Maria Valkova, who has a different perspective on teaching
Maria Valkova is a person who has been dedicated to art since childhood. She graduated from the Art High School in Plovdiv and the National Academy of Arts in Sofia with a profile in Graphic Design and Book Layout. She has been drawing since the fifth grade when he started preparing for high school application. She was also interested in Mathematics, contributing to having a special relationship with perspective.
It is perspective that is the discipline that Maria teaches at ARC Academy.
“Teaching has crystallized in recent years as something I aspire to. It gives me great pleasure to see that I have helped someone understand something,” she says.
Her training experience includes a private children’s center for non-standard mathematics activities, and, later a training course in the design of business presentations for professionals. She also led quite a few one-day workshops on a variety of art and design topics for children and adults. She was a teacher of drawing and illustration in the 10th and 12th grades at art high school.
Her professional path is also closely related to books – she has worked on over 30 books. Her special attitude toward them is also expressed in AVRTIKL – a specialized bookstore for literature related to design and visual culture and a place for discussions, workshops and other events related to design. Maria opened the place together with her friends as their goal is to be a center of attraction for designers, illustrators, and architects – people with an interest in art.
Art in various forms definitely excites Maria Valkova. Although her profile leans towards traditional painting, for her, the foundation is important, not the specific way of painting.
“For me, digital painting and 3D sculpting are different tools through which one creates images. There are basics that do not depend on the tool you use”.
It is these fundamentals that Maria emphasizes in perspective classes with students at ARC Academy.
“I was pleasantly surprised that the perspective fit me because I manage to put all my interests into it. For me, perspective is not only a connecting line from point A to point B. It is a way of seeing, a way of thinking, a way of perceiving,” says Maria.
She seeks to provoke students and encourage discussion. As a teacher, she advises them to observe, explore and analyze the real world – for example, what happens to the walls of a building when we change the point of view.
Training at ARC Academy emphasizes practical tasks and Maria Valkova’s classes are no exception. She gives simple tasks to her students – to work with simple objects such as boxes and cylinders.
According to her, you don’t always have to be perfect in the drawing. Its purpose is to teach students the basics so that their drawings don’t look “broken”. From there, they can upgrade.
“For me, it’s important that they understand the logic of things and then they can jump as much as they want,” she says.
For Maria, another important aspect of teaching is motivation. A student should not do homework “because the teacher said so”, but “because it is useful for their development.
She boldly tells the students, “I don’t care what you do. It’s about doing something for yourself, for your own good.”
“It’s risky to say something like that to a student, but I can see it working in my case,” Maria says with a smile.
She shares that teaching at ARC Academy brings her great satisfaction and the students feel it.
“It shows both from the feedback I receive and the emotion during the session. I enjoy sharing knowledge with others. I am also constantly learning from them,” says Maria.
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