The End

last week of class. time flew by. these past four and a half years flew by. and i'm finding it hard to get to the finish line, a bit reluctant to graduate but excited to see what the next step is.



life drawing has been a great closing experience to my college career. having not drawn (in a drawing class) since freshman year, it was great getting back into fine art. having no job (currently) lined up, with no real post-graduate plans, i think i want to get back into doing the things i once loved, hobbies and the like...and especially drawing. creating art is something i miss as i've focused highly on design this past semester in particular. life drawing has been an outlet for me, giving me 3 hours twice a week to forget about all other assignments and focus on something i genuinely enjoy doing.



i've continued expanding upon things learned prior to midterm and my drawings from this last half of the class are definitely stronger because of this. i've actually really enjoyed the details of the body we've been learning in the last weeks...eyes, noses, hair, and especially drawing hands. it's very challenging, but rewarding when you see the results (well, some of the time.) i've gained confidence with my line over the course of this class and confidence that i can draw the human form realistically. sure, things are still off, but i'm able to see much better now, and portray what i see onto paper. my knowledge of the human form has also greatly improved, having nearly no background in this subject matter (even though it is our own) i feel i know enough to make my drawings believeable.

i've learned a lot this past semester and cannot stress how much better i see things now. here's a look at my latest drawings from the semester....enjoy.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/44090108@N02/sets/72157622892267423/

Eitheror

head, shoulders, knees and toes.....i've learned 'em all. more or less. this week was a fun one. . . . . honest. drawing the face is pretty complex and challenging but it's a pretty necessary part of drawing the figure. i took to it with an open mind and the outcome was...well, it was definitely a face, i'm just not so sure about the likeness to the model. eye enjoyed drawing the eyes especially. i've learned to draw with line over the course of this class, rather than with shade and value...and this technique i find is great with drawing the facial features. when i drew faces in the past, they often bared resemblance to some sort of cartoonish character...now, while they still may not be spot on, they do look human. and that's a start.

hands are also on the more challenging end of the drawing scale. my first attempt i was not so pleased with, but the second one did manage to show some improvement. sometimes i forget about the basic elements like the three flanges of the finger, and i just draw....but going back to these known structures, i notice my drawings improve. that's one big thing i need to continually remind myself of...seeing what's beneath.

she sells seashells by the seashore

second shell attempt, and this time it was macroscopic. one success was the incorporation of a more severe diagonal, however, looking at it now, i'm convinced i could push this a lot further. another change: charcoal. straight up charcoal. no vine. no pencil. just charcoal, and i'm not altogether sure if that was the right choice. i don't usually use charcoal but wanted darker line work on this drawing. and darker line work is what i got. throughout the whole thing. this new medium seemed to distract me just enough to prevent me from creating varying line weights. in review of my last drawing, i needed to work on darker line weights at the part of the shell closest to me and gradually fade those lines as they moved back in space. i failed to do that in my first drawing, and i failed to do it yet again in this one. however, i do realize now as this drawing hangs in front of me, it is much more three dimensional than i had thought as i drew it on the floor...so this element, i am moderately pleased with. I did enjoy drawing big as well. I thought the page would be hard to fill with such a small object, but it wasn't. It felt good to use my whole arm. Now, I just need to work on making it look alive.

In group critique, most things i saw wrong with my drawing, my group members did as well. Line weight was the biggest issue by far. More curvature to my lines would help the shell to look more alive. I need to work on loosing the rainbow effect of the concentric lines and focus more on the intricacies of the shell to generate the overall form.

leavetaking

35 min skull

i've neglected in the weekly postings of this here blog, but i'm about to get back on track. in my time away from this, i have been learning. learning much about feet, about skulls, about muscle structure...about bodies. the field trip to the bodies exhibition proved to be a rewarding experience. i had never heard of it, and had no idea what to expect going into it. i'll admit, i didn't even know we'd be seeing real bodies. so that in itself was absolutely fascinating and slightly unnerving all the same. my favorite part was seeing organs that were plagued by disease and how they looked in comparrison to healthy ones. i'm big on the visual learning thing, so this trip really helped me with seeing more than any book or diagram could.

30? min foot

for a reason

cross contour 30 min.

this past week has proved to be what i would consider, a successful one. i went to an open drawing the week before and that seemed to be just the ticket to get me into the drawing mindset...and that mindset continued into the following week. and i liked that.

lots and lots of drawing time this week gave me more and more insight into the human body. my drawings seem to be more knowledge built and because of this, much more successful. i feel the pelvis might possibly be finally falling into place for me, and i like that too.

...still struggling with making the inner structure more predominant than the outline around it, but i hope to work on that and keep it in mind more this coming week. so, i like this challenge as well.

a week full of likes. can't complain.

1 hour

Two Months Remain

So we're half way through the semester...and I'd be lying if i said it's gone by slow. I was nervous to try my hand at drawing again, as its been over three years since my last drawing class...but it's proved to be a good learning experience time and time again. I've gone from barely being able to get the figure on a blank page to locating major landmarks of the body to replicate it on paper. I didn't really notice the progress I had made until I looked at all my drawings, lined up next to each other...first day up until the most recent, and there's a definite progression heading in what i would say is a positive direction. A big struggle of mine, was fitting the entirety of the human body on the page, especially when dividing the page into four smaller units...not only could I not get the body drawn in 30 seconds, but I would also veer far outside the boundaries which I created. This is still a challenge for me, as I seem to always want to draw larger than space allows...we'll see if i can get that settled by the end of the semester. Correct proportions and foreshortening have also been tough, but with more and more lectures on the bones and muscles that make up the body, my drawings seem to get more and more accurate. Though there are some definite shortcomings in my drawings, this class has taught me a lot about seeing. I can't emphasize that enough. In past classes and drawing in general, I tend to draw what I want to see; what I think something looks like. This class has taught me to look at what is in front of me, and draw it for what it is, not what i feel it should be....and that's created a big change in my drawings as a whole.
I hope to expand on what I've learned so far...understanding foreshortening better and also gaining more knowledge when it comes to all the complexities that make up the human body. The manikins have been a great learning tool (tedious and annoying at times) but nonetheless, I'm gaining knowledge with each muscle I build. My manikin is a bit wonky looking, so perhaps I'll work on bettering that in the following weeks as well....

so please, take a gander at my work thus far..

http://www.flickr.com/photos/44090108@N02/

be like that

so...it's been a few weeks since my last blog. and i do believe i have a few things worth reporting. we've been learning more and more intricacies of this thing we call the human form. it's all quite exciting really. my focus, however, over the past couple weeks (and i am sad to say, but i'll be honest) has not been on life drawing. instead, i'm finding most my time is being spent starring at a computer screen figuring out the inter workings of a building, not the body. time spent on my senior project is taking precedence, and rightly so, but i do hope to divide my time up a bit more fairly...starting now. funny though, how the human form can relate so closely to architecture and design..........here's my take, my senior project has been dedicated to the creation of a recording studio. throughout my research, i have learned of all the elements it takes to construct this structure...wall upon wall, air spaces between walls, layers of gypsum board, sound barriers and diffusers...all these things, when figured exactly so, make a space suitable for sound, an environment strictly built for resonance without vibrations. A recording studio is a complex structure, much like the body. There are layers and layers designed to coincide with one another to make up the entirety; all very important elements that make understanding the whole that much easier.

the maniken with a little more muscle

elegant graffiti

30 sec

after a week off, it's feeling good to be drawing again. you never know how much you miss something until it's taken away, and not that this was taken from me, i could've practiced on my own, but it was freeing to draw yet again.

25 min

i can literally see change in my drawing style. learning about the muscles and directly applying it to my drawings...well, what a difference it has made. and i'm not just saying that, i mean it. how the body can be broken up into such simple shapes, like the egg...it just makes everything fit so much better. strange as it may seem, such a complex thing the human is, it can actually become such simplistic line and shape. i also can't help but notice this new thing i do...whether i am sitting in a classroom, people watching, etc. i check out their spines. whatt?? yea, kinda weird but so intriguing.

35 min

Is this where you saw yourself 5 years ago?

...that's what my fortune cookie said tonight. And the answer is...no. But I'm quite alright with where I am. and where am I? Well, I've been constructing muscles on a mannequin, and it's been anything but easy. Once again I am reminded of just how complex the human structure is. It's definitely a learning experience and my only regret is not learning it sooner. Seems like one of those things I should have learned back with the ABC's...a ....b....c....thoracis.

Muscle building is tough, tedious work. It really makes you study the photo in the book and then apply that to your skeleton. It's definitely another skill I need to further develop...the skill of seeing. Studying and really seeing...

What If You

Can I just say, I may have had a slightly skeptical attitude coming into this as I haven't had a drawing class for a couple of years, but dang, this is fun. I've missed you.

I feel I've learned so many things in this past week alone. The figure is an amazing subject to draw. It's so real, and unforgiving, and perfect. It's complex, but simple all the same. To look at the lines and curves of the body...I'm just amazed by the natural design of it all.

I'm learning to really see. To draw what is infront of me, and ignore my thoughts of what I think I want to see. I think that is the difficult part. Everybody knows what the human body looks like, but to really portray it accurately, well, that's the tricky part. And that's the part I hope to get down in the coming weeks.

That Moon Song

More of an extreme doodler, but nevertheless, I like a drawing utensil in my hand. I draw from my mind's eye...using sharpie's and tech pens to create pattern and shape. Always black and white. Life Drawing, for me, I hope will expand on this. Doodling is one thing. The figure is another story. I wish to draw more realistically and have deep rooted knowledge to back it up.