Dawn Hunter's South Carolina Sunshine
FOUNDATIONS: ARTS 103
In Line with Nature
by Dawn Hunter, Project Author
and ARTS 103 Course Director
ARTS 103, The Fundamentals of Art course, is a beginning level art class that sets the stage for inquiry while encouraging students to explore visual perception, material, and artistic design practices through the medium of art and design thinking. The four interconnected portfolios use a recursive process of discovery, perception, interpretation, construction, deconstruction, and re-construction to facilitate students’ transferable knowledge of visual practices. Throughout the course, students will apply knowledge from previous assignments to new problems and projects.
Continued:
Drawing, abstraction, multiple media, repetition, feedback and re-construction are strategies students learn to perceive, think, make, problem solve and communicate within various art and design situations. Students learn to make purposeful artistic and design decisions and eventually develop sufficient visual vocabulary and independence to meet future goals in various disciplines of art and design.
Students who take ARTS 103 are majors and non-majors. This is a student work example by a USC School of Visual Art and Design BFA major, Jianna Schirmer: Image 1: Final project, In Line with Nature, Image 2: Thumbnails for In Line with Nature, Image 3: Texture Inventory, Iterative composition development (juxtaposition studies). Images courtesy of Jianna Schirmer. Visit my Mixed Media Drawing Adventure blog post to learn more about the project.
Trusting One's Own Perception | In Line with Nature
Sensory Perception and Interpretation: Students begin the In Line with Nature project by selecting a found object from nature. They proceed to perceptually investigate its textures, shapes, forms, and structures through a series of mixed-media drawing inventories and thumbnails. They then advance the inquiry by considering format, context, and compositional hierarchy, creating a final drawing that places the observed object within a visual environment constructed from textures and shapes previously extracted from the object itself. Through this process, students carry visual information from one investigation into another, transforming close observation into an interpretive composition grounded in the perception and investigation of natural design.
Students who take ARTS 103 are majors and non-majors. This is a student work example by a USC McCausland College of Arts and Sciences, Psychology, BA Major, Khalon Thompson: Image 1: Final project, In Line with Nature, Image 2: Thumbnails for In Line with Nature, Image 3: Texture Inventory, Iterative composition development (juxtaposition studies). Images courtesy of Khalon Thompson. Visit my Mixed Media Drawing Adventure blog post to learn more about the project.
The Assignment Sheet
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Student work, Madi Rawlings, Final Project, In Line with Nature, graphite, ink and color pencil on paper, 18" x 24"
Foundations in Practice: From Observation to Application
In Line with Nature introduces a recursive practice, where the results of one investigation can become the starting point for another using the same or different visual information. The processes of close observation of natural forms, use of shapes and textures from those observations in their inventory drawings, and gradual development of those forms in complex compositions are of value to use in subsequent Foundation courses as well as in later upper division courses.
The value of this process extends beyond a single Foundations assignment. As students progress into upper-division coursework, the visual strategies developed through observation, interpretation, iteration, and reconstruction can be retrieved and adapted to new creative problems.
Former student Katlin Jeffcoat provides a particularly clear example. She transformed the leaf forms from ARTS 103 into a composition for In Line with Nature in addition to continuing to explore them in her upper-division design work. She continued to manipulate and transform the images through color, composition, etc. in order to continue to create within the boundaries of the visual language she had established in her Foundations work. What began as a means to learn how to see was able to be transformed into a visual language which she continued to grow and to make her own.
Above, Kaitlin Jeffcoat's 1. Texture Inventory, 2. In Line with Nature Thumbnails, and 3. In Line with Nature Final work. Below, Kaitlin Jeffcoat's Merch Menu project from ARTS 266.
More Inspiration: From Thumbnails to Finished In Line with Nature Projects.
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Pedagogical Lineage
The Texture Inventory and Shape Inventory grew from inventory exercises developed by artist and educator Mary Stewart in Launching the Imagination. I have adapted these exercises to emphasize sensory perception and close observation, asking students to investigate a natural object and extract visual information from what they discover through sustained looking. Stewart's larger approach to Foundations similarly emphasizes visual thinking, problem-solving, and the application of knowledge beyond a single exercise.
Student work in this section was completed by Angel Pel, a Biology BA major in the McCausland College of Arts and Sciences. Texture Inventory, left, and Shape Inventory, right, function as source material for the final In Line with Nature drawing. Both works are conté, graphite, charcoal, and ink on paper, 18 × 24 inches.
The process of studying the fundamentals of art is always a part of an artist’s studio practice. I think of this in terms of the philosophical stance of Josef Albers. Instead of finishing a set of studies and then moving on to more complex work, the artist is always in Foundations. He views fundamental study as a way of learning to see, a process of direct observation, of experimentation, and of discovery by the artist. It is not a matter of following rules and doing work as Albers referred to it, but rather of finding one’s own way through study.
Foundations pedagogy is also recursive and multi-generational. We as teachers inherit from our own teachers and from many other teachers and continued to adapt as we grow in experience, adapting these to the needs of our own students. In this way, students too, become part of this ongoing process. Their discoveries, their unique interpretations, their unexpected solutions to assignments I give, teach me in turn, how I continue to understand what I teach and how I teach it. This pedagogy is relational in nature, meaning that I as teacher shape the student’s learning but the student in turn shapes my ongoing understanding of what and how I teach.
Josef Albers approached foundational study not simply as preparation for advanced work, but as an enduring way of learning to see. His emphasis on observation, experimentation, materials, and discovery continued throughout his teaching, and even advanced students returned to his basic courses. Albers believed that the lasting measure of education was not the work students produced in school but what they carried with them afterward, writing that “the best proofs are the results in later life.”
Conclusion
In Line with Nature demonstrates how close observation can become a foundation for continued visual inquiry. By carrying shapes, textures, and discoveries from one investigation into the next, students learn that creative work is not a series of isolated assignments, but a recursive process in which ideas can be revisited, transformed, and applied in new contexts. These habits of seeing, thinking, and making provide a foundation students can continue to draw upon throughout their studies in art and design.
Student work in this section was completed by Angel Pel, a Biology BA major in the McCausland College of Arts and Sciences. Final drawing for In Line with Nature, conté, graphite, charcoal, and ink on paper, 18 × 24 inches