Designing Your Own Curriculum
This so-called semester has been a bit of a crash course in how to organize a full-time-ish art schedule. When I was at the atelier, I gave no thought to how I'd spend each day and what I might learn; this was determined for me and followed a rather simple schedule of mornings in the life drawing room for three hours and afternoons in my studio for three hours doing copies of Bargue drawings. One evening of the week I had an additional three hours of life drawing and then on another an additional three hours of anatomy studies.
No surprises. Nothing out of the ordinary. Yet very difficult to mimic outside the atelier.
That's not necessarily a bad thing. It's just a different thing. A thing that requires management.
Maybe the fear of missing out got to me (hey, FOMO), but I decided it would be a great idea to have at least one art class every day.
Even as I type that out, it seems a worthy goal and a rather amazing way to go through life, but that also means I have a 2-ish hour commute each day for a three- to four-hour class, which is the whole of my six hours of decent energy (thank you, chronic illnesses) gone.
On Sundays I have a gestural / quick sketch figure drawing class that challenges me in ways that makes me what to apply my head to a desk ad nauseum. It's difficult. My art is changing. I'm growing. It's painful.
First and foremost, Mondays are the day I type up the pages I wrote for the week and send them off to my book coach for edits and review. But now on Monday evenings I've signed up for a portrait drawing course that focuses on vine charcoal techniques. This is also the day I tend to cram in my doctor's appointments....
Tuesdays are a headcase. I have my foundations drawing and painting class in the morning followed by my small sculptures and doll-making class in the evening.
Wednesdays are my oil painting days. I paint from a live model in the morning and do still life painting in the evening.
By comparison, Thursdays are blissfully sleepy even though it's still full. I have my foundations drawing and painting class in the morning.
I roll into Fridays with great anticipation of my intermediate figure drawing and portrait class. I have a gentle and encouraging instructor and get to work from a sitting easel, which at this point in the week is a rather critical feature.
Saturdays recently got busier. I have an oil painting class in the morning followed an hour later by my life drawing class.
So that's ten classes over seven days.... It's not a bad way to spend my time, but it's also maybe not the healthiest way to spend my time. I am a rather limited resource, and I see the wall not so far away on the horizon.
At this point almost all of my classes are useful and informative, too. When I consider what classes I might cut out, I want to gather almost all of them into my arms and shoe away the suggestion that I may have too much on my plate.
So I'm going to approach this from a criteria standpoint. Make some rules.
1) I need to take one day off a week from formal classes. This should probably be a weekend day so I can spend time with my loves.
2) Only one night class. (Really, I should say no night classes, but I love my small sculptures and doll-making class too much to give it up).
3) Two classes a day are allowed only twice a week, but preferably only once a week.
On March 11th, I finally have a bit of breathing room in my schedule again. Meanwhile, I'm looking very hard at how and when and where I want to study. Ideally I'll swap a few of my formal classes for a couple open studios to develop a better self-study practice.
With so much on my plate, doing my own stuff at home has gone right out the window, and even homework is hard to get to. That means I'm not learning as deeply as I can. So, changes ahead.
No surprises. Nothing out of the ordinary. Yet very difficult to mimic outside the atelier.
That's not necessarily a bad thing. It's just a different thing. A thing that requires management.
Maybe the fear of missing out got to me (hey, FOMO), but I decided it would be a great idea to have at least one art class every day.
 |
| Overscheduling |
On Sundays I have a gestural / quick sketch figure drawing class that challenges me in ways that makes me what to apply my head to a desk ad nauseum. It's difficult. My art is changing. I'm growing. It's painful.
First and foremost, Mondays are the day I type up the pages I wrote for the week and send them off to my book coach for edits and review. But now on Monday evenings I've signed up for a portrait drawing course that focuses on vine charcoal techniques. This is also the day I tend to cram in my doctor's appointments....
Tuesdays are a headcase. I have my foundations drawing and painting class in the morning followed by my small sculptures and doll-making class in the evening.
Wednesdays are my oil painting days. I paint from a live model in the morning and do still life painting in the evening.
By comparison, Thursdays are blissfully sleepy even though it's still full. I have my foundations drawing and painting class in the morning.
I roll into Fridays with great anticipation of my intermediate figure drawing and portrait class. I have a gentle and encouraging instructor and get to work from a sitting easel, which at this point in the week is a rather critical feature.
Saturdays recently got busier. I have an oil painting class in the morning followed an hour later by my life drawing class.
So that's ten classes over seven days.... It's not a bad way to spend my time, but it's also maybe not the healthiest way to spend my time. I am a rather limited resource, and I see the wall not so far away on the horizon.
At this point almost all of my classes are useful and informative, too. When I consider what classes I might cut out, I want to gather almost all of them into my arms and shoe away the suggestion that I may have too much on my plate.
So I'm going to approach this from a criteria standpoint. Make some rules.
1) I need to take one day off a week from formal classes. This should probably be a weekend day so I can spend time with my loves.
2) Only one night class. (Really, I should say no night classes, but I love my small sculptures and doll-making class too much to give it up).
3) Two classes a day are allowed only twice a week, but preferably only once a week.
On March 11th, I finally have a bit of breathing room in my schedule again. Meanwhile, I'm looking very hard at how and when and where I want to study. Ideally I'll swap a few of my formal classes for a couple open studios to develop a better self-study practice.
With so much on my plate, doing my own stuff at home has gone right out the window, and even homework is hard to get to. That means I'm not learning as deeply as I can. So, changes ahead.
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