Coach, Media Maven and professional artist Heide Solbrig fine tuned our students' drawing skills in Environmental Art, an art-and-design-based-studio held this spring session II. For Heide, this studio was vital to NuVu students’ growth because even though we are, in her words, a design-based technology school, she explains that drawing is an excellent way to break down and understand concepts. “As much as we're very happy to experiment and push technology, we also want young people to have those basic cognitive skills that are necessary in design,” she says.

The studio explored the intersection of drawing, environmental awareness, and social engagement through various artistic techniques. From sketching in charcoal and research into environmental issues around the Cambridge area, learning about environmental art from artists such as Sol Lewitt and Natalie Jeremijenko, to how public art has highlighted debates about development in Boston—Coach Heide brought attention to how important basic drawing skills can be to design and technical projects.

Heide says that young people love to draw, and that the only thing that slows them down is a feeling that they can't draw. “There were a lot of traditional drawing elements in this class, and I think that because kids were really interested in learning how to draw, they were very focused on those,” she explained. Trips to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum for sketching in the gardens, sunny days sketching on corners in Cambridge, to cloudy days drawing outside of NuVu, the students took their skill building to the streets.

“We learned about contour drawing, gesture drawings, and classical drawing styles,” said Heide. “We applied them to specific areas through site studies within the city of Cambridge, then students chose a particular site to draw over and over again.”

One student drew a church that had been moved piece by piece to a new location. The student then drew the church in separate pieces using different materials, showing separation through texture. Other students contemplated a building’s future, drawing possible features for the building regarding forward-thinking uses and growth. Others looked at the past: what would this abandoned building be like if people lived in it? “They were able to simultaneously get some drawing skills and stir up a few creative juices on top of that,” she says.

These skills—such as the importance of mark making, the difference between hard, soft and in between lines, learning one-and-two point perspectives, are all key in design work.

“If you're a designer, being able to draw what you want to make is crucial,” explained Heide. “You have to be able to draw, to help the client visualize it, and convince somebody else that it's worth making. These are all crucial design skills.”

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