KANSAN.COM
Students hone artistic abilities on 3-week trip to Italy
CONTRIBUTED ILLUSTRATION BY JORDAN CHAMBERLAIN Jordan Chamberlain, a graduate student in the School of Architecture drew this in her sketchbook on June 20 in Florence, Italy.
MACKENZIE CLARK
@mclark59
Five students abandoned the classroom to sharpen their skills at four different destinations in Italy this summer.
Barry Fitzgerald, professor of design at the University of Kansas, took three illustration majors and two architecture students to Rome, Siena, Florence and Venice for a six credit hour program.
The students spent three weeks practicing drawing subjects that were moving around and walking down the street, among other things, Fitzgerald said. They discussed mental tools that could help them ground the people they saw within a space and to create a sense of space the people they drew could occupy.
"A lot of these things don't get done in a drawing class that is limited to being in a classroom," Fitzgerald said:
Fitzgerald said there is a different challenge to drawing people who are moving and may not know someone is drawing them.
"Learning how to draw while the world is just moving around and not stopping and posing for you takes a different set of tools in order to handle it, know how to approach it and do it successfully," he said.
He said he applies content he taught in a special topics class on campus several years ago in order to create his study abroad curriculum.
"It's a drawing class, but we don't have a classroom. The world is our classroom;" Fitzgerald said.
Jordan Chamberlain, a graduate student from Chicago in the fiveyear Master of Architecture program, said some of the experience she gained was unlike anything she's studied before.
"[Fitzgerald] was able to get me out of my comfort zone, because I know how to draw buildings really well, but I don't know how to draw people and artwork," she said.
Chamberlain said her favorite city was Venice, which she described as "exactly what everyone pictures in their minds." Although the group only spent a few days at
each stop, she said they got a good taste of each diverse destination.
"Even though we were there for a short amount of time compared to a lot of the study abroad programs,we were still able to see a lot and get a feel for each of the cultures in the individual cities," she said.
Chamberlain said the artistic skills she honed in Italy are essential to her planned career.
"As an architect, you are drawing almost every day," she said. "Part of the creative process is that we're taught to draw, and that's how we get our creativity out on paper, as
opposed to putting it into a computer first. [...] The skill of knowing how to put something from your mind onto a piece of paper is really crucial for an architect."
Fitzgerald and Chamberlain both emphasized that the program is not strictly for illustration students.
"I would say it's open to anybody in the sense that I don't have any strong prerequisites, but I do think it's best suited for students who have basic drawing skills,"
Fitzgerald said.
However, he said he has had students participate from various other programs: industrial design, interior design, graphic design and more. He said he believes studying abroad is a valuable experience.
"I think that's very important for students to start to understand how the rest of the world works, and that it's not necessarily the same as what we know here," Fitzgerald said.
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