Description
Book SynopsisBy applying philosophical and historical perspectives to drawing instruction, this volume demonstrates how diverse teaching methods contribute to cognitive and holistic development applicable within and beyond the visual arts.
Offering a new perspective on the art and science of drawing, this text reveals the often-unrecognized benefits that drawing can have on the human mind, and thus argues for the importance of drawing instruction despite, and even due to contemporary digitalization. Given the predominance of visual information and digital media, visual thinking in and through drawing may be an essential skill for the future. As such, the book counters recent declines in drawing instruction to propose five Paradigms for teaching drawing as design, as seeing, as experience and experiment, as expression, and as a visual language with exemplary curricula for pre-K12 art and general education, pre-professional programs across the visual arts, and continuing education.
Trade Review
"The drawing activity (and its cousins: sketching, doodling, painting, design, calligraphy, sculpting) can be traced back in time at least to early cave paintings more than 30,000 years ago, or even to rock art hundreds of thousands of years ago. Drawing is at the birth of writing and the archiving of ideas, knowledge, giving us a more powerful means to extend our cognitive horizons than the mere oral traditions. Seymour Simmons brings back to the centre this fundamental activity necessary to each human's learning and development: each of us experiments and flexes our brain, in infancy, to learn about representing shapes, the world, and imagine and set theatrical scenarios, in large part through drawing. Simmons sets the stage for the next paradigm shift in education and beyond, in the current era dominated by computing and the scientific method: that of unleashing our creativity with the use of our body-mind through the various dimensions offered by drawing."
-- Frederic Fol Leymarie, Professor of Arts Computing, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK
"Seymour Simmons' book is a tour de force, covering the panorama of issues in drawing, the arts, education, philosophy-- indeed, what makes for a full life. The book may well be the best synthesis of Project Zero's contributions to artistic education and artistic knowledge."
-- Howard Gardner, Hobbs Research Professor of Cognition and Education, Harvard Graduate School of Education, USA; Senior Director, Harvard Project Zero, and Ellen Winner, Professor of Psychology Emerita, Boston College, USA; Senior Research Associate, Harvard Project Zero
"The drawing activity (and its cousins: sketching, doodling, painting, design, calligraphy, sculpting) can be traced back in time at least to early cave paintings more than 30,000 years ago, or even to rock art hundreds of thousands of years ago. Drawing is at the birth of writing and the archiving of ideas, knowledge, giving us a more powerful means to extend our cognitive horizons than the mere oral traditions. Seymour Simmons brings back to the centre this fundamental activity necessary to each human's learning and development: each of us experiments and flexes our brain, in infancy, to learn about representing shapes, the world, and imagine and set theatrical scenarios, in large part through drawing. Simmons sets the stage for the next paradigm shift in education and beyond, in the current era dominated by computing and the scientific method: that of unleashing our creativity with the use of our body-mind through the various dimensions offered by drawing."
-- Frederic Fol Leymarie, Professor of Arts Computing, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK
"Seymour Simmons' book is a tour de force, covering the panorama of issues in drawing, the arts, education, philosophy-- indeed, what makes for a full life. The book may well be the best synthesis of Project Zero's contributions to artistic education and artistic knowledge."
-- Howard Gardner, Hobbs Research Professor of Cognition and Education, Harvard Graduate School of Education, USA; Senior Director, Harvard Project Zero, and Ellen Winner, Professor of Psychology Emerita, Boston College, USA; Senior Research Associate, Harvard Project Zero
Table of ContentsList of Figures
Acknowledgments
Preface: Toward a Renaissance in Drawing Education
Chapter 1: Introduction: Making the Case for Learning to Draw in Changing Times
Chapter 2: Beginnings: Drawing as an Innate Human Capacity and a Matter of the Mind
Chapter 3: What’s in a Name? The Uses of Philosophy in Drawing Education
Chapter 4: Drawing by Design: Connecting Drawing and Design through Mathematics
Chapter 5: Drawing as Seeing: Observational Drawing in Art, Science, and Medicine
Chapter 6: Drawing as Experience and Experiment: Creativity in Art and Experimental Science
Chapter 7: Drawing as Expression: Self-Knowledge, Healing, and Societal Concerns
Chapter 8: Languages of Drawing: Semiotics and the Search for Fundamentals
Chapter 9: Toward a Comprehensive 21st Century Philosophy of Drawing Education
References
Index
