FINA10036: The Body: Facts and Fictions

1000 word essay (25%) folio (75%)

If you’re looking for an easy breadth, look no further, this is the one.
I’ve always liked drawing people, and have been wanting to do life drawing for ages, but never had the chance to. So when I read about this subject in the handbook I knew I wanted to take it. You go to a three hour block every week which can be a variety of different things. We had two three hour lectures, both of which I understood nothing in. One was on “drawing in the expanded field” whatever that means, the other on “postmodernism” (no clue either). I’m quite sure less than 20% of the group came to the second lecture. So yeah, you can definitely miss these if you want.

Drawing wise, this subject seems to be geared towards creating “contemporary” art. I don’t know if it was just Bill who ran my group (the group is split into three smaller ones for workshops), but we were encouraged to do all kinds of wacky things when drawing such as drawing something that someone else touches (with their eyes closed) and describes to you, or drawing with a giant stick taped to our arm to you can’t bend your arm/would have less control over what you’re doing or picking a random item and drawing the model by tracing the item or drawing over other peoples work and questioning who owns the final piece etc. Pretty much crazy “profound” arty stuff with deeper inner meaning that I really did not get, but even so a lot of fun. XD We were also encouraged to try drawing on LSD/other hallucinogens on multiple occasions;;;; I did not and still managed to get a H1 though!!

Workshops with a model generally had a little less direction, we’d all just stand with our easels and drew however we felt like and Bill would walk around and make comments, give feedback, tell you what you could fix, etc. He seemed a little opposed to more “traditional/classical” drawing techniques though, which was a bit annoying for people like me.
There were also a couple collage workshops, where we’d swap tutors and then two “group tutes” where we were required to bring ALL our work and stick it up on the walls and we’d all walk around in a group and comment on peoples work and then go to the other groups and look at what they did. If you chose to draw every pose as I did, be prepared to die carrying all this paper to Southbank. Even more so if you have a bunch of classes beforehand and bonus points if one of those classes is a prac. My rolled up pile of drawings was so big I ended up putting it in a coat hanger because I could not find an elastic band big enough to hold it in!

As far as workload goes, it can be as little or as much as you want it to be. Bill regularly says that everyone generally tends to do quite well, and if you look like you’re engaging with the subject, you’re likely to get above 80. Outside of what we draw in class, we’re required to produce a “visual journal” to turn in along with what we do in workshops, and it can be filled with pretty much anything: drawings, text, photos, seriously anything you wanted. As it’s been a busy year for me, I haven’t had the time to draw much outside of class, so I just brought in a couple of old sketchbooks;; I was actually highly tempted to turn in my doodle filled math book (hey, vectors and quadric surfaces can look artistic, right?), but thought that might have been pushing it. I know a lot of people in my group with no previous work to show made the entire thing in a couple of days. So pretty much, if you like to draw, you might put countless hours into a folio, but because you wanted to and not really for the subject, and if you don’t really like drawing, you can whip something up in a couple of hours and turn it in for assessment. And chances are, either way you’ll do well since either they can tell that you’ve put in effort or you’ve handed in a bunch of smears that are expressive and emotional and fit exactly what the markers like.
There’s also an essay. Writing it was painful. Thankfully they changed it from 1500 words to 1000, prolly so they wouldn’t need to mark so much;;; But still. Painful. There’s a reading list as well that you can read if you want. But all the books on it are pretty ridiculous. The one I borrowed had a part about how when drawing, the extending of the arm and hand away from the body corresponds to the gesture that a baby makes during its exploration process when it’s first separated from its mother… (really?REALLY?) Needless to say, what I turned in was a load of crap. Oh and you get the topics at the start of the semester. Do yourself a favour and don’t leave it until between exams to start it as I did. Especially when you still haven’t learned part of the content for your actual non-breadth subjects. OTL
So pretty much, if you like to draw, definitely consider taking this, chances are you’ll enjoy it. And if you don’t but want something bludgy, go ahead and take it as well, pretty much everyone else in the subject is in the same boat. It’s art, no one cares in the slightest about your skill level. No matter what you produce, someone will come up with some kind of meaning to give to it, regardless of whether or not you intended for it to be there. So just run with it. It’s absolutely a subject that you can bullshit your entire way through, so much more so than I expected.

no

Bill, Peter, Sharron

no exam

4 Out of 5

None.

1x3hr block every week

2013, semester 1

H1 (83)