Pink's use of the word Symphony is very interesting. It is a more aesthetic word to describe the grand schema, the big picture, the finished puzzle, etc. I love that he set out to learn to draw. " I'm not drawing what I'm seeing. I'm drawing remembered symbols from childhood." Isn't this exactly what we as art teachers have to over come when teaching realistic drawing? I myself still struggle when working on my own drawings. All the problems he had with it where the same problems I see my own students face. I like how he talked about tricking the left side of your brain but turning a picture upside down before drawing it. I have several tricks I use when teaching realistic drawings, and I even use the words tricking your brain, but I didn't realize it was the left side of the brain we are tricking. I have students (4th grade) start a self portrait with a gridded photo of themselves and gridded a piece of drawing paper. I have them cover the photo so they can only see the squares they are working on at that time. I also have students (5th or 6th) do hand drawings, we start with blind contour and modified contour exercises over and over to look for details in their hands. I have sometimes thought this was cheating, but now I feel justified in teaching this way. It has students look for relationships and at the end the result is the symphony, everything coming together to make their drawings.
These people who already see these relationships in the world are awesome! I would like to count myself in there sometimes. The boundary crossers are really cool. I feel I need to be more multi in my life. "Sometimes the most powerful ideas come from simply combining two existing ideas nobody else ever thought to unite." I think food is a great example of this. I love hoppin' john which is rice, black eyed peas and bacon. Or bacon on a cupcake has anyone tried that is so good! " lend me your ears" "the boss doesn't really want you to pull a Van Gogh." Love that I laughed. It's a over used joke but is still funny.
I feel it is so uplifting to read want Pink said about Dyslexics! I have been fighting the world on the idea that learning "disability" means someone can't do thing. Someone with a learning "disability" learn and view the world in ways different then the majority. Which if most defiantly not a bad thing!
I think the grid assignment you talked about works perfectly for learning how to see the big picture. I’ve done it in a class before, and it definitely works by forcing students to concentrate on the individual parts to create the whole piece.
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