Drawing On the City

3 units

Drawing on the City brings together two seemingly disparate but actually complementary threads - the ability to draw and the opportunity to understand the city and its histories and issues in some breadth and depth. The course is open to both graduates and undergraduates, to students who are in the Sam Fox School and those who are not, and to students with any level of drawing ability - including none to start. During the first half of the semester, the drawing instruction is dominant, with the neighborhood visits becoming dominant in the second part of the semester. Generally a half-dozen or so neighborhoods are visited, and in most cases you will get to meet and spend time with residents. As the semester evolves, the two threads of the course will merge, and you will use your drawing ideas and your understanding of the city to create an ongoing book [writing, drawing, photography] of the semester, as well as a large, highly-individualized, ongoing drawing that builds on some aspects of the city experience that you wish to explore visually.