In the video chosen for the critique, an artist teaches the audience to draw a dog. The video begins with an introduction to the character that the artist is going to draw. However, instead of explaining how exactly the character’s head needs to be drawn (step by step as stated in the title), the artist simply proceeds with the outlining of the dog’s head without any further explanation. The artist introduces the character, but this introduction seems irrelevant to the tutorial itself as it does not directly explain how the drawing should be done. The artist provides a more detailed description of the process later when he begins to draw dog’s eyebrows and eyes, pointing out that a shade over the other eye should be thick to indicate that the second eyebrow is there. This note is useful to the audience as they could be not aware of the importance of this detail.
Furthermore, practical advice is given by the artist when he notices that the dog’s nose is slightly curved and “goes down at the end”, and beginners tend to pay little attention to this fact, which results in a decreased realism (Hart, 2013). Another positive aspect of the presentation is the fact that the artist highlights small details (“dog’s smile”, “split lip”, etc.) that make the drawing look more professional. Arnold-Garza (2014) points out that web tutorials have the potential to replace traditional lectures. While it is true, the example reviewed in this assignment lacks clarity and step-by-step instructions to provide an adequate presentation of the process. At the same time, the author does not entirely omit significant details in his presentation, which positively affects the viewer’s ability to replicate the process he presents.
References
Arnold-Garza, S. (2014). The flipped classroom teaching model and its use for information literacy instruction. Communications in Information Literacy, 8(22), 7-22.
Hart, C. (2013). How to draw a dog – spaniel (step by step)[Video file]. Web.