I've been teaching Drawing I for the past 3 years at the College of Charleston; 2 classes per semester, 2 days a week. It's been a good change for me, as I was in the decorative painting field as my 'day job' while I was in New York City. Teaching has given me the opportunity to organize my thoughts about Art (drawing) and pushed me out of my comfort zone, both by talking in front of groups of students, and also one on one. The politics of 'academia' and teacher compensation aside, I still believe that teaching is a valuable asset to my studio work and our community in general, and I keep doing it for the 3 or 4 stellar students each semester that I feel like I'm passing the torch to. I've had numerous teachers over the years that have made a big impact on me, both professionally and personally, from which to learn from.
My favorite part of the semester is always when we get to draw from the model, which I usually save for the end. For a beginning class like this, I usually emphasis gesture and form, over anatomy and proportion. We do a lot of quick gesture drawing and short poses in order to have the students sync their eye-hand-mind together. I usually start with a demo, to try and walk them through how I would approach the drawing problem at hand. Here are a few recent ones, all vine charcoal on 18" x 24" paper:
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