My teaching in drawing combines two linked structures: vertical (professor to students) and horizontal (peer to peer). I build clear sequences of exercises, lectures, and projects that give students a shared foundation, then I design the studio so they learn from one another and from the places where drawing happens. I treat drawing as a portable research method that can move through daily life, institutions, landscapes, and digital spaces while remaining rigorous.
I teach through clear sequences of exercises, lectures, structured projects and critiques that build foundations without forcing a single style. Students gain shared skills, shared language, and shared references so they can take bigger creative risks with confidence. This approach gives the class a common floor, then I encourage students to push past it. Critique is an important part of the semester.
In Practice: I design a repeating rhythm of short exercises followed by longer projects. Exercises isolate techniques and skills without the pressure of making a finished artwork, then projects require those skills inside a concept-driven artwork with revision and critique built in. I teach art history and contemporary drawing as living context for studio decisions, connecting techniques to artists, movements, and current exhibitions so students understand that craft is never separate from meaning. I also use "mobile" drawing days and field trips to museums, galleries, and unusual drawing sites, because changing environment changes attention, mark making, and idea formation. Critiques are held the day after the project is due and are mandatory. Missing Critiques means not finishing the project and reduces grades to a C being the highest possible. In the critique I encourage all students to participate but I use to show why a certain project is effective or ineffective. I speak about uniqueness, concept, generic, cliches, trends, how much skill is needed or not needed, intent and how to present work.
I build a studio culture where students learn by teaching, testing, and exchanging methods with one another. Peer learning makes skills circulate faster, strengthens critique, and models how artists develop in professional communities. It also makes room for tools and viewpoints that do not come only from me.
In Practice: Students deliver short technical or process tutorials for the class, choosing topics that add to the collective skill base rather than repeat what I have already taught. When students teach, they must decide what to demonstrate, what to risk live, and what to prepare in advance, which quickly shows them that clarity and preparation are part of artistic communication.
For some projects, I assign collaborative drawing or mixed-media projects so they learn how to share responsibilities, communicate through management platforms (I demo Figma and shared Google docs, sheets, photos) negotiate aesthetic differences, delegate duties and keep shared files and materials organized.
I structure drawing courses around a predictable flow that students, reported through feedback, state is helpful and supports momentum. Students know what is coming and understand the difference between learning techniques/draftsmanship and researching/developing concepts. Exercises build competence in project relevant skills, then longer projects require students to use those techniques to make an artwork. Alongside the exercises and projects is homeworks focused on research into historical and contemporary artists. I demo "old fashioned" ways to research alongside using LLMs like Perplexity that do excellent jobs at finding commonalities between student's ideas and historical/contemporary artists. The structure is not about control; it is about creating conditions where experimentation can survive.
In Practice: Short exercises focus on technique and exploration, not on a polished outcome. Through homeworks and in the Project phase, students can storyboard, sketch, build concepts, make small tests, and try unfamiliar materials that will later support larger projects. Three- to six-week projects scale up through the semester into resolved works with critique, revision, and stronger production demands. I extend the final project when needed, because it often combines multiple techniques plus a new method introduced near the end of the term.
I give readings and written prompts with a clear expectation that students develop their own thinking and their own voice. Notes must be handwritten in a sketchbook so reading becomes physical, visual, and personal. Students may use AI tools for support, but they are held to the same standards as any other writing.
In Practice: Required readings include sketchbook notes, and I encourage doodles, diagrams, and visual annotations as part of comprehension. If a student uses AI in a way that produces vague, off-topic, or incorrect writing, the work earns a poor grade and must be rewritten after they actually engage the text. I explicitly teach that these systems should not replace reading. When I detect, through my own extensive use and through differences in writing styles, that students are using AI, I offer them advice on ways to change the language, avoid obvious tells and always, always, always, start with your own writing. Students WILL use LLMs simply because they often write much better than they can. It is important for their life after graduation that they know how to use the LLMs well. Many students appreciate this approach because it improves their work and reduces over-reliance on tools that do not understand context.
I teach drawing as both a discipline and a portable way of making and researching. Materially drawing can move through classrooms, city streets, natural spaces, and digital platforms easily. It is debatable what constitutes a "drawing" and my belief is that using a sketchbook, surface, internet space, the air and even the movement of bodies* to make a mark (which is equally materially loose) is creating a drawing. The surface having equal weight in importance is key. The studio is portable. This portability helps students build a practice that does not depend on a perfect setup.
In Practice: I regularly move classes outside the drawing studio to art spaces, coffee shops, nature trails, science labs, and performance spaces. Place becomes part of the assignment, shaping observation, mark making, and interpretation. Students learn to draw from life, from movement, from sound, and from screen-based sources, and we discuss how each context changes what they see and how they respond. In regards to content, making meaning can be found through choices in surface/mark backed up by a clear intent.
*re: my student exercise/project in Student Images
Many students arrive with narrow definitions of what a "good" drawing is, often tied to realism or social media trends. I expand the field so students can develop a voice rather than chase approval. Drawing becomes inquiry, material experimentation, and a way of building ideas.
In Practice: Students explore drawing across surfaces and contexts, including hybrid physical and digital workflows. They might move from graphite and ink into projection, collage, or tablet-based drawing, depending on course level. Critiques focus on intent, communication, and risk, not on conformity to a single aesthetic. I make it clear that drawing can be precise, messy, slow, fast, observational, diagrammatic, or conceptual, as long as the choices are intentional and supported by craft.
I teach students how to teach themselves, because tools and expectations change constantly and artists must adapt without losing intention. I demo only portions of an exercise or project and talk about how to find helpful tutorials and resources. We talk about who is making tutorials and assessing the qualifications of these individuals. There are many Youtube "celebrities" in various softwares who espouse unhelpful advice on Art while showcasing only technical workflows. I teach students where to find documentation for software, the differences between Fan Art and Fine Art and how to use LLMs that are trained, or they train, for specific applications. Students gain methods for testing, documenting, and sharing what they learn (through the Tech Tutorials) so they can keep growing after the course ends.
In Practice: Students produce peer tutorials, share workflows, and document process so their experiments can be repeated and improved. I grade organization, revision, and clarity alongside visual outcomes, because those habits protect creative risk. Over time, students see that learning how to learn is just as important as learning any one technique.
I incorporate generative AI throughout all of my courses. I speak on panels, at conferences and use generative AI in my own artwork and share this with the students throughout the class. It is a tool that students must learn how to use. Many students avoid AI or have strong views about it without experience or knowledge. Machine Learning (AI is a subset of ML) has been used by artists for many decades. We go through this history so that they understand this is nothing new. Technology shifts and the world adapts. In these demos and talks, students learn how generic outputs happen, why they happen, and how to move past them. They also learn to use language models as research tools for locating similar ideas across entertainment and fine art history.
In Practice: For example, we run simple prompts across multiple image models to reveal generic defaults, then identify what not to do and how to push beyond those patterns. This is in the research phase for projects. Dumb Prompts and Smart Prompt homeworks allow them to understand the difference between "slop" and artists using generative AI in highly imaginative and intellectual ways. Students use AI to research precedents for their ideas, then decide whether to remix, critique, expand, or abandon those directions in favor of stronger concepts. This turns AI into a tool for critical thinking rather than a shortcut. I also have AI assignments where they must use AI for a certain % of the final project. In these, I show how to train a LoRA (like a personal filter) and how to use image to image, image to video and image to 3d methods. Using these methods complicates the overly-simplistic understanding of AI as an author of work divorced from the artist.
I believe drawing belongs beyond the studio. Mobility changes what students notice, how they gather materials, and how they think about audience. Public-facing collaboration increases seriousness, visibility, and care.
In Practice: When possible, I connect drawing courses to public contexts: small exhibitions, hallway displays, online showcases, or collaborations with local spaces. Students see that drawing can enter conversations in the university and the city, not just live in a portfolio. This experience helps them understand drawing as an active practice that can circulate, be discussed, and matter to others. In 2025, one of my classes spent the last 6 weeks of the semester meeting inside Locust Projects. We developed Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality artworks and showcased them at the same time as EMERGE week. I reached out to one of my collaborators, Professor Jacob Sudol who brought incredible avant-garde music to the night. It was a huge success and exposed students to site-specific artwork using cutting edge technology.
Assessment in my drawing courses rewards clarity of intent, craft, and risk. I teach students why organization, iteration, and revision matter, and I design projects that make those habits necessary. Students learn how to submit work in certain formats and in folder setups.
In Practice: Students receive feedback at multiple points, revise based on critique, and learn to articulate their choices with precision. The grading criteria values process as seriously as outcome, because process is where learning becomes sustainable. By the end of the course, students are able to explain what they are doing, why they are doing it, and how they might push it further—skills that carry directly into advanced study and professional practice. Students lower their grade through missing due dates, improper formatting, not reading instructions, missing critique (this one is the most severe) and missing parts of the assignment.