With less than 3 weeks to go until the final Freshman Deadline, panic is in the air about the three assigned drawings.  I get questions every day on my facebook group about ideas, media, size, and more.  Here are some of my responses:

“Velum yes, glue no:) Have fun!”

“You can certainly do a drawing of altered paper for the two sided drawing, but you still have to do an additional altered paper drawing. Nice try though :)”

“You can alter the paper to make any form you want with any materials you want, but the drawing of the altered form should be 16 by 20 inches in graphite on white paper. Have fun with it!”

“Bigger is fine. Don’t worry about it. We start to worry when they are smaller than the required size. Breathe. :)”

“Water with the graphite is fine.”

“That sounds great. I can’t wait to see the result!”

“You should consider the whole area, but you don’t have to draw on every square inch. Have fun! Easy for me to say, right?”

Over and over again, I say “Have fun.”  I can only imagine how illogical this advice must seem to someone who is completely stressed out about the admissions process.  Have fun.  Have fun.  Am I crazy?  How could anyone possibly have fun with any part of a college application?  College admissions is far too serious, right?

Well, it is serious, and I don’t want to try to diminish that seriousness in any way.  But here’s the thing, most artists create their very best art work when their minds are open, when you feel free to let your inspiration take hold of you and lead you.  Putting yourself in that head space to do these three drawings will be really hard, but is absolutely critical.  The best drawings that we see are always the ones where it’s clear the student loved doing them.

So how do you get to that head space if you’re completely stressed out?  First of all, breathe.   Okay, the next step is to think about what you love to draw.  What’s your favorite subject?  What’s the thing that you would draw without any assignment at all?  The final step is to take that thing that you love to draw, and somehow incorporate the assignment into it.  Say, for example, you love to draw fruit.  You love setting up bananas, pears, oranges, and other organic edible things in still lifes.  Arrange the fruit in the spokes of a bicycle wheel, or in a shape that roughly approximates a bicycle, or in the shadow of a bicycle, or in a bicycle helmet, or on a plate with a drawing of a bicycle on it, or…well, you get the idea.

We’re trying to get a sense of your unique creative perspective in these drawings.  It will be different from person to person–illustrators and sculptors draw in completely different ways, but both perspectives are still valid and wonderful.  Your perspective will emerge as you draw, without any effort on your part, provided you do a drawing that you love.

I hope this helps, but if you still have questions, ideas, or panic attacks, please contact me any time.

Lucy King, Assistant Director of Admissions

Contact me at lking@risd.edu

This entry was posted on Monday, January 26th, 2009 at 10:56 am and is filed under admissions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.