What happens when you put three generations of men from one family together for an art lesson?

Quite a lot of laughter, as it turns out! 😂🎨

I had such a fun morning teaching this lovely family during an art lesson at The Nare Hotel in Cornwall, exploring figure drawing, faces and, most importantly, learning to understand what we are actually looking at rather than what we think we see.

The youngest member of the family isn’t in this photograph, but I don’t think that matters. Look at the expressions on these two faces and I think they tell the whole story beautifully!

Learning to understand a face

Drawing a face can feel incredibly difficult when we approach it as a collection of things we already know: two eyes, a nose, a mouth and some hair.

The transformation begins when we stop drawing what we think those things look like and start investigating what is actually in front of us.

Where are the shadows? Where does the face turn away from the light? What are the relationships between the features? What shapes can we really see?

This is why my art lessons aren’t about teaching people to copy my technique. I teach the fundamentals of art so that people can understand why something works and use that knowledge to develop their own artwork and their own technique.

I often describe it as learning the grammar, spelling and punctuation of art. Once you understand the underlying language, you have far more freedom to express yourself.

Art doesn’t have to be serious to teach us something

There were lots of laughs and giggles during this lesson, but there was also lots of understanding happening.

Those moments are one of my favourite parts of being an artist and art teacher in Cornwall. Someone suddenly sees something they couldn’t see before, or understands why something works, and another little door opens.

When three generations of one family are discovering those things together, it becomes about more than the drawings.

It becomes a shared experience and a memory.

That is one of the things I love most about teaching. People may arrive wanting to learn how to draw or paint, but very often they leave having discovered something about how they see as well.

And judging by those two wonderful smiles… I think we had a pretty good morning! ❤️🎨