The holiday season has begun...

Unfortunately I was unable to go on the field trip because I had to work in Eau Claire at 3 and was uncomfortable with the idea of driving for over 3 hours on rather icy roads. I'm disappointed, but, hopefully I can make up for it somehow. 

While working at a portrait studio has almost nothing to do with life drawing, I have gotten the chance to observe the way that people of different ages move differently. Taking a picture of a baby under 3 months has a significantly different procedure and strategy than a teenager. Having learned about adult proportions, it is very interesting trying to get the framing right on a baby.  The proportions are so different! 

Also this week I have been working on the third shell drawing. I'm excessively scared to start using the ink on it, so, I haven't gotten that far yet. 

My newest internet addiction is the Behance Network. It is an artist website that allows you to make a profile out of your portfolio, post your work, and look at work from other artists.  Through this website I have found several interesting things relating to life drawing. The first interesting find was this:

I chose to include this drawing in my blog because the line quality stuck out to me.  It's not necessarily the best type of line in my opinion, but, it is very different than the way that I create lines. These lines are quickly drawn and ragged. My favorite part of this drawing is the shadow under the chin. While these lines up close, don't read as a shadow, farther away, it is very effective. 

These drawings have a very different lined qualities than the last drawing I discussed. These lines are smooth, slowly done for the most part, and precise. My line quality is certainly not anywhere near this good, but, this gives me something to strive towards. 

Dead-line

While looking at various artists' websites today, I came upon this illustration by Bruna Gonzalez.  It seemed fitting because so many deadlines are coming up for projects, papers, and tests.  This past week especially, I have found myself feeling rather like a dead line.

Life drawing class was cancelled this week on Tuesday.  On thursday in class, we experimented with using ink.  We started out by drawing a small contour drawing of our shell. Then we discussed what the goals of the shell drawings are and how the ink would be used. Applying the ink was almost scary to me. Ink doesn't erase!  That for me is intimidating. It's difficult to experiment and discover if you are afraid of making mistakes, so, I was glad that we practiced on a small drawing that we didn't spend much time on. I was still nervous about it and I think it shows in my drawing. I will definitely be practicing more before I do the bigger version so that I am more comfortable taking risks with the ink. I think that after I understand more about how the ink works, I will really enjoy working with it. I love the way that it shows movement and how it can be used to enhance an organic shape.  This is what I came up with in class:

Also this week, I worked more on my manikin. I redid the abs and the  maximus/minimus.  I think that I am starting to get a little bit more used to the way that the clay works. I still need to redo the thigh muscles and the spinal erectors, but, I think it is starting to look a lot better.  It is still very frustrating trying to get the muscles to look right together when its difficult to visualize, but, I'm getting better at it.

Week Reflection

Due to mid-program review we only had one class period this week, which, to be honest was a big relief! It is the time of the semester again when classes get more intense and full of expectations. For several reasons, I have found it difficult to focus and find myself falling behind rather than improving. I have noticed that when I am drawing the figure now, I get so caught up in trying to remember all of the things that we have covered in class, like legs and feet, that I completely forget to draw the rib cage. In the longer drawings it is easier to go through the drawing and figure out what is missing, but in the gesture drawings I run out of time and sometimes miss really important things. I feel like I need to go back to the ideas that we talked about at the beginning of the semester to make sure that I at least get the whole figure on the page.

We also had a shell drawing due this week. When working on this shell drawing, I realized that I am still improving and that I am getting better at seeing contour lines, which I really struggled with at the beginning of the semester. We critiqued the shell drawings in small groups. My group noted that I used the page well and had a good long axis. They also said that I had good line variation but needed to add more contour lines. I plan on re-working parts of the drawing to make it work better as a drawing.

I am continuing to struggle with the manikin. I enjoy learning about the different muscles, where they are and what their jobs are.  I find the manikin work interesting, but very frustrating. It seems that the more I work to fix the muscles, the more likely it is to fall apart or be shaped completely wrong. There are several parts that I need to redo and other parts that need to be refined.

I spent a while today looking at figure drawings done by other people and specifically looked at the use of line. It is fascinating to observe how very different looking lines can be used to describe the same thing effectively. These are two examples that I found:

In the first drawing the lines are dark and thick while in the second drawing they are thin and mostly lighter and much crisper.  These are very different approaches to the use of line, but we still read these both as figure drawings.

Midterm Reflection

It's hard to believe that over half of the semester is over already! I have learned a lot so far and am surprised by the progress that I have made.  Life drawing has certainly challenged me in ways that I've never been challenged before. One of the hardest things for me to get used to was drawing quickly and focusing on the general form instead of details.  In all of my previous art work I have focused more on small details rather than getting the gesture down.  At the beginning of the semester I struggled to even make a decision about where to make my first line in 30 seconds, but now I can get down most of the figure in 30 seconds.  One of my unexpected, ongoing struggles is with the maniken. When I started working on it, I thought that I would be great at it because I love working in three dimensions and working with details.  It seems that the more I work on it, the more frustrating it gets and the more difficult it is for me to create the muscles accurately.  My favorite part of this semester so far was working on the shell drawing for homework. While I found the process frustrating, I enjoyed looking at the shell and taking in all of the details.  I think that in trying to capture the form of the shell using only line really helped me to understand how to capture the figure only using line.  

In the second half of the semester, I am hoping to continue to improve my figure drawing skills. Things that I really need to work on include better understanding how foreshortening affects the way that the figure looks and also continue to learn how to focus more on the form as a whole instead of detail and shadowing.  

Here is a link to my Flickr page: Midterm Portfolio