CCOG for ART 131A Winter 2025


Course Number:
ART 131A
Course Title:
Drawing I
Credit Hours:
4
Lecture Hours:
20
Lecture/Lab Hours:
40
Lab Hours:
0

Course Description

Introduces visual language of drawing, basic perceptual drawing techniques, media, and tools. Explores personal expression and creative problem-solving skills of sighting, measuring, composing, and constructing in drawing. Presents foundational vocabulary to discuss and evaluate drawings within diverse historical and contemporary cultural contexts. Audit available.

Addendum to Course Description

Hands on studio art class focusing on drawing projects. Includes some written assignments. Instructor demonstrations, slides, lectures, video/films or occasional fieldtrips may be included. Homework will be assigned in the form of individual exploration of the concepts and processes introduced in class.

Intended Outcomes for the course

Upon completion of the course students should be able to:

  • Apply a variety of beginning-level creative strategies for solving visual and conceptual problems.
  • Utilize appropriate vocabulary in critical dialogue about historical and contemporary drawing from personal and diverse cultural perspectives.
  • Express connections to personal and cultural experience through drawing.
  • Compare and contextualize personal artwork to another artist’s artwork. 
  • Critique one’s own drawings and drawings by others in relation to drawing history, cultural practices and standards.

Integrative Learning

Students completing an associate degree at Portland Community College will be able to reflect on one’s work or competencies to make connections between course content and lived experience.

General education philosophy statement

The study of Visual Arts is essential to the development of the individual and one’s meaningful participation in society. At the heart of artistic practice is the ability to organize experience and recognize its meaning. The creation of artwork and appreciation of aesthetics is a source of great pleasure and also a valuable means to effective visual communication. Participating in Visual Arts is an important way for individuals to connect to the past and respond to the present with a stronger sense of engagement with culture and society.

Course Activities and Design

  • Create drawings using a variety of compositional, spatial, and perceptual strategies.

  • Figure/ ground relationship.

  • Spatial construction systems in drawing.

  • Representation, expression, abstraction.

  • Various media in drawing.

  • Foundational art vocabulary.

  • Elements and principles of design, including line, mark-making, and value.

Outcome Assessment Strategies

  • Create appropriately crafted drawings in response to assigned projects.  

  • Assemble a series drawings through idea generation, preparatory studies, and research. 

  • Write short essays that analyze, interpret, contextualize, and evaluate student’s and classmates’ drawings through application of basic foundational art vocabulary. 

  • Use research, writing, and discussion to cultivate deeper connections between personal work, life experiences, history, cultures, and other subject matters.

  • Provide constructive, respectful criticism to a group of peers.

Course Content (Themes, Concepts, Issues and Skills)

Themes 

  • Creative Process 

  • Visual Language and Perception

  • Cultural History of Drawing 

Concepts 

  • Elements of Form and Composition

  • Interpretation and Criticism

  • Cultural Contexts

  • Craft, Media, Techniques


 

Issues 

  • Path from ideation to expression

  • Traditional and non-traditional technique versus experimentation 

  • Process and material limitations and possibilities

  • Personal Expression

  • Cultural sources and influences 

  • Diversity of approaches to visual language and subject matter across cultures

  • Awareness of audiences, self -assessment and self-reflection

  • Risk and creativity specific to a drawing practice

Skills

  • Generate visual ideas using a variety of creative strategies 

  • Draw using gesture, contour, construction lines

  • Manipulate compositional elements in order to create a sense of form and space 

  • Create with various media 

  • Use vocabulary to write about and discuss drawing and other art forms.

  • Assess one’s own work and others’ work

  • Practice professional standards and responsibility towards the communal studio and the environment when handling drawing materials and tools