A Paradigm for Promoting Visual Synthesis through Freehand Sketching

Abstract

Research (Fish, 2004) suggests that everybody should be taught how to freehand sketch and utilise it as a tool for supporting the visualising instinct. A fundamental shift in philosophy of the technology education system in Ireland towards design driven subjects brought with it a need to develop practising teacher’s technological capabilities. This paper is concerned with the exploration and development of freehand sketching as a support tool for visual synthesis and creative discovery during design driven activities. The fundamental hypothesis tested was whether a set of empirically derived activities ranging from observation to imagination, improved the ability of students with novice sketching ability to develop, manipulate and synthesise graphical libraries through the medium of freehand sketching. 124 students of an Initial Technology Teacher Education programme participated in a journey through the activities as part of a third year undergraduate Design and Communication Graphics module. The study was carried out over a four week period, it involved eight hours of classroom based instruction and the sketching ability of all students was measured pre and post-instruction. Results from the study reveal a statistically significant increase in student’s ability to freehand sketch with notable improvement in their fluency and ability to synthesise concepts and geometries. Overall, the novel and original activities have a notable effect on student’s ability to form, manipulate and synthesise visual information and communicate this through freehand sketching. The model presented has potential to be successively implemented by other teachers in a variety of educational settings and student populations.