Is it a blind contour exercise?

I can't speak to the instructor's thinking, but I recall having "no tool" drills in the "drafting and design" side of woodworking which were intended to develop a) blind contour drawing skills and b) "sketching fluency" - ie ability to quickly sketch fairly complex designs without being bogged down by tools.

The immediate exercise is regarding one-point perspective and It appears to be a course wide restriction.

Having said that this is the first concept The Wife is trying to help with. Perhaps it is a misunderstanding on the student's part.

What level is this course? High school? College?  

I know some art and drafting instructors are obsessed with the idea you should be able to draw acceptably straight lines and balanced circles freehand, and be able to eyeball angles.  Maybe that's all there is to it?

My drafting teacher back in the Pleistocene made us do blind contour drills every week and occasionally made us just draw circles on the board.  He was old school, and didn't have any truck with that newfangled Euclid stuff.

I followed up, and this does not appear to be an exercise. The requirements of the assignment are to strict (draw a room and contents, to scale, dead straight lines in one stroke). I'm going to go with obsessed.

Regarding "old school": I said to The Wife, "its not like 'being on the straight and level' is a new concept".

Dead straight lines in one stroke?  That strikes me as possible but unreasonable for an intro course. Short of the instructor actually not liking the fact they have to teach the course and wanting to punish the students for it, the only explanation is either obsession or as a demonstration of why they should master using their tools...

(that said: sounds very much like "draw a room and contents, to scale, straight lines in one stroke" is just a vehicle to achieve some other target skills, but asking students to do it without explainiing what they're supposed to be learning seems odd.)

AHA! Went online to take a look and current drafting curricula and found a bunch of sample tests and exams - most of them make a distinction between "sketch" and "draw" and on questions where the student is asked to "sketch" something the instruction is that you must NOT use a straight edge or compass, and the sketch must be "clean" and clearly labelled.  Sounds like this exercise is training to prepare students for the requirements of standardized testing.

Thanks. I'll see if I can dig up the local syllabus.

I'm hoping this is making a point in an assignment. As I understand it, the next assignment is do it in SketchUp.

I'm also a little dubious of teaching contradictory concepts in a single assignment (perspective and sketching at the same time?). But then again... I'm not a prof.

Also... I seem to remember from my TAing days... what the student thinks the prof said, and what the prof actually said, aren't always the same thing, that's why the student needs a tutor.