Gunnar, Lubomir, Robert, Judith and list,
The topic of drawing and designers is fascinating from many points of view. It is perhaps even more challenging today with the many students who have never used a pencil for cursive writing let alone drawing. There is this belief that digital instruments of one kind or another are much more sophisticated than a cylindrical piece of graphite enrobed by wood. My own simplistic approach has been to call a drawing class PAD, or pencil-aided design. Somehow this acronym resonates a bit more with a few students.
More seriously, my experience of teaching industrial design, including drawing, at three universities in two countries for over 30 years, boils down to a few conclusions or lessons learned:
* Many students students cannot draw because they cannot see. This point was made clear to me when a guest lecturer in my professional practice class said that she could identify those students in my class who read regularly by the quality of their written assignment. That is, a student who read on a regular basis (not web pages, mind you, but articles and books) generally wrote better papers. This insight made me think about drawing: perhaps students cannot draw well because they do not see well. This is when I developed a 15-minute exercise at the beginning of each of my drawing classes. I would bring an artifact, usually a design object of one kind or another. I would place it on the table for students to view, inspect and examine. I would also tell a story about the object and its designer. I would then put the object away and ask students to draw five different views strictly from memory. The first drawings were terrible; by the end of the semester students had become much better at drawing because they had become better at seeing.
* It should be noted that a few of my colleagues did not appreciate the production of terrible drawings. From their perspective all drawing should be well done, which leads me to my next lesson learned: as designers we need to be mindful of the teaching methods that we borrow from other disciplines in the visual arts. This is especially the case when we borrow from the fine arts without totally understanding why designers draw in the first place. As an industrial designer I draw for two reasons: to assist me in my thinking or creativity process, sometimes called visual thinking, and for communication. Too often I see drawing exercises in design that are taken directly from other disciplines without ever understanding the learning outcomes, i.e. why are we doing this exercise in the first place?
* Expectations have changed since I first started teaching design. Thirty years ago it could take you a week to see the slides that you took on a roll of film. Today no person, let alone a student, would accept this kind of time delay. A colleague of mine at San Jose State decided some years ago to see immediate gratification not as a threat but as an opportunity. On the first day of his second-year drawing class in industrial design he asked his students to find an image of something that they wanted to draw. Not surprisingly most students picked very difficult subjects such as concept cars. Anyone who knows the domain of automotive design would know that drawings of automobiles demands very specialized skills. No instructor would have recommended such a subject. Nevertheless these students were not daunted by the challenge. They proceeded to draw the concept cars and make a mess of it. Are we surprised? But what happened next is important: my colleague sat down with each student, analyzed the terrible drawing, and determined what in the student’s drawing did not match the original. For example, the wheels did not look quite right. Why? Because the student did not understand the underlying principle of circles and ellipses. The remedy? Let’s draw circles and ellipses. Some of you may say that this is what you do now. The difference, however, is that the San Jose students now have a reason to draw pages of circles and ellipses. The exercise suddenly has meaning. Moreover, the desire of immediate gratification so present in the students is satisfied by drawing the concept car at the beginning of the semester and not waiting 12 or 15 weeks to see the end results.
I would love to read about other exercises that allow design students to learn and use drawing more effectively.
Best wishes,
Jacques Giard PhD
Professor of Design
The Design School
Arizona State University
480.459.6879
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On 5/13/15, 7:36 AM, "Gunnar Swanson" <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
Apologies if this strays too far from the subjects of PhD studies and research but an exchange between Keith and Martin about drawing in the " How to teach argument ability to design students?" thread brings to mind some questions I am dealing with.
Now that my spring semester is over, I can begin obsessing about the next one. This coming fall I am going to teach a basic drawing class for the first time. It is one of our "foundations" classes taken by all students in the Bachelor of Fine Arts in Art program here at East Carolina University before they start media- or subject-specific work. This includes students who will have concentrations in graphic design, animation/interactive design, filmmaking, and photography (of the fine art variety) in addition to a range of art and craft areas.
Many of the students in the areas I listed currently feel ill served by our foundations program (which is generally run by people with a traditional fine art and craft background.) The basic drawing class tends to start out with perspective, drawing some cubes, and then goes on to a bunch of observational drawing--stools, ladder back chairs, and pumpkins seem to dominate the work--concentrating on line quality. The main purpose of the class seems to be to foster the sort of drawing skills that make artists say that someone draws well.
I am not specifically dismissing traditional art drawing skills, by the way. Beautiful rendering is like eloquent prose. It is convincing, can help promote clear understanding, and has intrinsic value. I just don't believe that these skills are the first thing a group of eighteen year olds wanting a career in art and design should deal with. Also, too many of them see drawing class as a barrier to be breached before getting on with what they want to do rather than as a tool for doing what they want to do. (I think that our current approach could be greatly improved upon for people who want an art career but the deficiencies for designers and filmmakers are the most obvious problems.)
My goal for the class is to promote drawing for communication of ideas. This includes communicating with others such as collaborators, clients, and other stakeholders--especially concentrating on bringing others into the creative process--and communicating with oneself--for understanding plans but especially in formal idea generation processes.
I am seeking any comments on the subject whether broadly philosophical or concrete and specific (including examples of assignments that have been successful in the teaching of specific aspects of seeing and thinking.) If your comments don't seem to be of interest to the list (or if you think this entire subject is too off-topic), please email me off list at [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>.
(In case anyone is interested, my current thought is that I will start with having them do measured drawings of an object--plan and elevation views, then orthographic versions--followed by perspective drawings. Then much of the class will be drawing quickly from imagination especially in aid of developing and expanding a visual vocabulary for a subject that can allow the combination of vocabulary items in different ways. (By drawing, I mean pencils, pens, and paper including a lot of tracing paper.) Then we'll deal with time and narrative--like comics or story boards--maybe turning those drawings into animatics. The textbook for the class will be Scott McCloud's "Understanding Comics." Like I said, all comments and suggestions are welcome.)
Gunnar
Gunnar Swanson
East Carolina University
graphic design program
http://www.ecu.edu/cs-cfac/soad/graphic/index.cfm
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Gunnar Swanson Design Office
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Greenville NC 27858
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