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Final Post

I am typing this post outside of the drawing room with twenty minutes to go until our final. Nothing like saving things for the last minute.
I am fairly happy with my final shell drawing. I really wanted to use brown ink, rather than black, but every store I checked was sold out or only had black. I attempted to use leftover coffee grounds but that didn't work either, so I pulled out my old black ink. I did end up liking the drama that the black added to the shell. I may go over some areas with a darker black ink, as it lightened more than I wanted it to as it dried. I really want there to be more contrast between the bottom wash below the shell and the actual shell. I worked really really hard to get the right shape of the shell, which I changed gradually over the course of a few days. It helped that I gave myself extra time because I was able to work for a bit, take a break and come back and look with fresh eyes, which allowed my to see what was wrong with it. I was a bit scared to add the ink wash, but finally was able to loosen up with the ink.
As for the last drawing in class, the full body pose, I am less than happy with. If you cover up the shrunken head it is not so bad I guess. I really wish we would have had more than one class period to work on the entire body. Maybe I can convince my husband to pose for me one of these days so I can try that again.
I feel like I have learned an entirely new was of looking at and drawing people and objects. I love drawing portraits and will definitely use what we have learned to make those better and more three-dimensional on paper. I don't feel like I actually stopped drawing sketchy, although I did try. I guess that is just the way that I draw and I can continue to try to work on that. Overall I am happy that I took this class and hope to use the new techniques that I have learned in the future.

Large shell drawing

My third shell drawing shows major improvement since my first. I thought I would be nervous about the large size of the paper, but since this was the third I ended up doing okay with using the space. I had a lack of wall space and worked on the floor, which seemed okay. When I use the bigger sheet for the final shell I will have to clear some wall space off so that my perspective is not distorted on the paper.
I worked a lot harder to focus on the shape of the shell rather than drawing half-circles over and over to show the shape. I was finally able to find the angles in the curves, and I really worked hard on creating a wrap-around effect. I also incorporated the use of atmospheric perspective, darkening the tip that is closest and gradually getting lighter as the shell moved back into space. The group who critiqued me said that they could see some movement and that the variation of line width was helpful. They also noticed that I tried hard to make the lines wrap around the shell. They suggested that I work on the inside area of the shell, giving it an edge and adjusting the angle of my lines to show that it curves out and down. Overall I think this drawing is much better than my first and second cross contour shell.

Final before the Final

Yikes...It is time for my final post yet I have failed to update my blog since midterm. So I am going to take a long look back into the last few weeks and try to summarize those classes. I believe I need to begin with the feet.
I have a thing about feet. I think they are kinda gross and I don't even like mine being touched, so to sit and stare at another person's foot was a big thing for me. I do feel like I got a pretty successful foot drawing out of the experience, so that was good. It was hard at first to draw the structure of the foot from many different angles, because sometimes I had to make up what I was told was there but couldn't see. I think learning the internal structure of the feet was probably the most important because the feet and hands are pretty complex.
The field trip to the cities was a good time. I was a little weirded out at first but once I got over that I really enjoyed seeing all the separate systems that make up our bodies. The nervous system was insane to see, as well as all the blood vessels that made up the shape of whatever body part they were taken from. It was really nice to be able to go to the museum with no itinerary. I enjoyed being able to roam around and just look at whatever caught my eye. I am pretty much in love with the Japanese art area, especially one sculpture in particular (the clay spiral form). I also spent a lot of time looking at the Josef Sudek and Czech Photography exhibit.
And now I move on to skulls, the eyes and the nose. I was happy with my skull drawings, I feel like they were pretty accurate to the model that I had drawn from. It was helpful to actually be told that the back of the skull were actually bigger than the face, I honestly think I may have overlooked it if I was not actually told to watch for that. As for the eyes, I have always drawn faces from pictures and thought my eyes were the best part of all my drawings, and now I have the knowledge to make them even better by showing structure to help them seem less flat. I think the thing I will remember most about noses is to show the front and side plane, and to add that roundness to the end of the nose.

mid-term post

The url for my Flickr page is: www.flickr.com/photos/44112821@N02/

So far this semester, I feel that I have learned a lot. This class is teaching me an entirely new way to look at the human form as well as an entirely new way to draw. Being told not to draw the outline on the first day of class was something very new to me, as was not drawing shadows but using lines instead to show space and value shifts. I feel like I am getting better at keeping things in proportion, as I have noticed that I am not using my eraser as much as I used to. I am also getting stronger with my cross contour drawings.
By the end of the semester, I would like to have improved with my line quality, as I feel that a lot of my drawings seem very sketchy. I am also looking forward to drawing portraits, and hope that what I learn in this course will help with that.

Week 5

This week we had a lecture on the ribcage and abdominal muscles.  I found that the abs were much easier than the spinus erectors, but then again we only had to build three of them.  The information was very helpful for class on Thursday, when we spent the class time doing gesture drawings in which we focused on drawing the spine, ribcage, and ab muscles.  My gesture drawings on Thursday started out a little rough but I got the hang of it as I kept working.  The drawing shown was from the last long pose on Thursday, and definitely my best of the day.  I felt like I had some trouble showing depth and space around the waist, and tried using some cross contour lines to convey the space.  Other than that I think I did a decent job of picking up on the visible lines created from the ribcage and showing them in this drawing.  

Starting on my Mannequin

 

Although I missed the first lecture on the muscles, I took a mannequin home to get working on the spinus erectors.  I worked from the book and managed to get all the muscles formed and attached.  The diagrams were a bit confusing and it took me a while to figure out how they all fit together.  After getting some input in class, I had to move a few of the muscles that weren't exactly in the right place, and then spent some time removing a good portion of the clay.  I initially used too much clay and made the muscles too thick, so I had to scale those down so that everything fit and did not bulge out past the shoulder blades and back of the ribcage.  

Finally...A post for week 2!

Here are two of my drawings from week 2.  The one on the top is the first cross contour drawing I have ever attempted.  It took a few minutes of studying the figure before I could decide on where to start.  I finally decided on the middle area of the back and worked from there.  It seemed easy enough once I got started, which gave me confidence for our first shell drawing.  

Unfortunately, I had an extremely difficult time with the shell, maybe because I was expecting it to be so easy.  I mean, the lines were pretty much there already, how hard could it be?  I became very frustrated very quickly.  I tore up several sheets of paper (wasteful, I know), took several breaks, even tried working from photographs of the shell but every time I started the drawing looked flat and wrong.  The bottom drawing is what I ended up with hours later.  It is not too impressive, but it was honestly the best drawing that I ended up with.  After Amy told me it was a decent start and gave me some pointers I was a bit less discouraged, and I am actually looking forward to trying this again when we get the larger shells.  

Week 1 reflection

This week brought in some new experiences for me, the biggest, and probably most obvious, being the use of nude models. I thought it would be awkward and uncomfortable, but once I started drawing it was not much different than drawing anything else. One very important lesson I learned this week is to study the shape and form of the body before I make my marks on paper. This way I can avoid having my work look extremely sketchy. Another big one was how to hold my charcoal, which I can't say I expected to need correcting considering all my previous years of drawing classes. Of course, this is a way of drawing that I haven't experienced yet, and I am sure I will receive more input and tips as we go along. The cross-contour drawing was new for me as well. Mine came out in a grid style since I made the assumption that cross-contour must mean that my lines should cross. But now I am going to attempt the first cross contour drawing of my shell, which should definitely turn out better now that I have a better idea of what I am doing.

some previous work

1st post

I am taking Life Drawing because I love to draw and am very interested in learning a new way to do so. I am looking forward to learning some human anatomy and applying that knowledge to new drawing skills. I love drawing portraits and hope to improve in that area throughout the class.