It seems like every day MaryAnn makes it her job to keep instilling the basics. She talks about what she thinks they need to improve daily, but she knows she can't just give the full list of improvements on a daily basis. Because people are only able to really translate 2 or 3 new things into what they're doing at a time, she just gives the most important 3 bits of info out, of her list of 10 essentials. Its been interesting to see the students apply that knowledge over time. Because of the nature of the skills being taught in the class, we'll see the changes over time. Some of the fun in this is forcing time to be a factor. One of the warm-ups she's been having everyone do to get them in the right thought-process is have them do a couple 5 minute sketches, then switch into speed-mode. She has the model switch position from in a decrescendo: 2 mins, 1m45s, 1m30s, 1m15s, etc all the way down to 15 seconds, then it starts going back up. This exercise is great, in my opinion. It makes them think initially that they have to work fast, but they still spend too much time on small details when they should be thinking broad strokes, so the more they feel the time is running out, the closer to stick-figures the drawings get. But that's most definitely not a bad thing. It forces them to make their eyes travel back and forth between the paper and the subject quickly, allowing them to make decisions they would have worried at if given too much time. So while the faster poses look simple, she's forcing them to see only the essential, which inevitably leads back to the skeleton and how the hips, shoulders, and back are oriented and it makes the weight of the subject make sense with the legs. I've been glad to see them all be affected by this 'ah-hah' moment, and while it doesn't directly translate into the rest of their work just yet, I've noticed some moving ahead with this new mental tool.
- sergelballif
