Freehand Drawing at the BAC

This fall I have been teaching a class on Wednesday afternoons at the Boston Architectural College. What's that you say? How can I teach at an architectural college when I don't know the difference between a corinthian column and a doric column? Meh, doesn't matter. The point of the class is to understand and apply observational drawing and rendering three-dimensional forms into a two-dimensional space.

Now I love teaching, and I especially love interdisciplinary teaching, where I get to work with students from all sorts of different backgrounds. They may not go on to careers as fine artists, but they can still appreciate a basic drawing class and take the greater skill of observation and attention to detail to whatever future they have set for themselves. John Ruskin noted that he enjoyed teaching drawing to people like craftsmen, engineers, mechanics, etc, because it helped them to "see" better and that they were better at their trade for it.

Following are some pictures from a recent BAC class. The focus was rendering drapery and fabric so they were drawing their coats and bags, incorporating all of the various techniques we've covered this semester including gestural drawing, contour lines, variation in line weight, rendering reflective surfaces, volume, shading and negative spaces using charcoal and/or pencil.