Portraits!

Yay! Now we can put a face to those bald bones we've been drawing for over a month.. I wanted to focus my Life Drawing II skills towards storyboard character drawing efficiency. This tends to mainly mean gestures, expressions, and skeletal posture. I've been waiting for the moment of expressions and it has finally come! I'm honestly going to make this post short and sweet. I'm proud of my portraits since we were given little direction and were just told to draw. The first one is Luke, the second Evan B, and the third is Paul. Enjoy!

Nip-Tuck

Alright so this post has little to do with Life Drawing II and much to do with Art in general. My good friend Paul and I were flew through the first and second seasons of Nip/Tuck on Netflix and finally graduated to Season Tthree! Woot! The show itself is a manifestation of present American society's selfish and glutinous ideology and their continuously evolving definition of 'beauty'. Although that description may not sound too pleasing to some, the show is incredibly intriguing and emotionally charged.

I feel our drawings in class are a physical manifestation of our own ideas of perfection. Think about it. Our own eyes in connection with our hands fill in or change aspects of an object based on how we want them to look. We then must return to the drawing and correct any perceptual flaws. This idea of reconstruction is not absent within the plastic surgery proffession of Christian and Sean, the main characters of Nip/Tuck. Whether on paper or in the surgery room, we are both striving for perfection, with realism. Most patients do not want to look fake rather 'normal'. A natural realism or natural perfection you could say.



Because the show focuses on improvements to define 'beauty' and perfection, how on earth does someone choose imagery depicting such difficult and subjective concepts? They find 'perfect' people. The idea of the nude in modern day's perfection is displayed on this Season III cover. What do you think of this depiction of perfection? What is your ideal beauty?

Critiquing a Critique

I was unhappy with the critique this week. 7 minutes and no one said anything worth while. I knew I had been struggling with cross contour and the class beforehand I had already spoken with Amy about this. I wanted to hear from the class, but no one had anything to say besides Evan. Thank you Evan for speaking at least, but I didn't take a liking to your comment because it was subjective. And I guess all critiques are subject, but you have to take them with a grain of salt unless the comment is collective. From the lack of response from the class, this wasn't collective. Evan stated that he enjoyed my 10 minute drawing more than any other. He thought it was more pure and natural because he didn't like the blendy value drawings and I had already stated the faults of the cross contours. The 10 minute drawing is not the strongest of the ones I accomplished these past weeks, sorry Evan. I really enjoy the value drawings I've accomplished. Expanding on my last post about going in-depth into Photoshop painting, value has been my priority these past months. I felt a true connection with the skulls and I really enjoy the profile view. I was totally in the zone with this drawing and therefore left most of my original lines to show the progression of connection, from basic to detailed.

The following is the 10 minute drawing, 2 value drawings and a cross contour:

To sum this week up, SPEAK UP people! It makes the class much more interesting when everyone participates and ANYTHING you have to say is helpful. It also encourages others to speak up or gives them a new perspective to reflect and comment on. I HATE, absolutely HATE crappy critiques. It's a waste of my time and yours. Sorry for the tough love, but Wednesday was brutal and I never want our critiques to progress like that again...ugh.

Connecting

This week I focused on connecting with the drawing. I love the artist high you feel when you are really interested in the subject matter and focused on the task at hand. I love turning on that iPod; the sounds fill your mind and calm your thoughts. The page extends into your peripheral vision; just you and the page. Wednesday it was Duffy and Gnarles Barkley singing me into the zone. Whats your favorite song to draw to? Comment away..

For a unrelated comment, I have begun going in-depth into Photoshop painting. I have attached a close-up of a character I've created. I began painting highlights and shadows onto the character and realized how convenient knowing the body structurally was to painting this storyboard frame. Although I haven't spent the time I wished I could on this painting, I think it hasn't turned out too horribly. Comment on suggestions! :)

Okay, so basically that's a self-portrait.

That's all for now, until next week.

~Megan

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/