Create > Witness Description Drawings

Create > Witness Description Drawings

Goal: Improve your observational skills and the use of descriptive communication

Access Prior Knowledge:

“Learning to draw is really a matter of learning to see – to see correctly – and that means a good deal more than merely looking with the eye.”  -Kimon Nicolaides.

Play > Spot the Difference > http://www.spotthedifference.com/

New Information:

Drawing is about Observation

Drawing is about observation, about dismantling what you are looking at into the lines that make it up, and then recording those lines, one after the other, on a piece of paper.

That’s how a computer program works, zillions of tiny steps performed in the right order at the speed of light.  A Beethoven symphony?  Just read every note from the overture to the finale.  French cooking?  All you need is a clear step-by-step recipe.  Drawing works the same way.

Most anything you draw is made up of lines; straight, curves and organic squiggles.  You can draw a short, reasonably straight line.  And with a little care you can draw an arc or a fairly round circle.  To improve your accuracy, just slow down.  Practice will make you better.  

But you don’t want to just learn to draw lines and arcs, any more than you want a lesson on how to boil water or how to play a single note on the piano.  It’s putting all those parts together that makes the idea of drawing satisfying and challenging.  But that’s all it is - a challenge, not an impossibility, no matter who you are.

The key to success in this course is to flip a switch that helps you see differently.  

And most importantly, be kind to yourself

Apply Knowledge and Skills:

Create > Witness Description Drawing

Goal: Develop a verbal language of description to improve drawing accuracy

Studio Activity:

Describe the Culprit:

Pair up.  One person is the ‘witness’ the other is the ‘police sketch artist.’  The witness must describe the formal line qualities and the spatial relationships of the symbol given to them using descriptive words, such as, up and to the right, curved down and to the left.  The sketch artist must try and accurately render the symbol being described.  Ancient symbols > http://goo.gl/RSSLJY  Hobo symbols > http://goo.gl/0D1G4F

Goal Review:

Publish > your witness drawing to our G+Community > Concepts & Creations category

Respond > in the comment section explain why the following statement is true or false.

• Your ability to verbalize a description of an image or visual setting will aid you in expressing that image in forms using visual medias.