Teaching and Learning

Last weekend I taught two workshops in San Francisco, both outside the Ferry Building, surrounded by the market, the tourists and a very noisy drummer. The drummer might have been a bit much, but other than that it was perfect for a workshop title “Capturing Chaos: Drawing a Crowd”.

I love teaching, get super involved and never remember to take a single photo, so thank you Laurie Wigham and Stephen Brigham for taking some pictures and sending them to me. Here I am, bent over backwards, trying to demo while explaining a concept on the left. On the right, we look at our final pieces of the day together.

I’ve reviewed the content of this workshop, which is the same one I taught in Singapore,  here on my blog, so I thought I’d share a couple of sketches by a participant that really help explain what I’m hoping workshop participants walk away with at the end of the workshop.

Srivani Narra sketched this first piece a week before the workshop. Coincidentally, it was at the very same location that the workshop was held the next week. The second sketch is her final piece from the workshop. Both lovely pieces, for sure, but such different captures. She said doing the workshop gave her the confidence to add people to the scene she captured. She’d always seen the people as a part of the scene, just never felt brave enough to give it a shot to capture them.

Thanks Srivani, I couldn’t have put it better: to feel confident to capture what you want to capture of a location, including the people is exactly what this workshop is about.

Me? I decompressed after class with a Vietnamese iced coffee and a sketch of the long line for ice cream at the Ferry Building.

Then I jumped on the Bart across to Berkeley (where I parked my car, parking in San Francisco is super-expensive!), picked up a Zachary’s pizza, did a sketch while I waited for it, and drove home.

And I came home thinking:  I learn so much from teaching and from my workshop participants every time I teach. I hope they learn atleast as much as I do.

More workshops coming up soon. The next one in Sausalito on the 24th of October (that one is already full) and I may just hold a couple more in the South Bay if the warm weather holds out. Want to be waitlisted for one? Just let me know.