Art and interpreter training

While I consider myself a vaguely creative person, I’ve never thought of myself as artistic. It’s a long time since I’ve put pencil (or paintbrush) to paper for the purpose of creating art, but it’s my daughter’s favourite subject at school, so I enrolled with her on a 12-week course called ‘Art for the Terrified’.

Things rarely go to plan in life, and we’ve only had two sessions out of four (I was ill for one of them, the teacher was ill for another). After ‘colour’ and ‘line’, last night’s theme was ‘tonal value’ – or what I think of as ‘shading’.

I found the session enjoyable, partly as a way to switch off from real life, partly for the process of making art, and partly because it made me think about parallels with interpreter training.

Outline of an art class

Here’s what our teacher Jane had us do yesterday.

First, she gave us a sheet with examples of different shading methods: hatching, cross hatching, stippling (where you draw lots of little dots), smudging/blending, and ‘scumbling’ (a word I had never heard before.)

As far as I could see, the teacher’s version of scumbling means drawing lots of little squiggles on the page to create shading. This does not match the Collins dictionary definition at all:

(in painting and drawing) to soften or blend (an outline or colour) with an upper coat of opaque colour, applied very thinly

But never mind! Scumbling (or scribbling, basically), seemed like fun.

After trying out some of the exercises on the handout, we moved on to the pièce de résistance of the evening, which involved copying a line drawing by Henry Moore, who, apart from being an incredible, world-famous sculptor, also enjoyed drawing sheep.

Sheep are close to my heart, since Yorkshire, where I live, is full of them. They dot the countryside and form an erratic counterpoint to the straight lines of dry stone walls.

[As a side note, my husband and I were once driving through the Yorkshire countryside, and I pointed out that the fields were pecorous. ‘What does pecorous mean?’, he asked. ‘Full of sheep’, I replied. To which he said ‘Sophie, sometimes YOU are full of sh**’. After that, I stopped trying to introduce interesting Latin-derived words into our conversations.]

But back to our art class, where after attempting to copy Henry Moore, I tried my hand at copying a photograph of a sheep:

Parallels between interpreter training and learning to draw

I spend a lot of time teaching, but I rarely attend classes these days, so I found it a very interesting experience.

I felt there were many potentially useful parallels between this art class and the process of learning to be an interpreter. Here are some of my thoughts:

1. Since art is an area where I have no great knowledge, expertise, or confidence, I found it useful to have a ‘guide’ (i.e. our teacher) to structure the session, give a brief demonstration, and set tasks. I’m sure once I have more knowledge and confidence, I’ll be able to shape my own learning journey.
2. I found the process of copying an expert very useful. I wouldn’t have known where to start with my scribbly pen drawing of a sheep without that structure. Copying Henry Moore’s technique was an opportunity to think about why and how he had done certain things: scribbled harder in darker areas, used straight lines vs curls, used precise outlines, etc. It made me think about why those techniques were successful (or not), and it gave me a template to follow in my second drawing, where I was copying a photo. For me, the parallel with interpreter training is that if you listen to an experienced interpreter, or attempt the same material and then listen to their version, you can analyse how they approached certain difficulties (speed, numbers, idioms, etc.) and try out the same techniques in your interpretation.
3. Having the task broken down into stages – first, copying Moore’s drawing, then attempting to use similar techniques to copy a photo of a sheep – was very useful. It meant that I had a trial run before trying the more difficult exercise, and I could then try to replicate the techniques. Not trying to do everything at once helped build my confidence, and by the time we got onto copying the photo, I had at least some idea of how I could approach the drawing. In interpreter training terms, this is similar to introducing consecutive note-taking or simultaneous skills gradually, both to build confidence and to create a strong foundation, rather than throwing interpreters in at the deep end.
4. One way in which the sheep exercise was very different from my days as an interpreting student (or a student of many other things: ballet, piano, etc.) was that I approached the process with curiosity rather than judgement. I really wasn’t bothered whether the end result was ‘good’ or ‘bad’ (according to whose standards, anyway?); instead, I was simply working through the exercises and then assessing what happened. Did I learn something from copying Henry Moore? Was I able to apply those teachings to the second sheep drawing? Was the second drawing, where I had more freedom, as successful as the first? More successful? Why? This was a very liberating experience, because I really didn’t care whether I was ‘good’ at art, or whether I drew a ‘good’ sheep. Instead, I viewed it as a learning experience and looked for what I would do the same next time, and what I would do differently (sheep 2’s head is too dark, for instance, so it doesn’t contrast enough with the background, and it’s too dark compared to the rest of the body). This is a really great approach to learning, because it means you don’t get depressed by ‘mistakes’, you focus on your performance in a specific exercise rather than your (supposed) ability or talent, you can appreciate incremental progress, and you can be constructive about what to do next.
5. One of the good things about the class was that the exercise sheet encouraged us to experiment with several different shading techniques. Without that encouragement, I would have stuck to smudging/blending, which is what I always used to do when I drew pencil drawings as a teenager. Trying something new gave me new insights, showed me that I actually liked some of the other techniques, and meant I drew a picture I would never have managed in the past, since I had never before done a drawing in pen or used scumbling for shading. Trying new techniques even if they don’t appeal to you or you don’t think you’ll be very good at them is important, but difficult to do, particularly if you’re a perfectionist type. For example, when I teach simultaneous, I often encourage students to play with décalage or try using salami technique, because if we stick to what we always do, we’ll…always get the same result! Trying a new technique when your existing strategies aren’t working any more is part of having a growth mindset.
6. My final thought is about the other participants. There was no opportunity to walk around the room and see what everyone else had produced. I thought this was a pity, because you can learn so much from examining other people’s work, whether they are experts or not. I would have appreciated the opportunity to see what shading techniques they had used and to pick up any of their tricks for dealing with aspects of the drawing I found difficult. In the same way, whether you’re an interpreting student or an interpreter in, say, a practice group, you can learn a huge amount from colleagues, whether or not they are at a more advanced stage than you are.

Growth mindset and learning

My biggest takeaway from last night’s session was about how enjoyable and constructive it was to apply growth mindset principles to my learning, in a way that I haven’t always done in the past. Perhaps it was easier to do that as an adult learner, and because there was nothing at stake (it wasn’t a vocational course to prepare for a new career, for instance).

Of course, the fact that I approached the class with a growth mindset, when I wouldn’t have in the past, is a great demonstration that even people who tend to have a fixed mindset (me!!) can change that.

Can you see parallels between your interpreting practice and another skill you’re learning, or a hobby of yours? Can you transfer your approach to learning a different skill across to your interpreting practice, to make it more productive or enjoyable? Is there scope for you to apply more growth mindset principles to your learning?