Joshua Jacober, first session

A delight to meet Joshua today. I did an overview of what I would like to see occur during our summer sessions and since we are meeting only once a week I am hoping we can continue once shcool begins. I showed Joshua some of the reference material I would be using to teach him about drawing: Betty Edwards, Drawing From The Right Side of the Brain, Betty Edwards, Drawing on the Artist Within, Nicolaides, The Natural Way to Draw, Zentangles for a beginner, The Joy of Zentangles, and Perspective, How to See it and How to apply it. Joshua is 15 years old with one studio art class in his history, so, we will start from the beginning, covering the basic principles of art and design and then playing upon and enhancing the unique way in which he has on his own expressed his artistic ideas with his "Compact" drawings. Because he likes to work this way, I will introduce him to Zen Tangling which would be a very natural extention of what he already enjoys doing.

I took some time to show Joshua the typed of materials we will be using and gave him a list of supplies he would need to attain.

For our first session I talked about Line or Contour drawing as a basis for all that would follow. I explained how art is a non verbal language and we could learn something just by looking at his signature. I was a little surprised to learn that Joshua did not know cursive. So, I showed him how to write his name (I think this will be useful in the future!) and asked him to practice it at home. I went on and describe how to put on paper what you see with your own eyes, which is not about expressing, but will lead to having the skills for his unique way of expressing.

I had Joshua get to know his paper with some warm up exercises and playing with the tools that were new to him. I asked him to draw a picture of himself, just from memory.

After several contour studies, including blind contour and modified contours, I ended our session by having him to a modified contour drawing from an upside down image. You may recognize the face of Abraham Lincoln! Joshua was pleased with it and so was I!