I thought about it not twice, but more than 50 at least times before writing this, but I think we, artists, have harder skin than we think and we can take this with both humor and as advice for the future...
In one of my last workshops, I was so frustrated about the people in the class that when the class was done (it was only 2 days) I had to write all this down. I found it in my notes today and decided well, what the heck, I better put it something digital. It's supposed to be funny, but not so funny ha ha ha. The workshop anti-etiquette people:
- The “I know it all” - do I need to explain it.
- The “random question dude”. That’s the one that interrupts a teacher talking about something like composition to ask which brand of paint/pastel the teacher prefers.
- The one that is “always IN the way”. Usually a person with his/her setup up front that is always blocking the view either by standing / sitting somewhere or setting their materials so they can also watch the demo?
- The one that doesn’t clean up after himself.
- The one that is always late, late first day of class, late coming back from lunch, etc.
- That person that tells the teacher how to paint, or how to tweak something so that it’s correct.
- The person that asks the instructor what his/her opinion is of other renowned artist’s work.8
- The one that criticizes another instructor in front of the current one and does it out loud.9
- The student that thinks he/she knows the one and only one artist you need to learn from…
- The artist that just goes to socialize.
- The loud person, yeah, just loud.
- The unofficial instructor assistant (guilty here). You go and try to help a student cause the teacher is busy helping somebody else, and you think you can help this person.
- The one that does not take constructive criticism at all.
- The overly frustrated artist. That’s the one that comes to class to get other people to say they are not so bad at painting, or even that they are good at it.
Reflection: I am going to leave the list at that….We, the students, and the instructor could spend time trying to understand why people behave like this but does that help anybody?I have been to many art classes and watched people matching the least above over and over again. But nobody talks about it because we are all trying to be nice. The thing is we are wasting our time and patience to accommodate others and missing the opportunity to learn from that master we always wanted to learn from…
Guilty of any of the above? I am guilty of several but the main on is the "unofficial instructor" :)
