Week Four

This week we spent a lot of time working on drawings from the cranium without the features of the face. We had to do 5 views, some with value some with cross contour, and some with both. Value is definitely what comes natural to me when drawing, but for some reason I feel that my drawing with only cross contour is the most successful. I found that I was able to figure out a lot about the forms on the skull a lot better with the cross contour drawing. I have also been struggling with making my forms look more three dimensional, and I feel that my cross contour drawing looks the most three dimensional. That same drawing starts to resemble a brain, which I found really interesting. I definitely found the back view the most difficult to capture. I think it's hard when there isn't as much form to work from like the back view.

Week three we did three 2-3 hour drawings of the skull. The first is a three-quarter front view, the second a profile view, and the third a three-quarter back view. Doing value was optional for these drawings, and I chose to add that in there on all three. I really struggled with a couple of things. Firstly, it is extremely hard for me to the skulls appear 3-D. It is really difficult for me to create lines that don't naturally exist on the skull to make it appear to look 3-D. I think that my back view ended up being the most 3-D drawing, due to the contour lines that I added on the cranium. So something I am going to continue to work on is adding in those contour lines that really help define the space.

The second thing that I struggled with in these drawings was creating the value not as it appears in real life, but to shape the value so the skull appears more 3-D. I struggle with this A TON! I am a painter, and usually my main goal in my paintings is to capture the light as it hits my subject. To simply disregard this is definitely going to take a lot of time and practice for me to grasp this new concept.

I haven't been in life drawing in about two years, so my skills are definitely a little rusty! I remember in life drawing one that I really enjoyed drawing the skull, so I was excited to begin life drawing two with this same task. Here are a couple of my practice drawings from the first week of class. These are basically just trying to get in the groove of drawing again, and trying to become familiar with some of the nooks and crevices of the skull. With these I was trying to stay focused on getting the features semi correct, with also adding some value to show depth.

Paintings

I posted some of my paintings as a separate page, so check them out!

Self-Portrait

Eye Drawing

Skull Drawings.

Hand Drawings

Gesture Drawings

This semester of Life Drawing has been very beneficial to me, especially since I haven't been drawing for awhile, so this class really freshened up my skills. My best work in Life drawing is defenitely my long drawings. I feel that I really get the chance to focus on my line-work when the time spent on the drawing is thirty minutes or longer. I think that my skull and hand drawings really show an experimentation with line-work and they create a good sense of depth in my drawings. Doing my self-portrait was very fun, I haven't really taken the opportunity to sit down and focus on a self-portrait, and faces have always been something really difficult for me to draw. I think that Life Drawing has really strenghthened my face drawing skills, especially within the last one or two weeks of class. The muscle building on the other hand has been a big struggle for me throughout the whole semester. I have never been very great at more 3-dimensional creations; 2-dimensional has always been my strong point, and I feel that this class has reafirmed this.

Blogging

Blogging is something completely new to me. I have never had a blog, or even looked at one before. I definitely like the idea of being able to put my work online. It makes it much easier than carrying our huge pieces of paper around to turn in at the end of the semester. Commenting on every one's blog is something I have been slacking to do, and I think most people have because I don't have many comments on my posts either. I'm not sure how I feel about having to comment on everyone else's work. I think that having the commenting as an assignment often feels forced, and we are just searching for something to say since we have to comment on something. I like the idea of having the commenting as an option, but if we are told we have to comment, I'm not sure how effective the comments will really be in the end. For me personally, it is difficult to comment on other people's work when I am struggling with my own work at the same time. It is difficult to have to worry about my own work, and then on top of it worry about critiquing other classmates' work as well. I do enjoy being able to look at everyone else's work in the class, it helps give us as students a suggestion of where we are in the class compared to everyone else.

maniken

Here are some photos of my maniken so far. The maniken has been a big struggle for me personally. The drawing I can learn and accomplish for the most part, but the modeling of the clay muscles has been a huge challenge. It is hard enough for me to model anything out of clay, but then for the objects I have to model are muscles of the human body, something that I have never had to look at this closely before makes it even more difficult. I still can't say that I enjoy doing the clay work, but I have learned a lot from doing it. It still baffles me how many muscles we have in our legs, and how perfectly intertwined they are. I specifically like the look of the adductor maagnus muscles, and how they give a great wrapping around effect. Looking further ahead, I need to work on making my muscles look smoother and more connected.

One of the most difficult aspects of the clay modeling for me is to figure out the different masses of each muscle. When I was creating my neck muscles, I made them too bulky, and the different thicknesses to each leg and thigh muscles seem to vary quite a bit, and it is hard decipher that at times.