Art Class?

I go to an Art Class - you can choose any medium you like. The Teacher has all of the qualifications and is a good artist herself but her mode of teaching is that you choose pictures you like from art books and copy them and fair enough you can use your own style and it doesn't have to be an exact copy but we never do say our own original stuff like say set up a vase of flowers (still life) and we never all go out into the countryside to do original landscapes. Is this a common way of teaching art????

Art Class?
I don't agree with this way of teaching, but I suppose its okay as a way of showing the different methods that other artists used. Maybe you should ask the teacher if you will always be learning in this method and if she says yes, find another art class fast, because you cant develope your own style of you're always copying someone elses.
Reply:actually this is a way of teaching. a very very very very old and outdated way of teaching. this is what they had to do in the old Paris School of Art. all the students had to copy old master drawings and 'master' that before they could move on to their own stuff. but why anyone would be teaching this way in a postmodern society is a mystery to me.
Reply:Yes, you need to understand where art has come from, in which you refer to the old, (or new) masters concept of design and composition. Once you have the concept, then you can improve upon what already exists. It's drudgery, (art school/classes) but art is philosophy, (ascetics) and to conceive of something different one must understand the history. This allows the future art historian to put you into context of art past, present and/or future.
Reply:yuck, sadly this ain't art. Do you pay money for this? maybe it's good to learn some basics by practicing with various media this way, but it takes the life right out of it if that's all you do. I wouldn't call it art anyway.
Reply:It is one way of teaching you hand-eye coordination, but doesn't go beyond it. The problem from drawing from 2D images is that many problems regarding representation of perspective, spatial distribution of light and shadow are already solved for you, so you don't learn to deal with them. While you learn drawing you don't learn to really look at an object and see what is really there, instead of seeing what you think is there (seeing what is there is not easy contrary to what your intuition may tell you). Learning to see is at least half of practice as an artist. It's generally common that you start with a non-color medium and learn to draw from simple but real object (e.g an egg, an apple). Once you mastered that you gradually introduce more complicated structures, colors and different media. I'd try to do such exercises at home (just use pencil) and then show them to your teacher and ask for comments and how to improve them.