C94 Article
A Little Life
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Mai Ryan (NCAD student):
one-minute gestural drawing |
A little Life
In the second of a series of articles aimed at second-level students and teachers, Margaret Corcoran looks at Life Drawing in the round.
Life drawing: a strange pursuit - but as a pursuit probably no stranger than kicking a ball around a field or climbing rockfaces. Just like these pursuits it is an exercise.
The Leaving Certificate syllabus in art is essentially unchanged for several decades. The examination times for Life Drawing in the Junior and Leaving Certificates are short: a fifteen-minute pose and a thirty-minute pose . Helen Comiskey, representative for Art at the Teacher's Union of Ireland makes the point that the 30-minute pose is a hard call on students - if the student gets thrown early on in the exam it can be hard to regain footing. The marks as part of the overall examination, fifty out of an overall four hundred, do not encourage allocation of class time. However, Life Drawing teaches a broad range of skills that transfer to all aspects of art-making.
The breakdown for marking is as follows:
• First pose - form/volume; shading; proportions; composition (five marks each);
• Second pose - as above, with the inclusion of 'detail'(six marks each).
The guidelines for the marking are restrictive for the teacher. There is no allowance or reward for experimentation either in approach or in use of materials. Noel Guilfoyle, art teacher St.Mary's College Senior School, Rathmines, feels that the first pose in particular should be a loose, free, warm-up drawing. He sees the Junior Cert as giving room for creativity, thus allowing the teacher to also be more creative. He encourages students preparing a portfolio for college not to be limited by the narrow parameters of the Leaving Certificate syllabus.
Are pupils attempting to enter art college straight from secondary at a disadvantage? Apparently not: Frank Bissette, Head of First Year Core Studies at NCAD, assures us that roughly 60% of entries to Core come straight from secondary. About 30% are from portfolio courses.
In the context of portfolios, Bissette draws attention to the NCAD Portfolio Suggestions leaflet.1 The attitude of visual curiosity is most important for him: "The Junior Cert is the approach that we want - that the subject is investigated is probably more important than the subject matter itself."
For Life Drawing he encourages a broadened use of media - for drawing, for example, the side of a broad piece of cardboard dipped in ink. "Most students tend to draw from their fingers. If they can at least be encouraged to draw from the wrist and then the elbow, then a scale and freedom can come into the work - not hesitancy. As they become more confident the medium will come into play - then they can work up to the whole arm."
Orla Daley, Programme Leader of Fibre Art at Ballyfermot College of Further Education, reviews incoming portfolios. She would like to see evidence of more expressive work in the portfolios - explorative techniques, wrong-hand work, extended drawing (bamboo sticks, etc.). The teachers are often doing this work but it may not make it as far as the portfolio. She is also keen that people vary the pose. In secondary schools you cannot ask much of the student who is modelling - but what about moving poses from the gym, football, hockey pitch ? - it's feasible to do this, but Daley doesn't see examples of it coming in.
Oonagh Benner is Life Drawing tutor in Fashion and Textiles at NCAD. She has also taught at secondary level in Gonzaga College, Ranelagh, and St. Andrew's School, Booterstown. She has been a member for some years of IAADE (Irish Association for Art and Design Education), which is proposing changes to the Leaving Cert curriculum. She finds the Leaving Certificate syllabus to be anti-art-education, in that it hinders interaction with media, ideas and process: the less broad an art programme the higher the student's likely grade.
She notes the time gap between the art exam and the cessation of formal classes. For students this can lead to a fall off in fluency. When teaching in Gonzaga she took the trouble of laying on impromptu Life Drawing sessions under the nearest sycamore tree in the grounds for one hour a day for the last few days of study and then right up to the exams. The sessions met with full, enthusiastic attendance and proved to be a beneficial down-time in terms of exam pressure. (Students themselves could easily organise something of this nature.)
Benner's comments fit with my own feelings regarding regularity of practice. I teach at NCAD late in the college day. Students often arrive tired, but the class usually energizes us all. In the two adjoining panels are exercises which I use or which have been suggested to me and hints that may help to energise or direct Life Drawing at secondary level.
1See also portfolio suggestions in the Art Education Supplement, CIRCA 89, pp. 32-34.
Margaret Corcoran is an artist based in Dublin; her next show will be in the Kevin Kavanagh Gallery, Dublin, in March 2001.
The article continues with two practical pages:
A bit of exercise: some practical Life Drawing ideas
Life hints: some suggestions for a better Life
Article reproduced from CIRCA 94, Winter 2000, pp. 38-39, but with additions here.
