Drawing for Designers: Techniques of Expression, Articulation, and Representation

The course is intended as a creative drawing laboratory for designers, an expressive and playful supplement to computer-based labor. The aim of the class is to learn how to depict and express the presence and appearance of people in natural and built environments.

This class objective will be achieved through three projects:
First: focusing on people’s active presence in the landscape.  
Second: on people in a populated urban environment.
Third: people’s relationship with the natural environment in movement.

Each of the assigned projects will be realized in a different, specifically selected technique:    
– The first project will use a technique called a subtractive tone using charcoal.    
– The second one will use a technique of multiple lines/marks using pencil and graphite.     
– The last one will use a technique of one-to-one scale representation, using mutipencil and graphite stick as the medium.

The course will help to master techniques in hand drawing, refine sensitivity to all details of what one sees, and develop capacity to articulate them in a visually convincing and evocative form.

The class projects will include work in outdoor and indoor situations and places, as well as drawings of life models. In the process of drawing, students will focus on the world of lines, textures, shapes, light, shade, and values. We will use various tools, materials, and artistic techniques, including pencils, vine charcoal, graphite, etc.

In addition to the completion of three large drawing projects, a special short assignment will be given at the beginning of each class session.

Working on studio projects will be supplemented by field trips, presentations, and discussions of relevant examples from art history and contemporary art. Guest artists will be invited as reviewers for the presentations and exhibition of the final project.

No prerequisites are required. Students do not need to take VIS 2446 to enroll.

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.