A contemporary pedagogy of drawing

ABSTRACT

This article reviews 20 years of attitudes to drawing pedagogy and looks forward with a studioful of post-pandemic optimism. It reiterates the importance of drawing in art schools as the most direct and economic means of nurturing our intelligence of seeing. Throughout the period, neoliberal policies directing the UK higher education curricula towards market-oriented criteria of success have eroded the foundation of a visual arts pedagogy: the exploration of the perceptual and its communication through visual language; educative activities of wider import than market concerns. An articulacy in drawing – visualcy – is fundamental to human culture, let alone preparation for professional practice in the visual arts and design disciplines. A remedial pedagogy is proposed, structured upon the two fundamental theoretical bases of visual perception and visual communication, illustrated with students’ drawings and the author’s efforts to practise what he preaches.

KEYWORDS:

• Drawing
• pedagogy
• intelligence of seeing
• visualcy
• neoliberalism
• creative arts economy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 The degree of balance between perceptual intrigue and conceptual intrigue is a useful criterion of quality assessment. ‘Perceptual intrigue’ is the product of tension between textural qualities of the drawing surface, and illusions of depth produced by the marks on that surface. ‘Conceptual intrigue’ refers to how a drawing can afford viewers fresh insights which stimulate new understandings of the theme or concept to which it alludes: the capacity of the drawer to employ rhetorical tropes in order to transcend whatever prosaic subject-matter might be represented in the work so as to make available meanings at a more profound level about our experiences of life, and the human condition in general.

2 In South Africa, a cross-hatched pattern drawn with ochre crayon on a silcrete flake is dated 73,000 years old (Henshilwood et al. 2018). We were certainly drawing long before we were writing; Ewen Clayton (2020) states a generally-agreed date of c5,500 BP in Mesopotamia for the first writing. In fact, our facility for depiction stimulated the very notion of written language. Visualcy preceded – indeed, facilitated – literacy.

3 For an analysis of how such reasoning emerged, see Mark Carney’s (2020) Reith Lecture, where he charts ‘ … how we have come to esteem financial value over human value’.

4 Within the sociological tradition, theories explaining value are classed as normative since they attempt to establish a standard, a norm. Gordon Graham (1997, 46) reviews three such normative positions: that the value of art lies in its capacity to give pleasure, aestheticism; that art’s value lies in its abilities to facilitate the expression of emotion, expressivism; and third, that art is valuable as a source of understanding, cognitivism. I take the view that the most socially-useful value of visual art – its prime function – lies in its scope for contributing to our understanding of our experiences of the world, without denying the social functions of art as a source of pleasure or a means of self-expression.

Additional information

Funding

The author reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.

Notes on contributors

Howard Riley

Howard Riley Ph.D. MA(RCA) CertDes FRSA FHEA studied at Hammersmith and Coventry Colleges of Art and the Royal College of Art. Doctorate of the University of Wales in the practice and pedagogy of drawing. Teaching: Curtin University, Western Australia 1980–1991, Malaysian Institute of Art 1991, Swansea College of Art 1991–2015. Head, School of Research & Postgraduate Studies 2004–2014. Publications: https://researchgate.net/profile/Howard_Riley. Drawings exhibited in Australia, Malaysia, Finland, Serbia, USA and UK: https://howardriley.wordpress.com. Riley is Professor Emeritus, University of Wales Trinity Saint David, and Tutor, Classical Education Forum, Cardiff.