12 Hour Drawing. Art 100, Section 4.

Reid S.

The assignment for 12-Hour Drawing is to work from observation, using just ink (no preliminary pencil sketches), for a total of twelve hours on a single drawing. Students worked from the somewhat uninspired halls of Nelson Hall for 30 – 45 minutes during most class sessions. Most of the walls, the entire floor, and the ceiling are white so students were faced with the challenge of finding variations within the whites and figuring out how to depict the value changes using just the ink from ballpoint pens. Also a challenge was how to incorporate “mistakes” into the drawings since the only medium permitted was ink – erasing was not an option. The results are ink drawings that appear almost painterly and seem infinitely more alive than the subjects the students originally set out to depict.