Riley Brown / @unibrawn

In a world increasingly oriented toward product and output, I believe the processes of drawing and painting hold value that cannot be replicated. The focused attention of study, the pleasure of mark-making, and the way artmaking can be used as a tool for processing thought are all invaluable to a learner, over and above the ability to produce a polished product as an AI now can. My teaching is built around that belief: process is not simply a means to an end but one of the most important things to teach in itself. I build a classroom of collaborative peers who learn their own lifelong habits and skills for long-term practice and self-directed growth, habits that carry well past institutional settings.

I establish my classroom as a space where students feel I am an approachable figure they can bring their own interests to. I make regular time for discussion, for sharing work made outside the scope of class, and for all of our influences. Collaborative projects are central to how I build community: students rotating around a set of canvases, each continuing another's observational study; trading artworks for others to finish; giving each other prompts and directions. In animation, I use complex loops the same way. They carry very little pressure in themselves, they work as an improvisational space much like a sketchbook, and passed from station to station on a timer they teach timing and mark-making through immersion while the class builds something together that no one could have made alone.

When students stall, the problem is usually scale or a void. For the first, I ask them to start with something small and achievable and break it into pieces they can check off, and I remind them not to measure their work against what a studio of fifty people made with time and money. For the second, I ask them to respond to something else: a painting they like, a film, a book, the room around them. It is hard to pull work out of nothing, and artmaking works better as a way of thinking about and talking back to another subject. Almost all of my own work is built from references and responses to a catalogue of inspiration I keep, and I teach students to build and interrogate their own.

It is equally important to me that students leave my class with sustainable habits for a lifelong practice. I weave time management into lessons and include instruction on stretching and physical self-care, since the demands of long studio work are real and developing artists rarely think about them early enough. I weight assignments heavily toward self-directed study: observation of their own interests, engagement with archival material, and active hunting for new contemporary artists, so they learn to deeply interrogate what appeals to them and build tools for growth outside the classroom.

Across all of this, I try to cultivate joy in making. Technical struggle and unmet expectations are a natural part of developing as an artist, and I ask students to give themselves grace: every drawing made is another step toward finding what they want to make, and mistakes are not obstacles but necessary material for growth. In my classroom, genuine effort, regardless of skill level, is the most valued input. It brings me real joy to watch skills develop and see young artists begin to find their voices, and I owe a debt to all the teachers who made space for me to do the same.