Anne Hall said
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A lot of what I learned in that setting was from watching her work on my paintings (perhaps out of her frustration with my immature efforts!).
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Jesse,
I can really relate to Anne's experience. I had a teacher when I was in ninth grade decide I needed a wash on the sky of my "beautiful" horse drawing. So he grabbed my paper, put a wash across it, and ran a blue steak down the middle of my white horse. I was devasted and angry! But too timid to complain about it. Then to make matters worse, somebody stole it out of my locker. Never did figure out why somebody would want a horse with a blue streak.
That stuck in my mind when it comes to teaching. I've had teachers grab my paint brush and paint on my oil paintings too(without asking permission.) Whenever that happens, the "me" is lost out of my artwork and I figure the best thing to do is learn from it, and go on. But I could never claim the painting as my own afterwards.
There are ways to get around that. Laying a piece of acetate or tracing paper over a drawing and making the changes on the covering shows the student what they need to see without messing with their work, then they can make the changes themselves, and learn from it. This works well for drawing, and colored pencil, I've never tried it with pastels, but I imagine they would stick to tracing paper. Acetate wouldn't work for oil unless it was dry, but doing your examples on a piece of paper works for that.
Another thing that helped me was to start the drawing on tracing paper and transfer it to good paper when it's complete. (Saves ruining expensive paper, and tracing paper holds up to a lot of erasing.) As a child I remember my frustration with ruining the paper before the drawing was done. I also remember my amazement when I saw that even the masters did preliminary drawings - I thought it came magically out of their heads!
I used to teach art to grade K-8 in a private school. I found that the best way to deal with competition is for them to compete against themselves, not each other; to try to improve on every project they produce. And it's nice to teach them to look for good things in each other's work which can bring a positive mindset that will help them in the future.
Good luck with your students Jesse.
Debra