EVALUATION

I always try to be conscious of evaluating my work when I finish a piece. Both ‘seeing’ and ‘noting’ what you DON’T like about a finished piece, is just as important as noting what you DO like about it…that’s how we learn going forwards…by deciding what we would do differently next time and keeping that in mind when we try again. It is impossible to ‘win them all’ we can only hope to improve upon the last time!

Whatever level your at - don’t be to hard on yourself - ENJOY THE JOURNEY because there is no destination. And as a beginner - your learning curve is steep- in a good way - you improve a lot in a short space of time. When you’ve been doing it a while you begin to plateau…the gains are marginal, you have to challenge yourself creatively to try new ways of working in order to surprise yourself as to what you are capable of.

This was a students evaluation from the 2 week drawing project below. I thought it was very perceptive. I love ‘not fear that I won’t finish’, and from my point of view, as the teacher, ‘great background advice without direction’ was a real compliment. I’m keen that students learn to think for themselves. There are thousands of tiny decisions to be made when you are creating a piece of art so you need to trust your instincts, be prepared to fail and also give yourself a pat on the back when you do something well!

Students work above.