Students began the academic year with an enthusiastic start this week as they began their first module at the IFC, Visual Research. As observation, experience and recording play key roles in our practice of visual research, faculty began this module by “un-teaching” students and took drawing back to it’s very essential components.

The first day placed an importance on the process of experience and mark-making over aesthetic product and students learned that drawing isn’t only about making representational forms, but can also be about the mark that a tool leaves on a surface. They gained an understanding of how time and scale effects these marks, and the body’s relationship to drawing.

Even the afternoon’s figure drawing period focused on mark-making and process as students made excavating, reverse drawings of their models and wire line drawings, exploring the human form through marks on the paper.

The next day saw an increased focus on line, as students learned how line can describe movement, mark borders and communicate transfers through looking at works that span time, from contemporary works to Egyptian hieroglyphics and artists such as Julie Mehretu, and Albrect Durer.

Students culminated this day in a collaborative drawing installation wh&

101;re they worked in teams of 10, utilizing tape as lines that defined borders of illusory spaces and cr&

101;ated graphic impact.

Some students used the tape to cr&

101;ate geometric optical illusions while other groups used the lines to describe ghostlik&

101; figures in the IFC hallway.