How This Class Has Affected My Drawing

-Vincent Bivona

Ever since I was a child, I have always been fascinated with drawing.

For me, drawing is a unique creative outlet in that empowers me to convey my own perspective of the world around me. For this reason, I have always enjoyed depicting images and scenes through drawing. I have also always had an interest in taking a drawing class but never quite got around to it. And so, drawing for me is one of the interests or skills that I  had believe I have failed to explore or develop until I decided to take this class.

This class has equipped me with the tools necessary to create art.

Having explored different drawing techniques throughout the semester, I now feel capable of creating pieces of art that I am proud of. After realizing the many aspects of drawing that I was not aware of before the course, I have come to appreciate drawing itself more as an art form. I now recognize drawing as an extremely intricate, technical process that can be used as a powerfully creative tool in communicating ideas through image or the telling of a story through image.

This class has motivated me to continue drawing.

After seeing how my work has developed and evolved throughout the course of the class, I now feel excited about developing my skills further. Before taking this class, I had stopped drawing for pleasure. However, being pushed to draw, I have realized once again how much I enjoy drawing. Overall, as a result of this class, I have come to respect, enjoy, and appreciate drawing more than ever before.

Last Drawing

At 2 am Wednesday night, as I put the finishing touches on my final drawing, I felt more so than ever the joy of drawing.

Having no prior art experience, I signed up for this class full of enthusiasm. Last semester, one of my friends recommended taking Professor Fick's introductory drawing class, and all of a sudden, I had become intrigued by the idea of being an artist.

But then came the first day we drew in class. The subject was simply a ball on a stool, and as I began to draw it, I found something strange. As soon as I looked away from the subject and back at my pad, I forgot what I was even trying to draw. Every few marks I put down would have to be erased. I needed to constantly squint my eyes in order to compress the 3-D objects I saw onto a 2-D page. And after making the slightest bit of progress, I realized that all the angles and proportions were off, and so I'd erase everything again. I never realized how much information one had to sort out when drawing from observation. The process was agonizing. 

And for most of the semester, I agonized over drawing. I would spend hours on my assignments while never producing anything of which I could be proud. Frankly, I was depressed with my apparent lack of talent.

But there were moments, few as they were, that I felt surges of inspiration. If you look in my sketchbook, you'll see two series of sketches: one of just my hands and another of portraits of famous physicists. These two series were each done in single sittings, and I'm sure I had found some kind of "zone." I think something clicked during those moments. It was not that I particularly drew well, but that I drew with definite purpose and patience.

As I continued to keep up with the assignments, I tried to remember how I felt during those moments when I enjoyed my sketchbook. I can't say I succeeded right away. Making polished assignments of large open spaces is much more difficult and taxing than simple sketching. But with our last assignment, for which we were basically given free reign on the narrative, inspiration hit again. Despite working on a deadline late into Wednesday night, I felt no stress. I was patient with my lines and shading, yet I didn't agonize over them. Without realizing it, I was enjoying myself, and I am proud of the finished product.

I'm glad that the zone found me one more time. And it came at a good time, because I think it helped me realize something basic but important-- that my right to enjoy and create art never had anything to do with talent.

Finding my Vision?

Do you feel that you’ve developed a vision for your art through the work you’ve made this semester?

I would not say that I have developed my vision for my art for the rest of my life, but I have identified a couple of themes that are interesting to me and that I would like to explore further. I really enjoy texture in things from nature—trees, clouds, water, etc., and I learned this when I was drawing setting for my raccoon in the first narrative drawing. In next couple assignments I did more strict studies on trees and clouds, but I felt they were boring. I wanted to bring back more of a quality that enabled an interaction between the drawing and the audience, which I felt my raccoon drawing had (even if it wasn’t immediately obvious). So I decided to keep exploring the textures of clouds but reintroduce another element, which ended up being an airplane wing. For this drawing, the placement of the wing was really important to me; I wanted whoever was viewing it to feel they were looking out the airplane window and thus indirectly interacting with the setting. I liked this idea—placing a single machine against the backdrop of a single natural setting and position it such that the audience would be drawn into the conversation between the two. Thus for my final drawing I picked out a strange angle to view the flying hull of a catamaran (and took the person sailing it out of the photo) and placed it against a partly cloudy sky.

What are you saying with your drawings after 14 weeks of work?

I don’t feel like I have fully explored the potential depth of things that I could say with my drawings. I don’t really know what I want to say, but I do know I that find the simple harmonious interaction between nature and man an interesting subject to explore, and I think I want to continue with that to see what deeper meanings it might lead me to.

What is important to you as an artist? Have you changed as an artist?

I use art mainly as a way to ground myself and relax, so it is important to me that what I make is also at least sort of relaxing and grounding. It seems I have settled more firmly into my style of drawing that started last spring in beginning drawing—a more pastel, subdued combination of values that gives a romanticized tint to whatever I’m drawing.

Finding Interesting Things--Yiou Wang

I love interesting things.

I had never received formal art education before, and being a self-motivated artist I clearly knew my limitations in drawing: I thought I was a little lost, I did art purely for fun and wasn't always widely aware of what I was doing with my art. When I started this class, I expected a relief from the confused state of artmaking. I thought we were to be guided step by step and do whatever the teacher told us to--a brand new experience in my life! But I was surprised when it became clear that the class's purpose was not on perfecting your skills but on finding your voice, focusing on the artist's mind rather than the artist's hand.

It was actually a pleasant surprise. In my stage of creativity, I already understood the importance of the expression of the mind in artmaking, all kinds of arts, but I needed time and space to practice this technique of transforming the thought into paper. So, I realized that the class's goal totally coincided with mine. 

With excitement and high energy I passed this flying semester. I found out my capacity of that transforming technique through tons of practice. I remember at the beginning of the semester, I had a few sketches, but nearly all of which drawn from beautifully pre-composed photographs. My mystical stairwell with a mirror was the only piece in which I played around a little bit: I added a mirror and some water. All others--my mom's portrait on the beach, the creepy abandoned amusement park, and the forest with a father and a son--were adapted from photographs. I did not compose those scenes, or altered any element purposefully. When I discussed with Prof. Fick, he showed a strong interest in the stairwell piece (which later becomes, "Untitled"). It was also my favorite, because somehow it had some part of my mind put inside the scene.

Gradually, through more works, I began to find it irresistible to try out my ideas on the paper. I veered toward surreal imagination, occasionally using photographs for tools to be arranged according to my idea, not as sources of inspiration. I continued my signature features. For instance, water represented inspiration and spirituality in multiple works, and I tend to play with my W.Y.O signature a lot, hiding it, altering it to suit the situation. One signature feature that stood out throughout my drawings, is what I call "the absence of the protagonist." It is my tendency to exclude any recognizable-sized human figure in my drawing. It is not to say that I dislike drawing people; I draw people, too, as shown in my detailed portrait of my mom. But I want a more intimate experience with the viewer. With a big human standing in a drawing, it often implies that you are gazing at someone else's life or circumstance, but with the absence of the protagonist, my drawing invites you--the live protagonist--in. I strived to create a silent conversation between my thought and its viewer in every single work.

After getting used to drawing what I find fascinating--mysteries, natures, infinities, and philosophies--I began to feel my hand freer than ever before. I could extract images purely from my mind and I could execute it with my hand. That's when I embarked on a longer journey. It wasn't until some point this semester that I felt all my past adventures had been doodling around the bay, but once I find drawing an expression of interesting thoughts, I'm preparing to set out for the open sea. As if by nature, I unconsciously put myself in face of bigger challenges every time. The final piece I did for this class is one of the most ambitious ones I've ever done. I underestimated its complexity and ended up tangling in a time-consuming, energy-consuming, complicated and rich piece. But my patience  pays off. My final drawing, after multiple times of burning the midnight oil and endless hours of hard work, turned out to be exactly what I wanted to express. Although if given unlimited time, my perfectionist drive could finalize it further.

Everything I did in the semester is the best standard I am able to hold to. Taking this class is the best decision I made in college. Although some works came at great cost, I don't care. This may sound very silly, but as long as I'm a young and energetic artist, I'll keep up this level of inspiration and I'll remember what I want in every future artwork--to present interesting things, to create conversations.

The Mirror That Reverts Time

Following The Predecessor

The Calcified World

Infinity of the Self

Infinity of the Space

The Homecoming (photo in progress)

My Thoughts On Drawing

Osaro Obanor

Drawing Blog Post

 Before I went into this class, I always would say “I suck at drawing.” Honestly, my opinion of this really hasn’t changed. I do, in fact, suck at drawing. But I enjoyed this class because it pushed me out of my comfort zone. It made me tap into a portion of my brain that I rarely utilize in my science/ pre-med courses. I have enjoyed my previous experiences with art through the mediums of photography and film but these experiences were not difficult for me to grasp because there were tangible instruction and steps which one could follow to improve their work. But unlike my prior experiences, my experience with drawing this semester was more dependent on a mental development of not only artistic skill, but also an understanding of the space around you. Having to analyze and interpret the world around you in order to capture a scene and have it translate realistically onto a canvas is honestly the hardest task I faced during my senior year. But the more I was tasked with having to  “be artistic,” the more I found myself visually appreciating the world around me.

In the hustle and bustle of everyday Duke life, it is easy to become accustomed to going through life with blinders on, focusing only on things that relate to your future goals.  I found that this Drawing course, and just drawing in general, was a nice break from the monotony and stress of Duke life. In addition to being a great stress reliever, drawing was also a productive and stimulating way to spend my time.

At first, I underestimated the amount of thought, presence, and awareness that is required when executing a drawing. But after many failed attempts to recreate the space around me, I realized that I needed to channel a stream consciousness that, before then, I never really thought was important. I needed to be present when I attempted to draw and really visualize things as I progress through drawings. Once I mastered actively thinking, I was able to move through my drawings and really pay attention to the way lines worked and how objects were related to one another spatially.

Although I still think I am a terrible artist, I do think that I have made a lot of progress in terms of how I think about drawing and visual space. I believe that it takes a bit more experience for my progress in thought to translate to progress in the quality of my drawings. Through much frustration and trial-and-error, I have come to appreciate the drawings that I have the ability to create and enjoyed the experience of going through the creative process. But overall, I really appreciated this course and its reoccurring tendency to push me out of my comfort zone in order to tap into a fuller understanding of the things we see on a daily basis.

Reflections on Drawing at Duke

What an exciting semester it has been!  There have been rallies, parties, recitals, projects, and drawing(?)!  For the past four years I have been loaded up with technical engineering classes that pushed me to the edge of my critical thinking abilities.  While baffling at times, I am not sure I ever felt as stumped as I did on occasion in my first art class at Duke: "What on earth am I going to draw for this assignment?"  I will admit, the first assignment had me in a panic as I fumbled to find anything in my room that looked like it could be art--but that's kind of a point in itself.  We are surrounded by art and anything can be viewed artistically if you approach it with the right mind set.  Those dirty shoes in the corner? Art. The bottle of spirits behind your books?  That can be art, too.

For me, it was not a sudden change.  Over the weeks, coming to class, sketching in our sketchbooks, practicing for the assignments...  Somewhere in the middle of all of this drawing, my mind just opened up and re-accepted the artistic inspiration that had been latent since elementary school.  By the time the perspective drawing came around, I knew what I wanted to study!  Perhaps almost comically, my skills had not caught up to my enthusiasm and I still managed to struggle with drawing what my eyes saw and not what my mind told me would exist.  My final submission for this class is far from perfect, but it captures some of the things that excite me most, and feels like a marked improvement from the form I had when I was going into this semester.

Art was my zen experience in a bustling senior year and I am happy I was able to enjoy it with my buddy Timo.  The change of pace from working on a computer to grabbing a sketchbook and watching the rain fall outside my window was functionally therapeutic.  If I could do it all again, I think I wouldn't change much.  Perhaps I could have made more time to sketch and really explore some new drawing territory, but given my schedule and drawing history, I am still thrilled to walk away with what I have.  I hope picking up the supplies on the 30th motivates me to use them and continue to have dialogue with my artistic self even after I set out on a new adventure as a Duke grad!

Thoughts on Drawing

I have always been involved in art ever since my parents signed me up for art classes when I was in elementary school. I had begged them for months to sign me up because I knew my older sister took art classes, and I had always looked up to her when I was younger.

From there, I took weekend art classes for many years until I reached middle school when I was able to sign up for art classes in school as well. I continued my passion throughout middle school and high school, even taking AP Visual Arts as a senior and creating a portfolio.

When I came to Duke as a first semester freshmen I was very busy adjusting to college life. I realized towards the end of the semester that I was disappointed in myself for not continuing my passion in art. I had gotten busy with school, extracurriculars, and family life, and had not continued to purse one of my passions that was most important to me.

This is one of the reasons why I decided to take this Drawing course this semester. I wanted to have something that would make me focus on art at least a couple times a week. Despite art being a passion of mine, sometimes it is very hard to find time for it in the midst of everything else that's going on. This class definitely helped remind me about the things that were important to me, the things that made me who I was.

I also took a seminar class this semester on modern art celebrities that also peaked my interest. Now, I am once again encouraged to pursue the things I'm passionate about. I am definitely considering a minor in either Visual Arts, VMS, or Art History. I also have realized that I'm interested in a career in marketing, something that combines both my interests of business and creativity. While searching for internships I also created a portfolio of artwork from my past as well as some from this class. (Link: http://www.sonyazhang.portfoliobox.me/portfolio)

I definitely want to take more art classes and more art history classes at Duke. I realize that I have the time and passion to do these things, I just have to remind myself of how important they are to me and who I am.