Homework drawings: Self Portrait using entire ballpoint pen, shadows assignment, elipse assignment, word and image, drawing using one mark, independent project
Paper Bags: pencil, 18” x 24”: students started with careful contour-line drawings, were introduced to basic measuring and correction approaches, continued using selective application of value
Still Life: pencil, 18” x 24”: students continued to explore measuring and contour, were introduced to cross-contour, directional mark-making, mark-making to construct tonal spectrum
Windows: Ebony Pencil, 18” x 24” Students used the rich, difficult-to-erase tones of Ebony pencils to make drawings of the windows in the classroom, paying attention to light /dark and inside/outside relationships
Structural Drawing: Charcoal, 18” x 24” Students followed a set of steps based on drawing simple geometric forms (cube and elipse) to draw a “pizza dinner"
During the 2025 Spring semester, I offered Drawing (Special Topics 5890) through OPEEP and the Department of Art. The class was held on Thursday evenings at Southeastern Correctional Institution (SCI).
Due to space limitations, the course enrollment was limited, with seven incarcerated students and five campus-based students. The small size of the class was fortuitous: we arrived on the second week to find our very spacious classroom had been divided in half with a wall, leaving us with just enough room to conduct a studio drawing course.
Materials were preordered and secured in the classroom, distributed for each homework assignment and class session: a pad of paper, ballpoint pens, as assortment of pencils, safety-proofed scissors, vine charcoal, glue, ink, and brushes. Over fifteen weeks, the students made drawings that explored fundamental drawing concepts: contour, cross contour, value/tone, erasure, collage, structural drawing, mark-making. In class, students were introduced to a concept, usually working from observation. There were not a lot of objects available for interesting still life setups, so we made do with folded and crumpled paper, paper bags, rolls of paper towels set up on desks. This limitation proved valuable—how does one make an interesting drawing of something common, quotidian, banal?
Discussion of the many pleasures of drawing - looking for its own sake, recording visual analysis, assessment and correction, the look and feel of stylus on paper, discovery – was informed by a short reading on drawing by John Berger. The first chapter of Ways of Seeing, also by Berger, opened up a broader conversation about images, how they function in society, and our role as viewers. A third reading, about Magritte by Michel Foucault, introduced further questions of how do we look at and analyze the complex phenomena of images. While I would like to integrate more readings in future iterations of the course, it was important to keep the class a studio course, where practice and making, rather than theory, was the focus.
With this learning objective woven into every week of the semester, students drew. A lot. Homework was devoted to more open prompts, generally based on the class lesson. We would conduct open sharing sessions of the homework to start each class. These remarkable conversations became vital to the success of the class. Making drawings is hard, and the range of experience was broad. Many students really hadn’t drawn before, while some drew a lot and were extremely accomplished. Everyone in the class shared their work and their opinions, and everyone expressed genuine support, encouragement, and seriousness. Within the context of the course, we all got to know each other very quickly, and the comradery was extraordinary.
This space is too limited to share many of the great drawings that were made, but we have included a carousel of selections created by the incarcerated students throughout the semester.
