I’ve been taking a drawing class this winter and it got me to thinking about learning. It dawned on me that it’s really difficult to teach yourself something with books or online videos unless you already know the basics.
For example, if you’ve trained in Tai Chi and know not just a form, but why you move certain ways, you can watch a video of a master instructor and get some insight. You can probably even teach yourself a new form that way.
But until you have a good grounding in the basics, videos are not going to make sense. You need to learn the basics from someone who knows them and can guide you past the errors that most beginners make.
Until your body has integrated those basics, you aren’t going to know how to interpret the things you see in a video.
In a lot of cases — particularly if you are learning to do something physical — such classes need to be in person with hands-on instruction.
In drawing class this week we were working on drawing negative space, because you need to understand negative space to see things the way an artist does. I was trying to do it, but the teacher came by and said, “You’re drawing the chair, not the negative space.” She showed me a couple of things and I was able to shift what I was doing.
I can’t exactly explain what shifted, either, because some of what I am learning is not the sort of thing that is easily put into words. It is instead the sort of thing you learn by watching and trying and getting just the right kind of correction.
When it comes to drawing — and we won’t even get into painting or sculpture or other visual arts — I don’t have enough grammar and vocabulary and comprehension of the basics to figure out what else I need to know. Having a good teacher is gradually giving me those basics.
A friend of mine recommended some online video classes, but she’s been doing art of various kinds for some time. I don’t think I know enough yet to pick up much that way. Once I have more grounding, I’ll look into that. Continue reading “Some Thoughts on Learning”…