Teaching students to teach themselves.

When I teach classes, I do demos but i don’t do “paint-alongs.” Rather, I like to talk about techniques or concepts and demonstrate them in action by “talking through a painting” as I create it. In the Wayne Theibaud exhibit at the Morgan several years ago, I came across a comment he made about the great drawing teacher Nicolaides who said something like “I don’t teach students to draw, rather I teach students how to teach themselves to draw.” My paraphrase might not be totally accurate, but the sentiment is something which I hold by. I think that if I teach a student to paint one very specific painting, they will only be able to pant that painting….. if I can show them the concept and have them apply it to their own original painting, I have taught them something very important.