Which Skull Speaks To You?

I really enjoyed Amy's discussion Wednesday of the artist putting their energy into their work, and thus the work expressing the artist. The viewer can really read the connection between your mindset and the drawing based on line quality, variation, and fluidity; I liked the expression that came up in Wednesday's class about the 'confident line'. So all this is kinda freaky, but I definitely see this in my beginning skull drawings. The first drawing was a wash. I wasn't looking at the skull carefully enough and making that connection. The drawing is very simplified and line quality is very weak. (Picture 1-Below) The next drawing I sat and studied the skull, and from many different angles when a part of the skull became unclear to me. I believe the drawing reflects my deeper engagement with the skull, but there is still much to improve upon.

Our group critiques on Wednesday were helpful in determining what needed more work, mainly by simply getting a chance to compare everyone's drawings. I realized I'm squishing the head together too much to where it is becoming more spherical rather than egg-shaped. I also have major issues with the proportion and placement of the jaw bone. I think shading seemed to be one thing most everyone struggled on. We need to work on picking a plane to be hid by the 'light', a direction of your choice, and only shade that plane. Although I did minimal shading, I think it truly makes your picture come alive, especially in intricate areas like the protruding cheek bone. I think I'm just going to continue my focus on the proportion and shape of the bone before I focus on finishing touches. These are all things to work on next week!

So thanks for the critiques last Wednesday and we'll see you soon!

A Second Chance at Life: Life Drawng II

Hello all, I'm back for more!

I've taken a year off from Life Drawing, but I'm back in full force! The first week I was absent, attempting to switch classes into Life Drawing from Printmaking. Success! So for the first week I don't have much to report on what happened in the classroom so I'll explain my reasoning for wanting to switch.

I'm a Super Senior in the Multimedia/Graphic Design program with a Minor in Digital Photography. I will be taking my senior project class Fall 2011 and I am planning to do a short film. This will take a lot of premeditated planning and I need the specifics filtered out before next semester. Life Drawing will benefit me immensely in character drawing and story boarding for my short film senior project.

I won't only benefit from Life Drawing II educationally. I'm looking forward to exploring the human figure even deeper than I did in Life Drawing I. I think we humans are beautiful, especially woman with our exaggerated curves. The human structure fascinates me. I believe exploring the nature of the human form helps me discover more about myself. I am more accepting and understanding of my own form after Life Drawing I. I cannot wait to discover what Life Drawing II will bring to my perspective of myself. I am also looking forward to exploring how others find themselves along their Life Drawing journey by viewing and commenting on their blogs. Here we go...

One More Thing...

Once upon a time I took a Life Drawing class taught by Amy Fichter.  Anyway, I began gesture drawings focused on the line of the skin of the body.  I would basically outline the figure.  Once we began learning about the inside of the body, I started to focus on the pelvis and the rib cage.  The aspect I found most interesting was the long axis, which I have renamed to be call the sexy axis simple for the fact that I think that space, that dip, the Cervical, Thoracic, Lumbar, Sacral and Coccyx curves make up that sexy sway of the body.  The pelvis, however, seemed to be the hardest anatomical entity to grasp.  Who says entity anymore?  In my later gestures I tried to focus on the pelvic angle and proportion because I felt I needed the most practice with that.

Cross contour drawing was the absolute most difficult aspect of the class.  In the beginning I could not understand what the heck those lines were doing and how thick or thin they needed or what angle.  The more we practiced cross contour, the more I understood plane changes, anatomical landmarks, and with cross contour the 3-d aspect of the figure was the easiest to illustrate.

The most enjoyable part of the class I thought was our focus on the facial features.  Really that is what identifies a person in their uniqueness.  I enjoyed the intimacy we had drawing the figure close up.  With the long drawings of the body of the model, I felt disconnected and had trouble seeing the important details sometimes. I would love to focus more on the face in the future and hone in on those skills. 

My least enjoyable aspect was drawing the bones.  Although drawing bones helped us understand the overall shape of the body, I felt our focus was on the muscles of the body.  When we drew from a live model, I could see the muscles and could put to practice what I built on the maniken.  With the bones, I was simply focusing on cross contour, which is not necessarily a bad thing; Just not as interesting personally.  Overall the class was a success and I believe I have taken away a lot about cross contour, line variation, muscle definition, and the overall proportional structure of the human body.  This will be beneficial to me for storyboarding and drawing in any animation. 

For more photos check me out on Flickr!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/38308953@N04/ 

 

OMG the year is over (blog)

I chose this gesture to represent my overall knowledge.  I do not believe it fullfills all of the criteria, however it was the most interesting considering the perspective.  The booty was obviously my focus and the angle of the rib cage was difficult for me to capture.  Line variation is somewhat there, with the but cheek being slightly lighter than the rib cage, but this could have been accentuated.  The long axis, rib cage and pelvis are defined.  

Sorry Matt, but I was proud of this picture so I had to include it.  I felt I did well with the plane changes and anatomy of the nose, eyes, ear and mouth.  There is some cross contour to get the overall sense of shape.  Line variation could have been accentuated, but overall I believe it looks like a human.  

This cross contour is my second long drawing I want to focus on because it was one of the most interesting to me.  I believe I've captured the model's muscle definition through line and cross contour.  I began to understand line variation in this drawing, as is apparent by the front leg being lighter.  I think this drawing is effective and accurate as well as aesthetically pleasing.

This is the cross contour I would like to focus on.  I really enjoyed this area of the body.  The slight softness of the belly is accomplished through my cross contour.  I also think I did well on the proportion.  

Bone Head

Discovering The Foot

Our group indeed agreed my drawing looked like a 3-dimensional foot. The toes and the ankle are what gave it away the most. There seem to be 3 obvious planes as the cross contour lines change direction from the top of the foot to the side as well as to the front of the toes. Everyone said I had chosen an ideal angle to get the best results in drawing it 3-D. The lines in the drawing, as mentioned, show very nice 3-dimensional qualities. The volume of the toes and ankle are what everyone enjoyed the most. The darker the line, the close the figure was to me and everyone in my group enjoyed that quality. The anitomical landmarks that are most prominant in my drawing are the fibula was said to be nicely represented as well as the horizontal line for the talus (crease between ankle and base of foot). Overall it was a successful drawing, although there were comments to watch my lines on the outside of the foot for being too straight.

Class Summary 3/26/2009

Today we got into groups, ours was a group of 3 including Caitlin, Matt and I.  At first we discussed the layouts of the pages, specifically ways of posting the pictures with its intended text.  Caitlin did her essay and images as separate posts, Matt and I included them together.  

Once over the technical aspects of each blog, we discussed proportions and our struggle with them.  (ie. proportion of pelvis to ribcage, or proportion of entire figure).  The pelvis in general seems to be a hard concept for us to fully understand.  After how many times of drawing it, we still can't get the shape.  We all like the long axis on the body a lot and think it's sexy.  

Looking at my blog, I realize regardless of how many times I edit the post to make the words fit to the images, there are still difficulties.  Also, it appears I forgot to add the images of my mannequin. So I've included them in this post.  Sorry for the inconvenience.