Assimilating new skills

Unlike dance or music training where the student begins their preparation at a young age in a disciplined environment (necessary to prevent injury and lay a foundation for the development of a life’s work), drawing today, is set apart by being a solitary, self guided activity in childhood. 

 Mindful of the need to stretch the varied learners’ approaches and relax their dependence on the use of ‘outline’, it is surprising to find the more able students are often the most reluctant to attempt new strategies, due to considerable investment in their personal method.  They are more attached and thus more limited by their approach.  But it is necessary to work outside the comfort zone to witness the value of assimilating the new skills.   

 Students with drawing skills adapt to linear drawing exercises quite readily but struggle with kinesthetic drawing (eg: where the form is built up tonally as if modeling with clay), and conversely those students without linear skills, grasp these kinesthetic exercises more readily.  If these two approaches are not persuasively imposed, the students will choose one and leave the other undeveloped, effectively crippling their own progress.

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