First Year Courses
Introduction:
This course is an in-depth exploration of fundamental compositional design principles and theories as well as compositional processes. The sensitisation of aesthetic awareness is essential for the artist, and the complexities of sensory and conceptual processes will be explored and discussed.
Course structure and content:
Students will be exposed to a range of creative and compositional processes and pictorial design principles including those specific to linear and spatial arrangement, tone and colour. This will involve lectures, activities and studies of master works. Topics related to understanding creativity will include trigger questions, brainstorming, creativity within frameworks, old masters and to contemporary creative composition process, the importance of regular compositional sketching, and theories of creativity. By the end of the semester, students will be planning and carrying out the creation of their own compositions, based on capacities developed through learning activities, and taking multiple dimensions of design into account. Critical evaluation is integral to the development of creative capacities, and group critiques and discussion will familiarize students with art terminology as well developing communication skills that are very important for the career of artists. To this end, students will be introduced to ideas relevant to productive discussion and debate such as logical falacies, rhetoric and dialectics.
Learning objectives:
At completion of the course, students will *know and be able to apply processes to generate creative solutions and creative starting points, *be able to analyse the drawing principles used in compositions; *understand color wheels and other colour models; *understand concepts of hue, value and chroma in the analysing colour; *understand primary, secondary and tertiary colours, colour harmony and colour design; *understand spatial compositional design and the structural elements of line, value, and color); *understand common principles of tonal design; *understand and be familiar with applying principles of communication relevant to productively giving and receiving critiques, and engaging in discussion and debate.
Introduction:
This course is designed to introduce or consolidate the student's core drawing skills and knowledge, covering form drawing, tonal drawing and including an introduction to human anatomy, and various traditional approaches to figure drawing from life.
Content and Structure:
Each lesson has a specific aim and forms part of a progressive development of skills, through life drawing excercises, a simplified introductory ecorche course, short and long pose drawings.
Learning Objectives:
At the completion of the course, the student will: *have developed basic skills and better knowledge of drawing and composition in space, *understand the integral relationship between the drawing process and the fundamental elements and principles of art, *analyze and draw a variety of subjects from observation and imagination, and *when given a problem, determine the strategies that would be necessary to solve it with the help of drawing via experimentation.
Introduction:
This course is designed to introduce or consolidate the student's core drawing skills and knowledge, covering form drawing, tonal drawing and including an introduction to human anatomy, and various traditional approaches to figure drawing from life.
Content and Structure:
Each lesson has a specific aim and forms part of a progressive development of skills, through life drawing excercises, a simplified introductory ecorche course, short and long pose drawings.
Learning Objectives:
At the completion of the course, the student will: *have developed basic skills and better knowledge of drawing and composition in space, *understand the integral relationship between the drawing process and the fundamental elements and principles of art, *analyze and draw a variety of subjects from observation and imagination, and *when given a problem, determine the strategies that would be necessary to solve it with the help of drawing via experimentation.