28 TEACHERs COLLEGE COLUmbIA UNIvERsITy
The bigger Picture of Drawing:
A New Curriculum, A New Pedagogy
Background and context
However, in recent years, any conversation with
colleagues in the UK teaching in pre-undergraduate
art & design foundation courses would inevitably
have focused on increasing anecdotal evidence of
students’ drawing weaknesses and their low con-
fidence in their drawing ability. From 2005, all six
University of the Arts foundation course direc-
tors were noticing in their course selection process
an increasingly worrying trend in the applicants’
portfolios. These concerns amounted to decreasing
amounts of any kind of drawing in the portfolios, a
limited range of subject matter and uses of drawing,
and little speculative drawing for ideas development
or research. Certainly, there would often be no
observational drawing where a student had learnt
how to look, analyze, scrutinize, and record visual
information.
Furthermore, if there were any drawings evident
in portfolios they were often a direct copy of a pho-
tograph, more than often poorly drawn and with
no attempt to relate photography to drawing. While
“copying” has an historical role in drawing, used
without any contextualization as the sole method
of drawing it does little to develop an individual’s
skills. I would argue that this lack of visibility in any
kind of sustained drawing or ideas development
through visualization, has its roots in the current
UK national school curriculum that through an
assessment driven process sees drawing relegated to
the copying of second hand imagery (usually artists’
paintings) and only to be done in workbooks.
In short, all the foundation course teams from
the University of the Arts London were increasingly
seeing application portfolios that lacked confidence
and competence in drawing; lacked an understand-
ing of the wider uses and purpose of drawing and
lacked the rigor of sustained objective drawing.
Furthermore they showed little evidence of drawing
for research or ideas development, and were over-
reliant on copying from second hand information.
Our concerns were supported in conversations with
national chief examiners.
I want to make clear that these problems were
not common to all schools, and we also saw work
from a number of schools where drawing was quite
obviously and confidently embedded into the art
and design curriculum. But our view was that these
schools were increasingly in the minority. However,
the issues I have described were critical on two
points. Firstly, it made confident selection of stu-
dents more difficult, and secondly, once accepted
onto a foundation course, this lack of skills and
confidence put students at a disadvantage in their
learning.Writing and development
Increasingly aware of these problems, in early
2009, the University of the Arts London through
the Centre for Drawing, with support from the
Rick Hopkins Bequest, commissioned the design-
ing, writing and development of a new drawing
qualification that would aim to meet the needs of
students and support progression. The Rick Hop-
kins Bequest were particularly keen that any new
qualification should be targeted at school students
aged 14-19, to increase the joy and use of drawing,
and the University of the Arts was keen to promote
proficient drawing for students wishing to apply to
its foundation courses and enhance progression to
undergraduate courses. The team of authors were;
Professor Stephen Farthing, Kelly Chorpening (BA
Drawing course director at Camberwell College of
Arts) and myself. We were given a very clear brief
to design and write a series of individual units that
would form qualifications that could be delivered to
14 to 19 year olds; could be delivered as single units
according to subject specificity or grouped to create
a qualification; would promote and enhance cross-
disciplinary drawing skills and finally, be validated
by the University of the Arts Awarding Body.
I do think that drawing is now more recognized
as being a common property, as there is an increas-
ing acknowledgment of just how many professions,
disciplines or subjects use drawing to explain,
communicate and propose. Like writing, drawing
is cross-disciplinary. So as authors we set out to
answer two important questions. Firstly, if the aim
of a drawing course is to be cross-disciplinary, how
can a range of individual educational units cross
disciplines and deliver skills, understanding and
contextual knowledge? Secondly, what would make
these units and qualifications relevant to the engi-
neer, cartographer, scientist or theatre designer?
Our starting point for the University level 3
drawing qualifications (and indeed later the MA
Drawing course), is the notion of purpose or use
in drawing. The qualifications ask questions of how
and why we use drawings as well as teaching draw-
ing skills. So it was important in the designing of
each individual unit that we challenged some old
orthodoxies in how drawing is taught. We deliber-