It’s been my dream to be an artist, not to teach art. Yet I serve on the board at Lipscomb University and taught courses at Houston Baptist University, plus I’ve lectured around the world about character design. If I didn’t want to be a teacher, why am I always teaching?
Before I answer that, please visit my Youtube channel where I offer free drawing tutorials (among other things). It’s not professionally produced, but it’s the kind of information I wish I had as an up-and-coming artist:
https://www.youtube.com/dougtennapel
To be an artist is to be both a perpetual student and teacher. If you’re not learning, you’re like a dead carp floating downstream. When I got into animation, it was a constant schooling experience of both learning and teaching every day. When I worked on Attack of the Killer Tomatoes in 1991, I remember we would freeze on a frame of Wiley Coyote and talk to each other about what Chuck Jones was doing. When I worked for Mike Dietz at Shiny, it was a constant back and forth about what we were doing and how to do it. There was no ego. Nobody ever told me how to draw a hand to make themselves look good. When an artist teaches another artist, it’s always out of mercy to the poor struggling guy or gal keep from making the same mistake for years.
All four of my kids dabble in drawing. Here’s my 16 year old’s recent class project:
I offered her instruction on how to measure proportions and encouraged her to be as exact as possible. She gave me the usual teenager “I know, I know.” But I noticed her using the technique. I couldn’t help but teach and she couldn’t help but learn. I showed her a technique of cutting a one inch hole in a white sheet of paper and placing that hole over the source photograph so she could isolate the gray value and make a more accurate assessment of what was going on in just one little area, then duplicate that exact panel onto her drawing. She said, “I know. But I’m really going for that.” Yet, her drawing’s values got much more accurate after that talk. Those were the only two little things I snuck in while she spent hours on the drawing.
My 11 year old son drew the Colosseum, and my 12 year old daughter is doing a watercolor of Spiderman. They aren’t as voracious as I was at their age, but they are drawing with better principles than I was. I doubt if they will choose art as a profession, which is almost a relief to me. But art will always be a part of their lives, and I hope they continue to learn and one day teach their kids how to draw.