My Thoughts on Drawing - Teng Hu

                       My Thoughts on Drawing
      I can't recall when did I start to be interested in drawing and art in general. Maybe start from I first look at Leonardo Davinci's drawing in elementary school. I was fascinated by the not only articulated beauty, but also precise, symmetry, and inspire me to realize there is a connection between art and engineering. The more artworks I look, the more I become interested in visual art. Learning to draw is also one of my dreams, and I think my last semester may be a good chance to explore this field.

     My idea of drawing involves from simple doodling to a different way of thinking. Since more I drew, I realize the most important thing is to train our eyes to see the shape and form first, and that special way of visual thinking inspires me a lot. Now looking back at DaVinci's work, I came to realize when that visual thinking intuition is strong enough like him, one can see the structure behind the shape, and thinking on shapes and forms, and I found that feeling really really cool. Although I'm not a detail-oriented person, I like drawings with discipline, especially Escher's work, he manages to fool people's perspective with the similarity between objects' shape, that really makes me want to learn the psychology behind visual arts.

   This class exposes me to many different concepts, perspectives of the world. One is negative space, especially use negative space to stir the imagination and bring the narrative to the drawing. I remembered ancient oriental arts heavily use negative space to describe concepts from Buddhism, some will even intentionally leave half the drawing blank. That connection between negative space and oriental philosophy (emptiness) I found very fascinating.

   This class has been a great journey to me. I'm looking forward to combining what I've learned into engineering and expand my career in future.