sort of mountain landscape. Think of the angle of the horizon line. Something like a broken building, cracked.”

“Think how big your canvas is.” “Some of them change over time. Don’t get too fussy.” “Maybe narrow the face down. Be careful of the blue. Clean your brush.”

PB brings two brushes for one student. “Find something in the painting that matches your face. Don’t worry about the

likeness. You did the Vermeer painting. Keep things simple. The side of the nose, the side of the face. See how that one relates to the others. Sometimes it comes from the brain. Let your eye paint the painting. Find an easiness. Don’t try to solve the complicatedness.”

“Raise the forehead a little bit.” “You might try holding your palette on your leg.” “That’s good. A brush stroke can do a lot in the right spot. That’s a good start.” “We’ll work on this today, Tuesday and Thursday. If you re really fast, you can

finish it today.” “Be careful of the blue. I don’t know what that color is. I use extra charcoal. You

just add more orange. How bright is it? Look at the eye level. Maybe raise the eyeball a little bit. Make some changes. Shadow or highlight.”

“It’s a good start. Listen to the painting. Painting tells you what’s going on.” “Let see 1600 Rubens. Let me find you a warmer red. Don’t worry about the

purple.” PA gets a palette for the girl. “Look at the mirror and figure out the face. Deal

with the color of the face. Go back with a smaller brush. Use the brush to just blend in what you have there now. Look at the structure.”

“There is no reason to save these white spots here.” PB suggests that a student cover the white spots.

“The face is too broad. Just keep looking a couple of seconds. Look at the mirror. That’s a generic face. That’s not your face. Whose face it is?”

“The variations.” “Work on the eyeball. Your brain knows it, but your eye feels it in a different

way. Gradation.” “Skin and hair. The hair becomes part of the skin, or hair covers parts of the

skin.” Again PB shows a student the Rubens book for the hair and skin relation. “Light is on your forehead. Look, the eyelid. It’s more fun to paint the lid curve.

See how the lid curves? Try to keep things warmer. The sense of the surface of the nose. Different plane. Over simplified and generalized.”