Wednesday, August 29, 2012

New Semester Begins

I'll be busy this fall with teaching at two colleges: Seneca & Humber.  At both I'll be giving classes in Life Drawing as well as mentoring an illustration course on Children's Books at Seneca.  I'm excited about all of it but a bit apprehensive about how much time and effort they will take to execute to the level I wish.

One could give only one course and have your complete time absorbed since as you teach you're also learning things you weren't aware of,  discovering new things to share with your students as well as ever evolving your approach, understanding and delivery.  I've never given the same course twice as hard as I may try to nail it down.  This applies even to the same course given twice in the same day.  But it makes life interesting never the less.

I've posted a drawing of gestures since the depiction gesture is ultimately the true focus of any life drawing course as I see it. Gesture is life: it is expression, attitude, pose, thought caught in a moment, as well as any  action or inaction as it holds for a moment before moving on.

The beauty of animation, and the reason I feel it is such a priviledge to be part of an animation faculty is that animation is life.  Anything can have life in the mind and hands of an animator.  An object like a cube, or a flour sack, or anything at all, can come to life. It can move and better still make us believe that the thought behind that movement is coming from the object.  It has atitude, emotion and a story.

Ultimately that is the challenge of life drawing: to distil life into gesture.

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