This is the last teaching post for a while. This is a list of things I have done and told to my 200 and 300 level painting classes.
Please suggest others in the comments.
Whatever you do, do it poorly. (Stop trying to be so good at it. You will learn more.)
Fail three times then succeed one time. Then do it again.
Try to make a bad painting. Bad ideas, bad colour, bad composition, bad technique. Put them all in a class critique and have seriously verbose discussions about them all.
After the last project, try to make the best painting you have ever made. Really engaging ideas, really brilliant use of colour, really good attention to your technique, and brilliant compositional plays. Put them all in a class critique and have a seriously verbose discussion about them all.
Look at one of your older paintings and do a new painting trying to do everything the opposite.
Make a painting that defies the rules of composition.
Make up a few rules you will use on a painting before starting. Stick to the rules.
Make a still-life of all brown objects. Paint using only earth/brown pigments.
Make a dark painting.
Paint a portrait of a poltergeist.
Make a still-life painting without using any black or white.
Make “the same” painting 10 times. Can be on paper. If you do paint on paper, gesso the paper first.
Make a painting, then turn it upside down and make it into something else.
Make a painting as you like, then ask the painting what it needs or what it does not need anymore. Respond to the painting’s answer. Gesso is a good editor. Keep asking the painting what more it wants until it stops speaking to you.
Put your finished painting up for a class critique. Listen. Spend a week looking at it. Make changes to the painting. Take it in again for the next critique.
Go to the library. Peruse the stacks in the books on painting section. Find a book that speaks to you. Check out the book. Read it. Give a book report to the class explaining what the book is all about. Listen to all the other reports and take notes of the books you want to read.
Use the library often.
Spend the most money on good brushes. Always wash your brushes well. Sunlight laundry bar soap is a good cleaner. Dry and store your brushes flat.
Spend money on good quality paint. If you are going to use cheap paint, do it on purpose.
Go to galleries. Look at art. Talk to your peers about what you see.
Read artist’s biographies.
Near the end of a semester, after I had gotten to know each student’s work, I gave a prescription assignment, unique to each student. Asking them to defy their habits in some constructive manner. Everything was prescribed to get them to think differently from their habitual approach. It was fun!
Visit other artist’s studios. Exchange ideas.
Posted: September 6, 2022
Photo: My office at U Vic. March, 2016.
If you teach, please share your ideas below.