LIVE DRAWING

The Live Drawing course aims to develop in the student the ability to portray objects, spaces and architectures in an effective and synthetic way on the sheet of paper without the use of computer tools or geometric drawing equipment.

After a few decades of believing that the spread of recent automatic drawing techniques would have allowed, in the practice of Architecture, to limit the exercise of traditional manual drawing, in recent years a profound revision of educational techniques and training courses (which has involved some of the most prestigious schools in the world) has led to the recognition of the didactic and heuristic function of life drawing and freehand drawing, lucidly re-evaluating its positive effects on the practice of design and analysis of architecture. In this panorama it is believed that the main educational objective of teaching Life Drawing should be to quickly educate Architecture students to a clear spatial awareness, a sharp perception of forms and an acute sensitivity to color. These skills, acquired through simple yet profound personal experiences, will constitute an essential foundation for the conscious and in-depth study of architecture.

Constant, conscious and assiduous exercise is the only means to achieve this goal and for this reason a condition of total immersion in graphic practice is expected.

The course has the further objective of leading students to:

1. be able to apply their knowledge, understanding and problem-solving skills to new or unfamiliar topics, inserted in broader (or interdisciplinary) contexts connected to their field of study;
2. acquire the ability to integrate knowledge and manage complexity, as well as to formulate judgments on the basis of limited or incomplete information, including reflection on the social and ethical responsibilities connected to the application of their knowledge and judgments;
3. know how to communicate their conclusions, as well as the knowledge and rationale underlying them, in a clear and unambiguous way to specialist and non-specialist interlocutors;
4. develop learning skills that enable them to continue learning mostly in a self-directed or autonomous manner.

The course lessons will take place both in the classroom and in the other spaces of the university building.
Some lessons and exercises are also planned to be carried out in the streets and squares of Ortigia and at the Paolo Orsi Museum in Siracusa

No prior knowledge is required to attend the course. The only real prerequisite is an incessant curiosity.

Although attendance at the course is not mandatory, for learning life drawing, the presence of each student at the lessons and at the collective and individual exercises is absolutely essential.

The topics covered, which will structure the various lessons and the practice of the exercises, will be the following:
- Theory and purposes of Live Drawing
- Contour tracing
- Visualization
- Timed drawing
- Color. Use of watercolor
- Seeing with the eyes. Elaborating with the mind
- Narrating a path

Eugéne Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, Storia di un disegnatore. Come si impara a disegnare, Cavallino, 1992 (ed. orig. 1879).
Betty Edwards, Disegnare con la parte destra del cervello. Longanesi, 1982.
Fabrizio Foti, La via del disegno. LetteraVentidue, 2017.
Claudio Patané, Lo sguardo Salato. Argon Edizioni, 2024.

During each meeting, the correct learning of the course contents will be verified through the performance of exercises.
The final exam includes three distinct parts:
- verification of the drawings made during the course;
- verification of the final exercise;
- the extemporaneous creation of some drawings.
The evaluation will take into consideration the graphic quality, the visualization ability, the consistency of application to the study, the improvements made during the course.

Can you show me the drawings you made during the course?
Would you like to explain your final project to me?
Could you briefly draw the space of this classroom and trace its section?