Teaching From Home

 

My apartment last spring set up for an online still life painting demonstration.  Bonkers makes her cameo.

I'm about to begin my fourth semester teaching painting from home.  The college early last semester decided to re-open gradually.  My painting classes are among the last to be returned to the campus.  At the end of the semester, it seemed as though the Governor of the State of New York was pressuring colleges to open up all at once and I was told to prepare for the possibility of returning to the campus at the last minute.  Now, the Governor is on his way out of office and we're going through a whole new covid surge with the Delta variant raging through the unvaccinated population.  The Bronx and Staten Island so far are the two worst affected boroughs.  I'm told that my classes will definitely be online again.  Part of me is very disappointed.  I looked forward to seeing students again in the flesh and speaking freely with them.  Another part of me is relieved.  I don't have to take my life in my hands doing that hour and fifteen minute commute from Brooklyn to the Bronx on the subway.  

The online still life demonstration set up from a different angle.

Teaching painting online is about as crazy as it sounds, but I think I've made it work.  It's definitely not my first choice for teaching this subject, but the circumstances and constraints unexpectedly created some opportunities and got some surprising results.   My students are forced to work on their own.  I got some very inventive results with what is normally a fairly dreary exercise of everyone painting from the same still life in class.  Now, they have to set up their own still life.  I got some very imaginative results.  

I personally demonstrate just about every assignment for them.  I usually can work pretty fast and finish the painting before the end of class.  Sometimes I finish it after class and show the results later.  I talk about just about every step in the process of making the painting, especially at the start.

With my advanced class, I can talk about something like landscape composition not only with a slide show, but by demonstrating what I'm talking about by painting a small pastiche usually in monochrome.

I'm trying to avoid the whole Bob Ross thing, I think so far successfully.  He taught a formula that appeals to amateurs.  I'm trying to teach potential professionals the basics of the trade, especially how to reconstruct three dimensional experience on a flat surface.

My new broadcast camera that turned out to be a lifesaver in terms of clarity of image and mobility.

My set up for a self-portrait demonstration.

A still life of tea things I painted as a demonstration for my students.  I sold the painting not long after I finished it.

My bottle still life doing a little exercise in Morandi type composition.  I started by dividing my canvas into thirds as he sometimes did.

For my advanced class I painted this blue monochrome Claude Lorraine pastiche to demonstrate a landscape compositional formula that he created and endures to the present.

For one of my beginning classes last semester, I painted a volcano for a landscape demonstration.

Michael's nephew Cole is now the proud owner of that volcano painting.  He likes volcanoes as do I.  If I painting another one this semester, he can have it.