Perspective Drawing

From prehistoric cave drawings, to ancient Chinese landscape paintings, to the Italian Renaissance, to Indian Mughal Empire miniatures, to more recent commercial artists like MC Escher or David Macaulay, throughout history people have found different ways to make the world look more realistic--to express the human perspective through art. In creating the illusion of realism, some artists have relied more heavily on emotion and perception, while others have come at it from a more scientific or mathematical viewpoint. In this course, we will learn about a variety of techniques and important historical moments in artistic perspective, as well as try our hands at perspective drawing and painting ourselves.

To successfully complete this course, students will need access to a laptop or desktop computer with a reliable internet connection and a working webcam and microphone. This course may also require purchase of texts or other course materials.

This Fixed-Paced course incorporates a blend of synchronous and asynchronous elements. Students and teacher meet live via zoom on a regular weekly schedule. In addition, students complete coursework including guided readings, interactive videos, text and video-based discussion threads, problem sets, individual and collaborative projects, and so on. While these activities are time-flexible, teachers sequence them with weekly deadlines to help students keep on track and encourage and support the development of productive time management skills.

During the course orientation period, CLI asks students to complete a survey on their availability for live class meetings. Teachers set individual class meeting times based on student responses.