By Robin Pogrebin
Having worked as an art teacher for 50 years, Lois DeWitt decided to try offering drawing and painting classes online. So in 2008 she established a website — Free Online Art Classes — that now attracts about 15,000 visitors a month from places like Indonesia, Africa and Germany to courses that include instruction in watercolors, oil painting and “artful lighting.” (Ms. DeWitt also happens to work in the lighting department of a Home Depot store on Sundays.)
“I have it all in my brain, and I want to share this,” said Ms. DeWitt, 72, in a telephone interview from her home in Wilmington, N.C. “Brick and mortar is hard — having a gallery and having a building — and the Internet is wonderful that way.”
Ms. DeWitt’s online courses, which attract advertising, are among a growing number of efforts by schools, distance learning companies, entrepreneurs and even museums that are experimenting with how to help people become artists without entering a classroom.
“The studio is no longer confined to the four walls that you’re in,” said Joel Towers, the executive dean of Parsons the New School for Design. “The teaching in art and design hasn’t kept up with the way the practice has evolved in order to figure out pedagogically, how do you go about teaching design in an online environment?”
The advantages are clear: Online courses can make it possible for aspiring artists to learn without having to travel great distances or pay for costly studio space. The emphasis on visual learning — through video demonstrations — can also bridge language barriers. But still unclear is whether fine art can effectively be taught remotely.
“There’s a difference between being digitally native and learning how to learn online,” Mr. Towers said. “We all know we have to figure it out.”
Various organizations are dipping their toes into this arena. The Fashion Institute of Technology recently started offering an online course in basic drawing. Parsons offers online credit and noncredit courses in topics like graphic design and color theory. The New York Institute of Photography went completely online last year.
The Museum of Modern Art is one of a few museums that have gotten into the act, with seven online courses, including a collage class, which combines studio technique demonstrations with study of the works in MoMA’s collection.
“Watch exclusive videos — shot in MoMA’s galleries — about works by some of the masters of collage, including Pablo Picasso, Joseph Cornell, Hannah Höch, Robert Rauschenberg, Mark Bradford and others,” the museum’s website says. “Detailed demonstrations will show you how to make your own collages, inspired by the ways in which these masters pushed the boundaries of representation and materials.”
The Fashion Institute of Technology course was developed to enable students to learn from distant locations; one student, for example, participated in the course from Milan. Students submit their work to a Dropbox file, and the teacher, John Allen, responds with his critique.
“I usually give them feedback within the same day,” Mr. Allen said. “It’s very satisfying in terms of the number of students who really do succeed in the program.”
But the process is also more time-consuming. “It takes a lot of energy to really look at what they’re doing and not be able to do it in an instantaneous way with a whole class,” said Mr. Allen, who has taught art for more than 20 years. “It’s less efficient than to look at everyone’s work in the room together.”
The prices and duration of these courses vary. The New York Institute of Photography charges a total of $1,299 for monthly billing, or $949 if paid upfront in full. Students can enroll anytime and have up to two years to finish the program.
MoMA charges $139 for its collage class ($125.10 for museum members and students), and students must buy their own materials and supplies. A digital camera is required to photograph and post work for weekly discussions.
Others have yet to take the leap. What became Art Instruction Schools, based in Minneapolis, has run a correspondence course since it was established in 1914 by a private company, the Bureau of Engraving Inc., to train illustrators for the printing industry, sending materials to students all over the world. While it recently put its venerable art test online as a pilot, it has yet to develop an online component for a new 27-lesson course on the fundamentals of art (total cost: $4,285).
“It’s really difficult to teach the tactile elements of art without ultimately marks on paper — brush, paint, ink,” said Patrick Stuart, the company’s president. “I think you have to learn it tactilely first — doing it on paper and seeing the techniques. Then you adapt that skill to the technology that’s there. This stuff has only been around a few years.”
Indeed, the technology — simulating a paintbrush or pen and ink on a computer — can be a wrench in the works. Right now the exercise is still more like finger painting. And computers, of course, can malfunction, forcing art teachers to also develop technological expertise to help students through such problems.
“A pencil breaks, you grab another one,” Mr. Stuart said. “When the iPad doesn’t connect to the Internet, then we have to support it.”
Ms. DeWitt in North Carolina said she started simply, providing her students with simple step-by-step instructions that she eventually augmented with photos and videos. In running her website, she teams up with Google, YouTube and Amazon (for example, linking to supplies her students can get on Amazon).
“Sometimes you have to demonstrate,” she said. “You’ve got to be in front of them doing it rather than talking about it — how to do a pen-and-ink drawing or shade with a pencil.”
She continues to offer live art classes for a fee in her home, a space she calls the Sun Room Studio. The classes typically attract about four students a session. But she said she enjoyed being able to reach a much larger audience through the web.
“It’s exciting to me to be able to share what I know with the world,” Ms. DeWitt said. “I think it’s pretty darn cool.”
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