Mark Making: From Basic Drawing Skills to Contemporary Approaches to Drawing

Catalog description

Drawing is one of the earliest ways humans attempted to understand the world, and it remains a remarkable tool for perceiving, recording, negotiating, and inventing our relationship with our surroundings. Drawing is not a privilege of the talented but a teachable skill acquired through the continued practice of specific techniques. In this class students will learn basic drawing methods such as contour, gesture, negative space, value and perspective, and will study why and how these techniques aid draughts persons in creating a three-dimensional illusion on a surface. Students will also examine contemporary drawing concerns and tackle two longer drawing projects centered around narrative and different materials and drawing methods. At the end of this course, students will have acquired basic drawing skills, learned some of the ways artists have practiced and conceptualized drawing and started to build their own personal visual vocabulary and approaches to the medium. Prerequisite: None. Fulfillment: General Elective.