Figure Sketching from Imagination-AADTHU

Figure Sketching from Imagination

2020.11.18

"Figure Sketching", an important course in the curriculum of the sculpture major, is offered to senior undergraduates, when they are at a critical stage gradually turning from basic exercises to strengthening their thinking skills and creativity.

Figure Sketching

Time: February 17, 2020-March 13, 2020

Teaching Team: Professor Wei Xiaoming, Associate Professor Luo Huan, Teaching Assistant Wu Hao

Target students: Grade 3 of the Department of Sculpture (Art-Class 718)

An important problem facing the teaching team is how to make full use of the sense of presence and immediacy of online teaching to make up for the absence of models and teachers' inability to directly see students' works, so that students can master the core contents of the course while studying at home.

Teachers set practical themes every week to stimulate students' initiative to present their spatial imagination, combine with the thinking mode of referring to pictures with a stress on multi-dimensions, fully understand and master the conceptual change from two-dimensional forms to three-dimensional models, and transform the modeling ability into the power of creation by depicting the imaginary human body shape.

Prof. Wei Xiaoming (left) and A/Prof. Luo Huan (right) teaching

The first week (February 17-21)

The first week's training focused on reviewing the familiar knowledge of human body structure and anatomy, with a large number of short-term exercises.

Prof. Wei Xiaoming's lecture and online teaching

The second week (February 24-28)

The students gradually overcame the discomfort of not having "models" and identified their interests through a large number of short-term sketch exercises. From the second week, the focus of sketch training turned to the modeling and in-depth delineation of human body dynamics and spatial structure.

According to the characteristics of the sculpture major, students were guided to turn from the attention to light and shadow effect to an in-depth understanding of the essence of body in sketch training.

A/Prof. Luo Huan's courseware

The third week (March 2-6)

The students gradually felt the uniqueness of sketch training from a subjective perspective, and actively enhanced their imagination in their homework to unify subjective imagination with objective features.

According to the characteristics of the students' sketch assignments, Prof. Wei Xiaoming recommended works by masters of art such as Botticelli, Caravaggio, Gericault, Rossetti, Schiller, Kokoszka, and Carl Millers to encourage students to choose and share artists' cases interactively.

A/Prof. Luo Huan and A Wu Hao, respectively analyzed and discussed the artists' cases and creation problems with the students, who shared their thoughts and ideas.

Students sharing artists' cases

The fourth week (March 9-13)

The dual-body sketch exercise is the most difficult in the curriculum, so in the last week's dual-body sketch exercise, Prof. Wei Xiaoming prepared the courseware "Essentials of Dual-body Creation", drawing on his sculpture creation process to help students understand the methods of dual-body creation in space, structure and transformation.

Prof. Wei Xiaoming demonstrates according to students' works (left)

A/Prof. Luo Huan's teaching station (right)

Students engaged in sketch training at home

Through repeated study and training, the students have been able to start with an imaginary movement, gradually weaken the reference to models by strengthening and enlarging personal feelings, achieve the unity of subjective imagination and objective form, fully experience the transformation of an artist from "form" to "state", and complete the thinking training from objective sketching to active creation.