Even teachers of art go through a standard training scheme: art school, college, university. But I didn’t really want to talk about this, but about how this learning process is built.
Mandatory lessons in painting, drawing, composition, viewing and plein airs, creative, pedagogical and museum practice - an obligatory minimum. Not all of this can withstand and reach the end in teaching drawing, but it's a pity. Unfortunately, I see the disappointing tendency of infantile students to give in to difficulties: it does not work out - I will not do it; I do not want to paint this portrait - I will not; tired hand - why do I need it ?; it’s hard to stand on your feet while working on a large format - probably this is not for me ”... And I'm not talking about the need to practice sketches daily, write sketches and draw sketches constantly, learn from nature, think, and not only follow the recommendations of the drawing teacher.
People are well tested for their readiness to serve creativity in the open air, when the conditions for classes, for example, painting, are not the most convenient and comfortable. Of course, Leonardo said: “... the sculptor does his work with great physical effort, and the painter with mental. This can be proved, since the sculptor during his work spends a lot of effort on striking marble or stone in order to free the figure enclosed in them from unnecessary pieces. This requires incredible physical stress, often accompanied by profuse sweat, which combines with dust and turns into a crust of dirt. The sculptor's face is completely covered with this crust and dusted with marble dust, as if he were a baker, and he was all strewn with small particles, as if it had just snowed. His house is dirty, dusty and filled with fragments of stone.
Everything happens differently with the painter ... he sits in a laid-back pose before his work, beautifully dressed, and with a light brush he puts beautiful colors on, he wears such jewelry as he likes, his home is clean and full of wonderful paintings. Often he allows himself to work to the accompaniment of musical instruments or to read aloud beautiful works that he can listen with great pleasure, not disturbed by hammer blows or any other sounds. ”
But da Vinci did not live in the Urals, where natural conditions are not so cloudless. As one of my teachers said, when they were dismissed from their studies as a student because of the cold (-30 degrees Celsius), the students joyfully ran to the plane air. “Only the paint became more viscous, and so - nothing,” he concluded his story, “so they would have stood on the bridge and wrote if the director of the school hadn’t gone to work through this bridge. He drove us out of the street. ” Creative impulse, of course, is praised, but health is more expensive.
My dad and I once went to the open air on the river near the village, out of town, in early May. It was warm and the sun was baking so that I had to strip to T-shirts and roll up jeans. And only we chose a good beautiful place for a sketch of the landscape, we just spread out the colors and began painting, when a whole flock of bloodthirsty, hungry midges rose and began to bite us in all places on the body.
I had to harder to pull the panama over the ears, smear all exposed parts of the body, including the face, neck and hands with fetid ointment from insects, put on windbreakers again and, after clenching our teeth, continue to write. We adapted by drawing with our right hand, fanning ourselves with annoying insects from our left. And midges swarmed around us and constantly stuck to the paint layer in the sketch and the palette, as a result of which, the whole sky in our landscapes was dotted with dozens of insects (in the lower part of the sketch, they were not visible due to the strong texture).
Tormented, bitten, hungry, tired, but happy with the result of our painting exercises, my father and I returned home and proudly demonstrated our work at home.
“Are there really so many birds?” - Mom asked. “They turned out so realistically over this forest, meadow and river in the blue sky!”
Dad and I looked at each other and laughed. Midges made our pictures special, gave them charm. And after all, on purpose, we would never have guessed to revive the landscapes with a flock of black birds. And we even got a certain analogy with the wheat fields of Van Gogh and flocks of crows above it.
Sometimes, on the creative path, the artist has to overcome certain obstacles. They will be constantly, as in any other work. And overcoming them, not only character is tempered and not only skill but also self-esteem is growing, new habits are being acquired, new opportunities are opening up. And it happens that even such unexpected pleasant surprises await us at the end of these tests. There is no need to be afraid of difficulties - without them there will be no real creativity, real pleasure from drawing, there will not be that special, personal experience of the artist, which forms the individuality and the author's style of the creator.
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