Photos by Kyle Schledwitz, COMM 1318/Photography 1
The room is quiet. A half dozen or so students stare at a table stacked with jumble of skulls, boxes, vases, bottles, and bits of cotton.
Then they quickly glance back to their easels and continue working.
This is ARTS 1316 Drawing 1, taught by SPC Assistant Professor of Art Christopher Adams.
“We were using pastels, conté crayon, and ink that day,” he says. “This is the time of year we mix wet and dry media for our compositions.”
Adams explains the focus in Drawing I is on the basics: line, space, shape, value, texture, etc. The typical composition, he says, is black & white with smatterings of orange from conté crayon.
Student Julio Cienfuegos says he’s been drawing with a sketch pad and pencil since he was five years old. Today, he says he’s enjoying experimenting with different mediums.
“I never even worked with watercolors really,” he says. “So, it’s very experimental and it definitely broadens your horizons to what you can do with drawing.”
Adams says this course is open to anybody with any level of experience.
“If you just need a break from, it’s like, ‘Oh, my gosh, the biology and, you know, all the math things just is getting to me’”, Adams says. “Come take a drawing class and exercise that part of your brain that maybe you don’t think you use enough of.”
That sounds like what student Madisyn Tidwell did. She is an animal science major, and she says she had no experience with drawing before signing up for this class. Since then, she says she’s been “drawing away”.
“I think he’s definitely taught me a lot of different elements to help me,” she says, “like figure out what I’m doing.”
“I think if you’re a major outside of art,” Adams says, “it’s a nice way to kind of, you know, kind of stop and really think differently about how you observe the world. And that’s the one thing about Drawing 1 especially. It’s not really what you’re drawing skills are so much as how you’re seeing things.”
This section of Drawing 1 meets at 8 in the morning, so students get an early start on creativity.
“I think it’s super calm, relaxing,” Tidwell says. “Gets your day started in a nice way.”
Adams describes the students this semester as “talented” and “mature”.
“I’ll have a few of them in Drawing II next semester,” he says, “but I’ll miss this class! It’s absolutely been a delight to have them for these 16 weeks.”
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