Drawing for different purposes
A drawing made by one of our 9th grade students.
Back in 2016, I collaborated with a fantastic biology teacher to apply different types of drawing to 9th grade biology curricula. My former colleague Taryn Serabian and I created several lesson plans where we inserted different kinds of drawing at strategic points in students’ learning.
In the frog dissection, we had students draw from observation. This meant they had to look closely in order to understand how the organs fit into the abdominal cavity. They observed the way that one organ led to another in the digestive tract. This type of drawing is all about close observation.
The second unit we developed was about understanding cells. I taught students how to simplify cell organelles down to their most characteristic traits. We created flash cards with pictures and names on one side and descriptions on the other. This type of drawing, which is the rough antecedent to medical illustration, simplifies the object for emphasis and clarity.
The final way we used drawing was to create information graphics from data collected in the environment. Here students were creating new visual imagery to represent data clearly, and to help the observer understand the data.
With the frogs, we drew to collect information. In the cell unit, we drew to focus attention on important details and better remember information. And finally, we drew to visually interpret data and to communicate its meaning. The three approaches can loosely be correlated to:
Taking in data with a great deal of detail.
Processing and simplifying the data for clarity and memory.
Visually representing the data for the purpose of communicating with others.
A diagrammatic drawing of a chloroplast.
Recently, I’ve been thinking about different approaches to drawing in my own work. Sometimes, I choose to be highly representational in my paintings. At other times, I’m gestural and expressive with materials. And sometimes I use symbolic drawing to represent concepts and ideas.
Right now, I’m working with this last type of drawing to create a series of paintings about creative ideation. I’m using a highly symbolic style to represent different kinds of creative processes. But I’m also being very deliberate with my mark making and palette.
In the image below, I’m thinking about the way that a text can become a lens for processing information and creating meaning. A common example of this is the application of religious texts to life events. And so, I call this image “The Sermon”.
