Midterm Post

Now that my life drawing class is half and I have a nicely sized collection of gesture drawings to look back on. Now that my life drawing class is half and I have a nicely sized collection of gesture drawings to look back on.  Paging through all of my thirty second gesture drawings I can see a fluid transition from sketchy looking outlines through drawings of ribcages and pelvises, and on to fleshed out gestural figures with various anatomical landmarks.  I can see where I learned how to use long axis lines and how to best apply cross contours without equidistant spacing.  I find some of my long term drawings to be very satisfying, with the very dark lines pulling out the closer surfaces and various curves feeling very lifelike, at least from my perspective.  With my last two long drawings I was able to achieve a lot of the qualities that I specifically set out to accomplish.

 

This is my long term drawing with the male model.  I definitely found the male model easier to draw, as I could draw a lot more knowledge from my own body when it came to how things feel and work.  I also found that various landmarks were very easy to identify as opposed to females.  Females tend to have very smooth and rounded forms, whereas the male seem to have more variation in surface texture and more visible tendons, muscles, bones, etc.  To me, it is far easier to define space and line here.

As far as the generals of my class go I’ve been generally satisfied.  I’ve definitely improved in drawing figures in the life-drawing fashion.  I’m still not entirely certain how life drawing is supposed to look, and I could definitely go with more examples.  At times I won’t feel qualified and won’t know if what I’m achieving with each drawing is in the right direction.  It’s hard to have a lot of one on one time in classes, but I might go out of my way to get some good discussion of my work in come next semester.   I’m actually exited to learn more about the muscles and bones in the arms and legs, as these are usually my favorite things to draw.  I’ll often find myself getting bored with the spine, ribs, and pelvis and applying myself in the limbs, especially the hands and feet.  Pulling off proper hands and feet can be challenging, and I find this process very rewarding.

 

-link to my midterm portfolio-

Shell Drawing

I struggled a bit with this drawing.

With this assignment we were supposed to take our shell and follow its cross contours across the page, making the shell as large as possible on the page along the long axis.  I feel that everything was positioned appropriately, although I could have had a higher view of the shell as it looks a bit like I was drawing the shell head on.  Obvious things to improve on would be varying line weight and position.  Everything is webbed with roughly similar lines.  There is some variation, with the best parts of the drawing representing this in the first row of outward spurs.  i couldn't seem to get any of the same feel of form in the upper half of the shell, which was done in a separate sitting than the first half of the shell.  There is a bit of fading in the upper half which is successful in that it was the further side.  This was intentional, but could have been more dramatic.  I outlined the shell, not with a simple outline but with various cross contours that come together to make up one outline.  In a future drawing I would like to try to break up the outline and create some implied line.  In addition I want to do the entire drawing in one sitting to avoid the disjointed pieces I have in this drawing: the bottom half being feeling full and alive with the top half feeling flat and dull.  All in all I think I learned from the experience and will be able to take what I learned and apply it to my next drawing.