Drawing
Coordinator: Win Bruhl
E-mail: wgbruhl@ualr.edu
Roger Winter, in his text On Drawing, provides this statement as an epilogue. It is an excellent statement with which to begin a semester of intensive drawing and discovery.
“…drawing is not for the timid. You may have come across a ‘how to’ book that lays out a step-by-step method meant to prevent failure, but you’ll soon find that it also prevents success. The best that a safe approach can do is to habituate a young artist’s work into perpetual mediocrity.”
“The worthwhile drawing process takes a hazardous route guided by the most general of concepts and goals. Sometimes the drawing ends in disaster, and sometimes it is brilliantly successful and the final combination of bold decisions and subtle suggestions that make up the successful work are born, in large part, of subjective, spontaneous discovery. …It is through the gamble, the willingness to make mistakes, that we keep our work alive and growing.”
Frida Kahlo is quoted in her biography, Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo, by Hayden Herrera relative to teaching art. Frida was appointed as a painting teacher at the Ministry of Education’s School of Painting and Sculpture (”La Esmeralda,” the emerald) in Mexico City in 1942:
“I want you to know… that there does not exist in the whole world a single teacher who is capable of teaching art. To do that is truly impossible. We will surely talk a lot about some theoretical question or another, of the different techniques used in the plastic arts, of form and content in art, and of all those things that are intimately related to our work.”
Drawing courses provide foundation level study for all students who pursue a studio art degree. The first two courses in drawing, Basic Drawing and Figure Drawing, are perception based and introduce students to methodologies of seeing and translating what is seen through a variety of traditional and experimental media and processes. The complete drawing program, which includes six courses of study, recognizes that even though advances in technology have become integral to some studio art experiences, the hand drawn image still carries within it a remarkable means of communicating the intellect and expression of the artist in a direct way. The touch of the artist’s hand remains an essential aspect of personal communication. Drawing facilitates an artist’s personal poetic and often prophetic vision.
For complete descriptions of all Drawing courses, please refer to Course Descriptions heading in the menu bar at left.