Leveling in arts courses develops novices’ talents
The assumption that to take Drawing I as a student who is not “good” at drawing would be embarrassing, futile or both, is one with which visual arts teacher Donna Sartanowicz said she disagrees. According to Sartanowicz, the most common challenge a beginner faces is trusting that improvement is a process.
“I think that there’s a myth in the world that art is a kind of talent that you either have or don’t have. All of us, everyone, can learn to draw,” Sartanowicz said.
The school offers a sequence of drawing and painting classes for students, starting with Drawing I and Painting I and ending with AP Studio Art. While in academic courses, levels determine the pace at which material is learned, leveling in these arts courses provides step-by-step guidance to promote gradual improvement.
“We are taking the knowledge that we already have, and we are applying it to more difficult challenges,” Sartanowicz said of the step from Drawing I and Painting I to Drawing and Painting II.
According to Sartanowicz, assignments in Drawing I and Painting I tend to be more structured, with a specific procedure and a specific final product. For example, one of the recent Drawing I projects was to create a still-life based on observation of a model, then to take a section of the drawing and modify it into a landscape.
Junior Michelle Ko, who has taken both Drawing I and Painting I, said that level one classes often invoked hesitance in students with both more and less experience.
“When you come here you find out that there’s a lot of people that can be better than you expected,” Ko said. “I felt some pressure, because sometimes I would feel like I’m competing with these other people to be the best. But it’s not always like that, because you always bring different things to the table.”
According to Sartanowicz, Drawing I, Painting I, and Drawing and Painting II are skill-based classes, while Advanced Drawing and Painting focuses on the conceptual challenges artists face.
“Level one is all about building your skills. Level two is kind of a combination of skill building and stepping out a little more, taking a little more independent control,” Sartanowicz said. “Advanced Drawing and Painting is more about conceptual problems.”
Sartanowicz said that a major challenge in the advanced class is solving “visual problems,” and there is more than one way to solve each one. In class, she demonstrates those multiple ways by showing other artists’ work as examples.
“[Advanced Drawing and Painting] has more possibilities,” Sartanowicz said. “Where I might have one or two artists shown for Drawing I, for Advanced Drawing and Painting, I might have five different artists. So the students will be able to kind of pick and choose, I’d really like to think about it in this way, or I’d rather think about it in the other way.”
According to junior Frances Love, who skipped Drawing and Painting II and took Advanced Drawing and Painting as a sophomore, the advanced class encouraged students to more carefully discuss their artistic choices.
Ko said that students in the advanced class tend to be more confident and creatively bold.
“The kids who choose to go on to the advanced classes are the kids who really discovered that this is something I like to do, I want to do, and it’s helpful to me in my life,” said Sartanowicz. “Those students tend to be more self driven and really wanting to push themselves in their abilities.”
If a student is genuinely interested in taking arts classes, Love said, they should go for it.
“People are not going to judge you if you aren’t as good or as practiced at it, but they are going to judge you if you don’t take it seriously,” Love said.
Sartanowicz said that while students sometimes come into her classes to fulfill their elective requirements, they often end up surprising themselves.
“You don’t take a class because you’re already good at it,” Sartanowicz said. “You take a class because you maybe want to be good at it, or you want to find something out, and then once you’re there, that curiosity can lead in in places that you never expected.”
