Conducting an art workshop is not an easy job. It requires a person to be knowledgeable, organized, and efficient. Since art workshops deal with a different topic each time, the workshop conductor should do a deep research on the topics that can be interesting, new, and which will grip the student’s curiosity. Not just the topics but the way how you teach also has to be interesting. The instructor should be able to demonstrate what he or she is teaching in an easy and understandable way which the students can make good use of. If it is a same regular routine, in the next batch one can expect lesser number of students.Determine what you want your students to learn, weather it is about the principle of art or elements of art for example; patterns, colour, composition, textures, etc or would it be about techniques like wet on dry, wet on wet, edges, techniques of using materials, techniques of using brushes, etc. Since art workshop includes experienced artists as well as beginners, whatever you are planning to teach must be useful for all kinds of students. Experienced artists maybe able to understand even the complicated things you might be teaching but it becomes difficult for freshers or beginners to follow it and understand it.
Arrange all the materials that you are providing to students before the class starts. If you have any handouts organize it properly according to the steps how you are going to teach and staple them together so that it becomes easy to distribute. The aim is to not confuse the students. Everyone should be able to get to the page number you are asking them to get.Some students might take more time to settle down. Request all of them to settle down fast and do not start the class until you have the attention of all the students. If you start before the settle down, later on these students who are not paying attention start asking more doubts interrupting the class and consuming most of the individual time and attention diverted towards them. Introduce yourself and talk a little about yourself and give an idea to the class what and how you are going to take today’s class. Also give chance for each student to introduce themselves and say a few words about themselves.
Simplify the steps and demonstrate the techniques in a step by step fashion which becomes easy to follow. Ask the students to follow each segment as you are demonstrating and encourage questions and try to answer relevant doubts only. When all the students have finished their piece of work, ask the students to put their art work up so that you can speak about each work and also welcome opinions of other students. Do not encourage any negative comments. Dedicate each student some individual time.Conclude the workshop by reviewing the whole days work and do a quick brush up so that students can retain what they have learnt permanently in their minds.
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