Drawing as Perception, Experience, and Action

This course is intended as a creative drawing laboratory for designers–an experiential supplement to computer-based work. It will guide students in mastering hand-drawing techniques, refining their sensitivity to detail, and developing the ability to express what they see in a visually convincing and evocative form.

Class projects will include drawing in both indoor and outdoor settings, as well as working with live models. Through the drawing process, students will focus on the world of line, texture, shape, light, shadow, and value. We will use a variety of tools, materials, and techniques, including pencils, vine charcoal, markers, ink, and other wet and dry media–later combining these with cameras, computer renderings, and more.

Over the course of the semester, students will complete three major drawing projects along with several shorter assignments.

• In one nonrepresentational drawing project, students will explore the formal expression of an emotional life experience.
• In another, they will investigate the performance of the human body in interaction with the built or natural environment.
• The final project will invite viewer interaction with the architectural setting through the design and installation of site-specific, illusionistic drawings physically inscribed on the interior walls of Gund Hall.

Students will also participate in field trips to sketch and draw in outdoor environments. Classwork will be supported by presentations and discussions of relevant works from art history and contemporary art. Guest artists will be invited as reviewers for the presentation and exhibition of final projects.

Students enrolled in VIS 2446 will be required to participate in three outdoor workshops and two site visits (Concord, MA and New York, NY), and will be responsible for ground transportation, meals, and incidentals for each of these site visits.