Drawing is an art of metaphor. In all drawing, there is a metaphorical, imaginative leap that takes place between the representation and the thing represented. To give a simple example, if I draw a picture in pencil of a vase of flowers, one goes from looking at the drawing, which really is a piece of white, industrially processed paper, of medium build, partially covered with gray graphite dust, to thinking about the thing itself — an actual vase of flowers.
The metaphors that drawing involve can also be more abstract: a splash of ink, for instance, bearing a trace of the artist’s physical gesture, might convey the emotion or impulse that provoked that gesture. But it is not the emotionor impulse itself. An arrangement of intricate and geometrical patterning might convey harmony, balance, or a yearning for order and stability, yet it remains a flat plane inscribed with lines. Likewise, an unruly drawing in charcoal of a tumultuous crowd of protestors might illustrate anger or action or chaos or solidarity, and it might communicate particular social or political messages, but it emphatically remains a drawing, an object, a collection of marks on an otherwise empty surface. It is neither that crowd of protesters nor the chaos nor anger nor political action.
These metaphors I am describing are what constitute, for me, the art and poetry of drawing. For much of this class we will be exploring the apparently simple but actually infinitely fertile metaphorical possibilities that exist within the creation of an illusionistic, three-dimensional space on a two-dimensional, flat surface. As an introduction to that process, this course places an emphasis on drawing from observation. By this I mean we will be spending the majority of our time looking at something that exists and moves in space and time, and we will be recording that experience on paper. This we will do instead of, say, copying photographs, which involves taking an already-flat, still surface and transposing it onto another flat, still surface.
In keeping with this idea that drawing is a metaphorical enterprise, this class as I’d like to conceive it is not about creating pictures of “truth,” “objectivity,” or “accuracy,” but about communicating a thought or experience with clarity and honesty. In drawing, you are speaking with your hand; you are translating an experience through mark-making and gesture. In a way, drawing can be thought of as a kind of visual writing, but I think that drawing can extend beyond (or perhaps below) what words can tell us. Drawing is the most direct form of visual thought, at least that I can think of, that fully synthesizes the eye, the mind, and the hand — it’s about how you see the world, how you think and feel about it, and how you move in response.
I want to get you all to think about drawing not in terms of a product (say, a well-drawn portrait with likeness and confident technique) but as a process. This class is less about creating a portfolio of “completed” and technically alluring works, and more about visual problem-solving, about training our brains to see. My goal is to enlarge your understanding of what drawing can do, and to unsettle any preconceptions you might have about what constitutes “good” drawing.
Sometimes in this course we will study other artists’ drawings. Here we will encounter alternative modes of representation, learning how another artist has navigated that original challenge of suggesting space and movement on a flat and still surface. Other exercises will work exclusively with questions of abstraction, and we will discuss how the grammatical components of formal design — such as shape, value, line, space, texture, scale, contrast, and composition — contribute to the overall content and emotive impact of any drawing, representational or “abstract.”
Above all, my highest hope for this course is that it provides a chance for us to better connect with the world, and a chance to be more fully present. And I hope you can learn to love drawing, as one of the most simple and yet immeasurably challenging means of doing just that.
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