Drawing Volumetrically

 Drawing Volumetrically

This semester I taught Drawing II: Contemporary Practices at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore. 

The course, which is geared to First Year students who took drawing in high school, focused on volumetric drawing in which the students drew objects as three-dimensional volumes. 

The reason for this focus was, first, I wanted to students to understand things as, well, volumes in space--that they are three-dimensional. Second, most students tended to start drawing with "one eyed closed". That is, they were more two-dimensional studies of three-dimensional things. 

As you know, we have binocular vision and thus the things we see are composite images: Our brain takes two points of view (from two eyeballs) and combines them into one image (two, simultaneous images become one). We can see this when we alternate one eye open/one eye shut and things shift left-right.

Students drew things to articulate that shift to represent simultaneous volumes.