Free Drawing

Abstract

Practice-based freehand drawing course

Objective

The seminar focuses on drawing exercises that build on one another, with which the students can try out a wide variety of forms of drawing and develop them further according to their inclinations. We examine drawing equally as a free and project-related process, highlight the advantages of manual drawing in the run-up to digital processes and look at forms of drawing in a wide variety of genres. It's about a playful acquisition of skills, not dissimilar to what happens when learning to write or speak one's mother tongue, and in the way that language and thought processes overlap, so do those of drawing and imagination. This puts us in a position to draw forms that we put on paper into our gaze at the same time. Every shape we produce feeds back into our perception and changes our view of our surroundings. The aim of the lessons is to recombine physical processes such as sight, tactility, memory, movement, etc. as elements of drawing with the help of experiments and exercises, thus creating a wide variety of approaches to drawing. – Heiner Franzen

Content

The drawing exercises start as a free game with simple shapes and objects and are continued step by step. The practice rounds are introduced by picture examples and video clips. Here we compare drawings from fine arts, film/video, cartoons, theatre, architecture, etc. These examples convey the special features of different materials and milieus and give concrete impulses for our practice. The main drawing tools used are charcoal, pencil and ink. All participants work together in the hall, alternately at the table, wall and floor on variable paper formats. The results are uploaded to a drawing blog at the end of each lecture and discussed over the following week.

Resources