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Hi Dan, I find there's a strange mental block which exists in a lot of younger students and they have the belief in that they either 'can' or they 'cannot', both relating to photo realistic illustration and accuracy. To overcome this and to realise various elements within a drawing I begin with 5 - 10 second drawings. Get the students to fold large pieces of paper so they have 16 little boxes, get about 5/6 of these and simply say when I shout 'change' the model will adopt a different pose and they should move onto the next box. This is great for the model aswell as the pose can be quite strenuous and dynamic. At the end of this the students should have 80 small drawings which will quite clearly show development in terms of 'handwriting', composition within the 'frame' etc. With only 5 - 10 seconds per drawing the students don't have time to get fussy or panic or try and adopt a stylistic 'gloss'. I usually go on to set up to chairs close to each other and tell the students to set up in landscape. The model will then continually walk around the chairs for the duration. Visually therefore there is the anchor of the chairs and yet the focus is the moving body. It always amazes me how scale and proportion, issues which can be severe in a still pose, become quite instinctual and fluid in a moving 'pose'. This can also be entertaining providing more and more elaborate routes for the model to travel. To get photography students more interested in the life room I once blacked out the room and supplied black paper and chalk to the students. They had to draw the model/pose from memory in the dark after I set off a flash, again the pose changed each flash and the students only had a small amount of time to translate what they had seen. I find these techniques really frustrate those of a technical-photo mindset and allow others the freedom to play and explore with their drawings. More importantly, for me, a real sense of self style emerges from the students and each piece is individual. It's great to watch and listen to students talk of each others' work. Best of luck :) Spike . Date: Thu, 15 Sep 2011 08:20:38 +0100 From: [log in to unmask] Subject: Divergent drawing exercises To: [log in to unmask] Hello. I was hoping to pick the collective brain. I've been tasked with running a series of drawing sessions aimed at first year undergrads, within an illustration an animation framework. The brief that I've been given is to 'open up the students expectations' of what drawing is or can be. Beyond this, the only stipulation is that the course leaders would like the students to begin developing a set of skills that will serve them when drawing representationally later on in their studies e.g faces, the human form, mass, light etc. I'm going to factor life drawing into the series of sessions but I wondered if there were any cornerstone exercises that members called on to:loosen up (or possibly tighten up!) the eye/hand and get students out of the mindset that photorealistic renderings of a subject don't equate to the most successful/interesting drawingsI have two or three ideas that can be varied and we'll also be going out to different locations to make a series of drawings at each site. This is going to be a year long programme and my initial thought is that the most important factor in the students development is to get them making as many drawings as they can. They will be using A4 sketchbooks to gather as much information as they can and then, seed larger pieces of work when back in the studio. Of course my hope is that the group will start to formulate their own drawing aspirations and practices beyond the initial projects and tasks set for them. Any thoughts or advice would be gratefully received. Thanks in advance. Dan