Thoughts on Drawing

Drawing this semester marked a pretty significant departure from anything I have taken in my 5 semesters at Duke. As an economics major with a concentration in finance, and a minor in computer science, the whole "Arts, Literature, and Performance" section of my T-Recs was never something that found itself naturally within my schedule. I could not have been more happy with my choice to take Drawing this semester.

I make no secret of it - I am not the best artist in the world. There were many kids in my class who had gobs of artistic talent, but I was not among them. Despite this, I found that the drawing class itself was more than welcoming to people who, like me, had no formal experience with drawing, and hadn't really done any art in years. And that is why I loved the class so much.

With regards to drawing as a whole, it was a nice departure for me from the things that I am used to. Drawing uses such a different part of the brain and the work is just so different from everything that I have done at Duke. Don't get me wrong, the work was challenging, but I enjoyed it and it was really refreshening to be challenged by objects and shapes and values rather than integrals and inequalities. That was what made Drawing so fantastic for me, I felt like I was being challenged in a completely different way than I have grown used to.

While this is the last visual arts I will likely take in my time at Duke, it will be one of the courses I remember when I look back on my time at Duke 20 years from now. I really enjoyed the work, and how the class was on one hand, accessible, and on the other hand, challenging in a way that I had never thought of before.