Dear Chuck, Jinan, Ken and others interested in this thread.
Jinan’s communication of the work he is doing in India, is so interesting and also challenging. Jinan: at the very least you are offering up a provocative mirror to us, in which we can see the benefits and limitations of established ways of thinking. It is very generous and compassionate, to share your thinking with us on this list.
Ken: you are right of course about Universities’ commitment to ethics, and ethics can be seen as a research discipline it its own right, as it is how we learn about what is communally considered acceptable for research.
I’d like to contribute some responses that derive from my work teaching drawing in art and design education contexts. I acknowledge that this is not a direct element of my own published research (as yet) and my knowing in this area has grown from iterative processes, working closely with students, over many years. Its quite a long post by my previous standards– hope you will bear with me on it. J (I’ve 'trimmed its tail’ too, so trust it is still possible to pick up the discussion) And to better enable responses I’ve indicated three questions ( Q.1, Q.2 and Q. 3)
Chuck you write (to Jinan):
>> “…Children say what they are drawing, but at certain ages their drawings show how they envision a tree, castle, or dinosaur, not what it looks like. It is quite different when they try to draw what they actually see. If this is what your students are doing, can you explain how they construct the image and what their thoughts are as they do it?” >>
I find I am rather puzzled by your comment about the difference between children’s “envisioning” and “what they actually see”. I had interpreted Jinan’s post as bringing our attention to the opportunities and challenges of exactly this, and the way that education affects it. You ask Jinan about how the children >>“construct the image and what their thoughts are as they do it?” >> Aren’t thoughts exactly what a drawing is? An expression of the workings of an individual human mind?
So Q 1: Please can you explain what more you think we can gain from further exploring the mental world of his students as they draw – and indicate the kind of techniques that are available and appropriate to his educational goals. I would find that very useful to know more about.
Education is a word we use to describe a form of learning that transfers knowledge, skills, values, attitudes, habits etc of a group of people from one generation to the next through teaching, training, or research. Yet the form of education, and its intention vary so much and I’m sure you will agree that we need to keep aware of opportunities as well as of entrenched attitudes, if we want to avoid becoming reductionist or mechanistic. This discussion thread has triggered helpful reflection on my work in drawing and education.
I’ve been teaching a 1st year Undergrad drawing class for textiles design, over several years, through which I aim to promote drawing as “ a way of seeing”. Many of the students tell me at the outset of the course that they are e.g. “no good at drawing” and have little confidence in their abilities. Over the years I’ve realised that this is often because no one had yet showed them, or explained to them the benefits of what I describe as ‘active looking’. As a result these students had formed an underlying, self limiting idea that drawing is an innate talent, which you either have or don't have. Perhaps for certain types of skillfulness in drawing this may be true – and no amount of practice will change this. But its hard to know because the innately less able tend to give up, and the more able continually work to extend their skills. I know one such skilful practitioner (an illustrator who works a lot with line) who told me that he has learnt that he must draw every day, otherwise he “loses it”.
The remit of my drawing class has not been to teach formalised drawing skills e.g. I don't teach ‘perspective’, or pencil skills like ‘cross hatching’ etc which I remember being taught on my own foundation course many years ago. My aim is to get students drawing- to lose their inhibitions and get stuck in. One way I find works well at the outset is to introduce active looking. By this I mean, encourage each of them to experience an intense engagement, a mindful state of ‘flow’ ( Csikszentmihalyi) where the person (student) and the thing being drawn become as though one, in consciousness. If only for a very short time.
This is a slight aside, but I have found this increasingly difficult to achieve in recent years as it seems many young people have never experienced ‘flow’ and I wonder how much mobile phones, texting, and the ubiquity of text based sensory onslaughts in the environment call away their minds to be flying around all over the place. But eventually the majority of the students get to experience flow, the chitter chatter in the studio stops and only the sound of drawing media scraping on paper can be heard – if only for 5 minutes. Breakthrough.
Through this, the students have an opportunity to see for themselves the change in their drawing achievements. I’m not going to claim that the change is for the better necessarily – its then up to them to decide. A simple comparison of the ‘before’ and ‘after’ drawings always evidences a shift in the qualities of the drawing and the resulting visual account of the subject drawn. By introducing drawing as “a way of seeing”, I seek to enable awareness of qualities of consciousness – rather than to produce perfect drawings or renderings of ‘reality’ – or even of what they “actually see”. In this model, the purpose of drawing is primarily activity, an 'embodied work out'. Like going to a gym.
Once they are drawing with enjoyment and confidence and they witness the shift of perception and consciousness for themselves, then the damage to their confidence and expectation (from earlier schooling, learning) can be repaired as they see the results through their drawing. And other ways of seeing can then be introduced through drawing.
Chuck: you mention envisioning: of “a tree, castle, or dinosaur”. Here, I want to risk telling a story about a tree near where I live. Its a beech tree- very old – and I pass her – I mean it – everyday in the park where it grows. I consider that this tree is probably the most beautiful tree in the world. It's a huge tree, the canopy has an enormous and generous spread, and some of the boughs actually grow into and through themselves; sometimes its covered with a bright green fungus, and when it rains the water runs down in dark trails that remind me of the skin of an elephant, when its bathing. There are large lumps like human heads on the lower trunk, and squirrel drays nestle in the clefts of branches. Pigeons roost there every night. I envision this tree as a grand mother of nature, a sensate, living thing that greets me and makes me feel so warm and good when I pass by her.
Q. 2 So Chuck, and others: is this a description of the tree I can "actually see"? Or a description of envisoning - of all that I know is there…?
Q. 3 Which one should I draw - in order to learn about Design?
Best wishes
Fiona
Fiona Candy
www.a-brand.co.uk
www.vimeo.com/fionacandy
-----------------------------------------------------------------
PhD-Design mailing list <[log in to unmask]>
Discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design
Subscribe or Unsubscribe at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/phd-design
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|
