Drawing Skills for Field Notebooks
“What is most compelling to me about the act of drawing is that you become aware, or conscious of, what you are looking at only through the mechanism of trying to draw it.” —Milton Glaser, Drawing is Thinking
Science and art, working together
THE DESERT LABORATORY on Tumamoc Hill will host its third year of the Tumamoc Art & Science Course this Spring, March 7-April 25. Each of the eight Saturday morning sessions will feature a different Sonoran Desert subject for participants to explore and learn through drawing.
Call it an artist’s sketchbook or a researcher’s field notebook—it makes no difference in these workshops. We begin with a lecture by an expert guest scientist followed by a talk and demonstrations by artists and illustrators Paul Mirocha, Bill Singleton, and Barbara Terkanian, all co-teaching the class.
Everyone is welcome, no prior knowledge or skills are required. People with advanced skills can work at their own level—everyone learns from each other.
Take one session for $80 or all eight at a discount of $550 (50% student discounts available). See the Desert Laboratory on Tumamoc Hill’s website for course details and registration. Download the pdf course flyer.
“Sketching in the field . . . can better represent landscape/plants; I’m much less intimidated by drawing” and “Changed how I analyze what I’m viewing; I will use this thought process when planning drawings.” – Student reviews of 2019 course
It’s not an art course
But, the skills that your learn this course have been used by artists for centuries to make many forms of art. It’s not a science course. But, we will teach some science as it informs our drawing.
The visual thinking tools taught here can help a person to think about, record in memory, and communicate complex ideas of all kinds. To think outside the collective box, you first have to get out of your own box. As we expand the edges of our awareness, art and science working together can do this better than either approach can alone.
