Life Drawing 1 final blog

Its that time of the year where sleep is the lowest point on my priority list.  In saying this I forewarn you that my sentences may not be all that coherent. But i'll try to be as clear as possible.  

This semester was very beneficial for me. I learned how to use After Effects, explored my conceptual side in screen printing, and most of all I improved my drawing skills.  After drawing for so many years I thought that I may have reached my full potential. After drawing 1 and 2 I put my drawing on the back-burner to make way for learning new skills. In doing this I became very rusty. Life Drawing 1 was a harsh wake-up call.  Although the growing pains were uncomfortable, I grew as an artist.  I learned how to see forms in a new light.

Here is one of my better figure drawings. I think this was done during a two minute time restraint. Some of the difficulties I face with gesture drawings is that I don't trust my eye enough. This results in muddled lines from second guessing each stroke. Another thing that I have trouble with is capturing the whole figure in 30 seconds. I never knew how short of a time span that could be. 

Cross contour drawing was a technique that helped me fully understand the concept of life drawing.  I remember briefly visiting cross contours in my other drawing class but Life Drawing really pushed the importance of it.  It helps define forms more accurately and it also provides the viewer with a hint of the information on the back plane. It helped me see the whole figure without seeing every angle.

Here are two of my long drawings. The first one we were focusing on the thigh muscles. The second long drawing we were focusing on the arm.

This was a half hour drawing in we were to draw the whole body then spend time developing the thigh. At this time, I had just recently finished forming the leg on my clay skeleton so I had some knowledge of the muscle structure. Unfortunately, I spent more time trying to get the proportions of the leg correct before I went on with the cross contour lines. The muscles would have been more defined if I hadn't done this.

In this drawing I had the clay model that the teacher had built as a reference. This helped tremendously. I was able to understand what was happening underneath the skin even if the model wasn't in the same position as the clay skeleton.  I realized something while working on this drawing.  Comic book illustrators spend a lot of time with muscle structures.  I assume that cross contour lines are a common practice of theirs. I also assume that the character spider man's costume was rooted in cross contour lines - haha.

Here is the ever troublesome Clay Model.

a trip to the walker: Q&As

Artwork in the Walker, or any other gallery, is not always crystal clear as to its intent. It is difficult sometimes to just guess the purpose of a piece.  A lot of the time the title of the piece does not reveal answers and it is rare to see an artist statement.  What was the point of exposing people to artwork in a gallery if there is no understanding between the gallery patron and the work itself? It was like the Walker Art Center was saying, "this artwork is important because we say it is". This frustrated me. 

 

Then I stumbled upon the Dolphin Oracle II. The Dolphin Oracle II is a interactive multimedia project that combines artificial intelligence and 3D-animation. The interactive nature of this project fulfill the inquisitive part of me.  The Dolphin invited me to ask the it questions directly. Soon after typing in my question I would get a response from the all-knowing oracle. Although I received answers, they were always vague and never fully answered the question I was posing. 

This innovative piece by Richard Shelton and Piotr Szyhalski, just like life, still maintains a level of mystery in terms of its questions. But that was it's message, you can't always be given an answer. Answers come from individual discoveries.

zee foot

I was gone the day that the class did this so I will do my best to comply with the assignment.

I received instructions from a classmate.

1.) Although I may have a biased view of my drawing, I feel that this is a fair representation of a foot. I did not have the bone or muscle structure as a  reference, so I did the best I could with defining the shape using cross contour lines.

2.) The way the foot was positioned helped create the 3d illusion in this drawing. What I mean is that I did not draw a profile of the foot on purpose.  I needed to show dimension, therefore I used two planes of the foot to communicate the shape of the foot.  In retrospect, showing three planes would have made for a better approach to showing 3 dimensions.

3.) I have not learned any of these landmarks yet. I will speak with you in class next time to become more aquatinted with the foot.

4.) The line thickness does not play a substantial part in showing dimension in this drawing. The illusion is relying heavily on the cross contours. The line is communicates best in the bridge of the foot. The lines become a bit confusing between the transition from the ball of the heal to the side plane underneath the ankle. 

group discussion (for real this time)

GROUP: Brian Hildman, Dianna Bentley, Jeff Carpenter

Brian Hildiman:
Brian has to work on drawing the proportions of the ribcage. His blog pictures were a little informal but you could still see all the information on the drawing pad. The mannequin looks good. Brian learned about the skeletal structure and the importance of knowing it to draw an accurate figure.

Dianna Bently:
I could see an exceptional progression in Dianna's work from the beginning of the semester to now. She has a good grasp on contour drawing but needs to pay more attention to proportion.
Everything in her photos were visible. She said her biggest improvement was in the way she drew the figure; at first she drew outlines but now she tries to draw the body from the inside out.

Jeff Carpenter:
I will pay more attention to the layout of my blog. The alignment of my pictures weren't very consistent. I received good feedback on my gesture drawings, especially the accuracy of the way I drew the pelvis. At the beginning of the semester I felt confident in my line structure. It was fast and I acknowledged line variation. This was before i was before I was introduced to seeing the body in a different way. I am a little bit more cautious with my lines and the result is slow tedious lines. I'll work on my line confidence, the more I practice the better I'll become.

Group Discussion

Mid Term Progress

My my my, it is now the night before my midterm is due and I'm staying up putting everything together.  I had ambitious dreams to have this done last sunday but life got in the way. 

It has only been a couple months and I can see a clear progression in my work.  These are the areas I've noticed my improvements: gesture drawings, contour drawings, the way I look at the human form, manipulating the clay to build muscles, and just 

my drawing skill in general. 

This is an example of one of my first gesture drawings. There are a few signs that prove my lack of practice. First off, the lines aren't very specific to the model. Second, the lines aren't fluid. Third, the shape of the body is proof that I didn't know what was underneath the skin forming the shapes.

These are some examples of some of my most recent gesture drawings.  There is movement in the lines.  With the help of the spine, clavicle, sternum, pelvis and some muscle information I have a better idea of how the shapes underneath the skin are working. These sketches are still a little messy and I'm sure the proportions are skewed but my control will come over time.

I can see the most improvement in my contour drawings.

Here is my first 3 hour contour sketch. There are a few problems with this drawings of a vertebrae. Most of the lines get mixed up and converge at weird points.  The drawing doesn't really exaggerate the depth because the long axis is practically horizontal.  A good part about this drawing is that the top and side planes are clearly defined. Unlike

 the side and top planes, the part of the bone closest to us is confusing.  The lines try to follow the contours of the shape but fall short.  Most of my criticisms about this are negative but its not bad for the first piece.

This is my second 3 hour contour drawing.  I don't know what happened here.  It looks as if my progress took a step backwards on this drawing. I think it was because I was spending too much time on getting the angle of each line right that I didn't take into consideration the overall shape of the bone. One improvement I made in this drawing was over exaggerating my angles to define the shape better.

This is my most recent contour drawing.  This drawing came a lot easier to me.  The ginger root's features mimmic the exterior of the human form and because of this, I was able to visualize the contours better. One features that help show depth in this drawing is the variance in line weight as the form goes back in the distance.  If I would have positioned the root at more of a horizontal it would have helped push the illusion of depth.  

Putting together the muscles on the mannequin has really been the journey of my class experience.  I have never had to work with clay like this before. Also, In all my other drawing classes, the main goal was to further my drawing skills, but this mannequin exercise is teaching me nomenclature of the human anatomy and how the human form is put together.  

These are the three views of my mannequin. As this project went on I became more familiar with how to prep the clay before applying it to the skeleton to create the shape I wanted.  Therefore, The first sets of muscles I put on were done in a messy fashion so I ripped down the muscles and reapplied them.  I wish I would have taken a picture of my mannequin before I took it apart so that you could see the difference in my technique.

This part was very challenging for me.

Because of the spiral nature of the muscle and the fragile nature of the clay it was difficult to apply these muscles. It was frustrating to get the clay to stick to the skeleton without ruining the integrity of the muscle shape while weaving through other muscles. Also, I couldn't grasp the shape of the Longissimus thoracis. The muscle is suppose to connect to the transverse process of the vertebrae, and extend out to and around back onto itself in a tube-like fashion. I did this but I couldn't under stand how the lateral view show a slim profile of this muscle.  You can barely see the Longissimus thoracis peaking over the ridge of the ribs from this view. How could this muscle be so tubular while being so discrete.  I don't think my hands are small enough to handle a piece of clay so delicate.

I really like how the thigh turned out. This was the part of the project where I felt like I really got a handle on the football nature of muscles (thin by the heads and thick in the middle). It came easy to me because I was working with bigger muscles, I didn't have to be too delicate with the clay, and there were major landmarks on the pelvis and femur to help me place the muscles.

That is it for the update.  I hope I didn't forget anything.  

First day of model drawing

What can I say about my first experience?

...Well, i definitely didn't think i would ever be this nervous to draw.  Thankfully, the uneasy feeling dissolved towards the end of class.  

Throughout the day we did 30 sec, 1 min, 3 min, and half hour drawings.  My favorite time restraint was the 1 min.  My lines where fun and fast, yet a little bit more descriptive then the 30 sec drawings. This is one of my 1 min drawings.  the proportion may be off but i still got a feel for how her skeleton was working under her skin and how it effected the surface.

Here is the half hour drawing.   A bit more accurate i'd say.  It will be nice when i know exactly what kind of bones are underneath to help me draw the figure more precisely.

I've been having difficulties with the cross contour drawings.  The problem is that i dont have any references of my page.  So, if my first line may look accurate but i dont really have proof.  The first line is crucial.  If i dont get it right, all my other contour lines will be off.  Sometimes i feel like switching up my liine direction when drawing contour lines.  Instead of moving from the left to the right sometimes my lines can be more descriptive if i change the direction. this is the models hip and thigh.

That is all for now.  see you folks in class