Lessons and collateral will go here.
ARGD 3010 - Design Drawing Techniques
BASIC PREMISE:
It is the opinion of every professional I have met in my career that learning to think and draw are the most important skills you need if you want to work in the design arts. This is true even in this digital age. If you don’t have basic drawing skills you will always be at a creative and competitive disadvantage.
The primary purpose of this course is to give you experience with effective concept development and presentation. Think of it as basic drawing for designers. Whether you wind up working in traditional media or with the computer, as content providers like photographers and illustrators, or as designers; we are all in the business of making compelling visual statements. To communicate clearly your visuals need to make images that are understood by the audience.
This requires that students develop an effective visual vocabulary, understand and utilize the inherent communicative power in abstraction and simplification. To that end our time in this class will be spent doing projects based on “Understanding Comics” by Scott McCloud. This is the best book I have found explaining how images are perceived by the viewer.
THAT MEANS:
We will do a weekly projects with the object of getting you to experiment and think about how drawing can be used to develop images that best communicate your intended message.
We will do a project a week. Assigned Monday and due Friday for a critique. Every following Monday you will be responsible for turning in a folder with your development sketches and final comps. These will be neat and orderly.
The Sketchbook:
So, how many of you doodle just for the fun of it when you are on the phone, or listening to the radio? Have you noticed how personal and interesting those drawings are; how natural they seem? On average students tell me they do between five and ten pages of notes for academic classes every day. How many pages of sketches have you done this week? This month? Are you art students or not? Since, as I’ve suggested, regular drawing is such an essential part of your growth you are encouraged to keep a personal sketchbook, which will make you eligible for extra course credit.
I am not interested in the content of the images in this book. I am interested in the quality of line; the sense of energy and rhythm. In fact I would hope you approach drawing in this book rather like a conductor in front of an orchestra. use your whole arm and draws freely. Listen to some music and move along with it. Be inspired by it. Drawing needs to become a pleasure for you. It should be something you can’t wait to do, not just another class chore. The bottom line is that if the act of drawings is exciting for you, the images you make will transmit that excitement to a viewer. You are expected to have your sketchbooks in class with you at all times for discussion, but will not be graded on the content. I will, however keep track of who is most interested and devoted to stretching their abilities as demonstrated in this book. So finally it will count towards your grade.
You will also keep a separate material on which you will do the developmental work for your finished pieces.
Projects:
You will develop sketches for a project every week for the first 10 weeks, then you will select your favorite five projects and develop them to presentation stage. Your final grades will be a combination of your initial 10 sketch stages and your final five pieces.
1. Living in Line: will look at the expressive potential in a variety of media.
2. Tonal Expression: will deal with facial expression using tonal materials.
3. Faces in Things: will have you looking for faces in unexpected places (tone and line)
4. Miracle Grow: you will use appropriate gesture and composition to express rampant growth.
5. End Game: you will select a theme based on your drawings and design an endpaper.
6. Book Title: will consider the relationship between drawing and letter forms.
7. Cultural Roots: how indigenous art and how it uses shape and line to create iconic images.
8. Dough Boy: tonal drawings of cartoon character using color to express varying moods.
9. Ornament: Combining shape and surface design to create seasonal ornaments.
10. Persective: New York Sity as seen from an escaped Macy’s Day balloon.
Additional Project from Ms. Dulemba:
I assigned a new project which will run through the semester - we'll call them "Color Boards." Start collecting swatches, fabric, buttons, whatever, to create 2 to 3 collages of colors you are drawn to. Each page should be about one color. We're trying to define your personal color palettes. This will be presented in conjunction with your final project at the end of the semester.
Class participation:
Your grade will be the result of your project grades attitude and attendance.
Self sufficiency:
You are expected to come to class prepared. You are expected to be pro-active in your approach to research in this and every class in this area. Are you willing to take take the initiative to figure things out on your own before consulting me? If you miss a class do you take the initiative to find out what you missed and make up the work? If there is one question I and every faculty member in this area hates it is “What do I need to do for a grade?” That’s easy. You need to do more. You need to be creative, self motivated and hard working. If you are your grades will take care of themselves.
Professional attitude:
Are you committed to the arts and do you take pride in the your work? Pride is expressed in this class by hard work and careful presentation. Do you take criticism and try to learn from it? If a piece is not up to your standards will you redo it out of personal pride? Do you do what it takes for success, no matter how long it takes?
Grading policy:
Since this is a MWF class you are allowed three absences per semester. For each succeeding absence one half of a letter grade will be deducted from your final grade. Three lates equal one absence. If you finish the semester with a total of five absences you will drop a full grade; from A to B, from B to C, etc. If you miss ten days of class you will receive an WF.
All students in the Lamar Dodd School of Art will evaluate their teachers via the Internet. Teacher evaluations are extremely important to assist in both improving instruction and rewarding excellence.
A simple online form will be available during the final week of class.
Please vsit http://eval.franklin.uga.edu You will be redirected to the secure course evaluation
web site. A link to the site is also available via the School of Art website at www.art.uga.edu under the “Student Resources” link.
Assigned reading:
“Understanding Comics” Scott McCloud
I expect you to have your “Graphic Style” Steven Heller & Seymour Chwast from 2010
