Task 6a Pilot observation

 

I have been observing the students I work with in my art sessions, with the intention of (1) establishing how well they respond to being taught drawing and painting techniques and (2) how they respond to art sessions that take on a more therapeutic teaching approach.  

 

In some sessions I have been teaching students more traditional drawing and portrait painting techniques.  In other sessions I have been teaching abstract painting as a therapeutic approach experiment.

This is not to say that abstract painting is not a technical way of painting but there is more freedom in producing the work.

 

Most of the students I work with have had very little experience of art lessons both in the school and in their prior education.  

This is due to a number of factors, ranging from poor attendance to destructive behaviour which has kept them out of a normal classroom setting.

 

Since I started working with the students I have been mainly concentrating on teaching them basic painting and drawing techniques.

Some of the students have picked the techniques up reasonably well and others have struggled.

I decided to combine drawing and painting in the sessions because the students consider painting more fun and drawing to be hard work.

 

This observation is intended to give me insight for my enquiry, as to how students with learning difficulties respond to processing technical aspect of drawing and painting.

As motioned above some responded well in parts, but needed a lot of guidance and struggled to remember and process information.

For example I demonstrated to them a number of times how to mix primary colours to create brown and purple, but despite my repetition, they constantly needed reminding.

 

The students found painting portraits the easiest of tasks, I think, because they had images to work from. They were proud of the end result and saw improvements as they created more paintings. 

 

The students really struggled with abstract painting.

Despite finding it difficult to follow instructions in the basic techniques sessions, they still needed guidance, which is something I was hesitant to give in this instance.

As an artist I found the abstract painting to be very strong, complex and interesting.

The student’s body language and the feedback they gave me in response to the abstract painting session, was that they were less proud and impressed by what they produced.