Why Do I Ask You To Keep A Blog?

Why the hell do I have to keep a blog in a drawing class?

If I already have to keep a sketchbook/journal, why do I have to journal on a blog?

I'm always just writing the same stuff on my blog that we end up saying and talking about in class, so isn't the blog just busy work?

How come Jason is the only Drawing 1 teacher making his students keep a blog?

I usually wait until we are past the half-way point in the semester before I answer these questions, which--whether you've vocalized them or not--I am sure many of you are asking. However, since many of the blogs seem it seems are being woefully ignored, I'm posting this now, instead.

Well, there are a several reasons that I ask you to maintain a blog as part of your work experience in this class:

1. If you take a look at your syllabus, you'll notice this sentence in the "course description": The student is expected to develop disciplined work habits and an understanding of the artist's language. Also, under the "course objectives," you'll read this tidbit: 7. Develop skills of observation, personal expression, and abstract thinking. How does one accomplish these skills? Through repetition, and through a regimented schedule of writing down your ideas. No one just suddenly arrives at being an artist. It takes patient, pervasive work. And patient, pervasive work requires a disciplined work ethic. Some students enter college with this work ethic already in place. But it is not merely a natural talent--a work ethic is learned behavior and can be cultivated and honed through lots of writing and written analysis both in private forums (your sketchbook) and open forums which are susceptible to public comment (your blog).

2. I may be giving away a bit too much about myself, but here we go: Here are two paragraphs excerpted from my written teaching philosophy (every college educator has to write one of these):

Beginning Students
My approach to teaching the beginning student is based theoretically on the idea that people learn skill proficiencies through repetition, ritual and ceremony. Repetition is achieved through daily exercises created to teach the student very specific skills such as line-control, color mixing, and compositionally organizing space. Ceremony is achieved through ritualized critiques and dialogues with specific guidelines and parameters designed to encourage assignment-specific discussion and avoid off-topic rambling. At this beginning level, it is essential that the student be introduced to the foundational elements and principles of design and learns to master techniques.

Some New Approaches
In the classroom, I employ some of the newest resources available in order to provide an educational experience that is optimal for the students of our current technological age. This is achieved by utilizing Internet websites such as Blogger, Facebook, and Deviant Art as communication tools. These provide not only a means of transferring information from educator to scholar, but also provide forums in which classmates can connect, discuss, and analyze as a community. Making use of these new approaches in cooperation with the established classroom operation ensures a learning experience that is geared toward reaching a generation of learners who have grown up in the “computer age.”

I think that sums things up in a nutshell.

3. It is important to be ready to promote yourself, your work, and your artistic community using the vast resource that is the Internet. The practice you're getting now by maintaining a blog will better prepare you for maintaining a website at a later point. In fact, many people from many disciplines--not just visual arts--use their blog as a website itself.

Dwayne Butcher, a local Memphis artist, good friend of mine, and Painting 1 instructor at MCA, maintains a blog that generates a huge amount of local and national attention on not only his own art and writing, but on the Memphis art scene as a whole.

Louis Lovhaug, a funny guy who does video critiques of really bad comic books, maintains his blog, "Atop The Fourth Wall", in lieu of an expensive website.

Photographer Nicole Kuntz maintains a blog to showcase her work.

So, I hope this answers any of your questions and puts any of your concerns to rest. If not, and you are still asking why you have to keep a blog, then I can only say this: BECAUSE I SAID SO!