Shadowing

In order to find out what kind of approach professional tutors have towards people with no prior art or illustration experience, I went to shadow a textile design student’s drawing critique. During the 30 minute quiet observation I found out that their approach to drawing and art was expressive and abstract. The method that their tutor encouraged the students to use was to create abstract, expressive art and patterns using different mediums, including ones that the students hadn’t used before. In the critique they associated descriptive words, such as ”living, merging, growth” or ”soft” to the work, which were then used as an inspiration to develop the patterns further. The students were also told to collect mood boards for inspiration, and the tutor emphasised how important it is to just keep the drawing practise going in order to ”get more stories” and interesting ”accidents” that would inspire the work further.

It was really insightful to see how the approach to abstract subjects can be more poetic, yet the core of the drawing practise is still the same – it’s worth it to keep drawing, no matter if the person is insecure about the results.

I have also been developing more ideas for the application:

• The application takes into account the user’s comfort zone, by asking / recording what medium and subjects people usually draw with, and uses that information to its advantage when creating easier or more challenging prompts.
• It creates a customised long term ”curriculum” that enables the user’s long-term improvement.
• Takes into account the physical location and mediums suitable for that location.
• Encourages to draw on different styles and techniques in order to enable the users to find the techniques they like.
• Time to try challenging things multiple times in order to learn that specific subject or technique.