It's more than just a fruit in a box.

 Flickr account: http://www.flickr.com/photos/60148576@N04/

This semester flew by for me. Hah I wonder how many people will start out their blogs similarly? Seems to be a common thought lately. But anyways, life drawing was one of those classes that probably changed my perception of the world as an artist the most this semester. I've decided to make life drawing my concentration (a huge commitment and journey I'm extremely excited to begin starting with life drawing 2 next semester). This has changed my thought process on still lives completely. Back in my earlier drawing classes I hated still lives, but now I'm excited by the idea. Even fruit and box still lives seem to have more life to me now.

I learned so many things about the body that have actually helped in my other art classes this semester, particularly painting. I learned about proportions, especially the head these past few weeks. My strengths are in my mark making. I feel as though I do expressive line work and it shows through my drawings. I also think I've improved a lot of proportions like I previously said. I've learned great things about measuring and drawing in planes to make sure everything matches up. My weaknesses lie in one of my strengths. Because I have such expressive mark making, I often draw dark and harsh from the beginning and it is difficult for me to later add in atmospheric perspective. I also am sometimes hasty and will miss tiny details that would have improved my drawing very much if I slowed down and took more time to observe.

The mannequin was a big part of my drawings earlier in the semester when we were learning about the glutes, art muscles and land marks like that. Recently, I haven't thought about the mannequin much other than the standard reminder here and there. But early on, I was constantly aware that I wanted my drawings to embody parts of my mannequin and vice versa. This course meant a lot to me and I'm really glad I took it early on and was able to find what I want to focus on throughout college. It won't have much of an effect on my future career, but this is just for me because I enjoy it the most out of any other studio class. I hope everyone else enjoyed this class as much as I have and have a great summer!

Grandma, what large cranium you have!

Yayyy its almost finals week!!! Which means we're almost all done!! Which means I get to beg people to hire me until some poor sucker actually does and I get to slave away for them all summer!! Ha, that was a little sarcasm, but I really am looking forward to finals week because it shouldn't be too difficult for me other than the fact that i have to stay here until WEDNESDAY at FOUR pm! Gahhhh i'll be the only person left at Stout.

So, life drawing was focused around our model's heads this week. I chose to draw Rob, and I think it turned out pretty decent. I wish Wednesday I would have drawn Annie because I felt like I was basically done on Monday with Rob's. So Wednesday I didn't do much but look at it and draw a line here or there. Friday (which I'm still in class as I'm writing this) we're going to talk to Amy about our muscles and do a long drawing of Rob. I'm really really glad Amy is looking at our muscles one last time because I know some of my stuff is definitely off. When we did the gesture drawings of Rob it was the weirdest thing ever. I seriously felt like I hadn't drawn a gesture in months. It probably has been a couple weeks, but still. Soooo awkward and stiff at first. I can't imagine how horrible I'll be in the Fall.

I'm excited/nervous to draw myself. I'm going to try to get it done this weekend because I shouldn't be too stressed out. I hope it turns out alright. Every other project (I've only had like two) where I needed to draw from a mirror I usually caved and just drew from a picture and my professor could always tell which wasn't surprising but whatever. BUT this time, I am determined to draw myself in real time. I'm at a dilemma though, I want to look halfway decent, because ya know this drawing could be around for the entirety of my life if I do it on nice paper, but when I draw I'm typically scrubbin' it in sweats with my hair messily pulled back. We'll see what I do... MAYBE I'll draw my head shape/facial features with my hair pulled back, then at the end put my hair down and make it look all nice and polished. Sorry, you probably don't really care, this is just my thought process.

Oh, and the title of this blog, well hopefully you figured it out. But if you didn't, its just me making a lame joke at how we were all kind of surprised by how big people's heads are and it just made me think of the Big Bad Wolf. Get it?

I'm All Ears

So, this week we just had class Wednesday and Friday. We took a lot of time to lecture, which was kind of a bummer but I think needed to happen because we were approaching something completely different. Eyes, mouths, noses, and ears are nothing like anything else we've learned so far. There really isn't much muscle or bone going on here, so it was new 'squishy' material. Sorry if that was too gross of an adjective haha.

But anyways, life drawing wasn't my biggest focus this week because I really didn't feel like I spent enough time drawing, I instead was slaving over an art history paper that I'm decently proud of which is always nice. We only really got to practice everything once, which kind of was a bummer because I didn't get around to working on any drawings this weekend. This week though Ii'm pretty sure we're just continuing those four things so I think that I'll get a better understanding. I wouldn't mind doing some quick drawings. I think they'd be hard, but probably a good way to get used to drawing new things.

My picture this week is of Hana's ear. I started out trying to do what Amy said with the whole make the dark parts of the ear lighter so it looks like they're going farther back but it just looked weird to me so I stopped and drew how I usually draw. I'm typically a 'dark' drawer. I don't like doing light lines and as soon as I remember to do light lines they're the same darkness as my erase marks so it just throws me off completely. Looking at the drawing now I wish I would have explored more crosshatching like in the right corner. Maybe next time I'll try that a little more.

Na-na-noggin

This week went by super quickly because of the whole Easter deal. I used to be religious--I went to Catholic School K-8. But I just don't believe it anymore and thus don't get at all exciting over the real meaning of Easter. Everyone has different views of course, this is just my own. Sure I enjoy the time off to catch up and apply for summer jobs, but it doesn't have any meaning to me and I guess because I'm an ex-Catholic that kind of bothers me. We call it "Spring Holiday" but chancellor, you're not foolin anyyybody.

On to life drawing. Monday we drew hands again. I showed up late and missed the intro to the hands section so I don't know if Amy did a lecture or not, doesn't really matter I suppose. But I was late because my boyfriend was driving back to Eau Claire that morning from visiting me, and when he got to his car his battery was dead. So I was in a mad rush to find some jumper cables, get them to my car and drive my car over to his to jump start it. It was pretty hectic. In class though this time it was both of the model's hands together which was nice because then it was more of a challenge than just doing one hand on its own, we had another to relate it to which I liked. The hands are pretty familiar now so I was glad we moved onto the skull.
That's where my drawing comes from. Amy skipped me somehow so I never got a chance to talk to her but I feel really confident with my skull drawing. I didn't draw any contour lines, however, which I think we were supposed to do, but I took my time measuring and though I'm sure something is off, I felt pretty good about it! :)
I hope everyone's weeks went by well and that you all have a fantastic "spring holiday". See you next Wednesday! :)

The Future and the Fire

This week started out so slow I honestly thought Monday was Wednesday. And then once Thursday actually hit I thought it was Wednesday. I don't know, something weird about Wednesday for me I guess. I've been trying to set up my class schedule so that I get a lot of my classes done earlier in the day, and then don't have any Friday classes, but with 3 hour long art courses, that rarely happens, doesn't it? So as of now, I don't start until 1 30 on Monday, Wednesday and Friday; and go until 9 on Mondays, and only have class from 11 to 2 30 on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Not at all how I wanted it. I'd much rather get stuff done earlier and have the evening for my self, but that's life! Hope everyone gets what they want for their schedules, it can be so frustrating. But I fit life drawing 2 in, so I'm really excited about that. And everyone else should take it with me MW 2 30 to 5 30 :)

I just want to keep this going, like I feel like I've learned a lot, but now I want more. I want to go in depth and really master these drawing skills. In painting we have a giant open ended painting coming up, and I think I want to paint my mother when she was younger flamenco dancing. Lume said that we should only paint figures if we've taken life drawing so I was super excited its going to work out for me to paint what I want thanks to this class!

On to what we did this week. I forgot what Monday was all about, but Wednesday and Friday we drew hands which was kind of exciting. Hands tend to be something we all shy away from, so it was nice to embrace them head on. On Wednesday I drew Annie's hands and she gave the. best. poses. ever. I was seriously so impressed, and loved my drawing because it was exciting and different! That's the first one up.  I think I did a pretty good job. It's not perfect, because I didn't practice drawing the skeleton until Friday (which I think would have helped), but I like it enough to be happy with it.


So on Friday I drew the skeleton hand for an hour and a half-ish. I'm really glad I took my time because throughout the whole drawing I kept checking my angles to make sure everything matched up. In the end, my pinky and ring fingers should have been a little farther apart, but to me that's minor because my proportions worked for the most part. I drew the fabric in and it looks like my hand is exploding out of a ring of fire hahaha. Changes the entire mood of the drawing which I thought was funny. Oh, I included two pictures this week because I felt like they are both individually so important and different, even though they're both of hands. Hope everyone else enjoyed the hands as much as I did! Have a good weekend without a muscle assignment! Yay! :)

1 4 3

Basically, I only attended class on Monday this week due to a field trip for painting all day on Wednesday and Mid-Program on Friday. Kind of a bummer, but it happens. Monday was a decent day though. Didn't love my 30 -second drawings, but they went alright. Like the majority of my drawing though. To me, I found a good angle that gave me a lot to work with and even though I was kind of far from the model, it definitely wasn't too bad. I wish I would have focused a little more on atmospheric perspective because most of my lines are the same thickness or don't show any depth. My proportions were pretty close except my arms don't look long enough, and I think I should have moved the hip/glutes area a little to the right. I think I just made her look wider than she is. The chair threw me off a little bit because it broke up the space and my continuous lines, but I suppose that's good because in real life not everything is going to look smooth and continuous. I don't think I fully understand the arm muscles yet because if I would have, I probably would have drawn more 'underneath' lines in the arm. With practice I'm sure I'll figure it out, its just that its new and Amy didn't get a chance to walk over to my drawing during class and help me.

I think I'm doing alright with the mannequin so far. Excited that we're getting close to finishing it--it'll definitely be nice to be done and see all the delicate work I've done this semester! Hopefully on Monday we'll get to show her our mannequins and talk with her for a bit, if on Wednesday she said we are in class Monday then awesome, I'm glad she knows that we've gotten quite a few muscle assignments lately! I feel like I was really whine-y in this post. Not so sure why, I've been in a pretty good mood today so maybe I'm just bothered that I had to miss a day for a field trip when I really need the drawing practice. But anyways, if you read it all, congrats for getting through it :)

Rain or shine

Class was canceled on Friday, which was kind of a bummer for me because I was really looking forward to practicing drawing because I just feel like I want more practice lately and haven't been consistent enough in my drawings. It's just a little weird feeling like I'm off ever since spring break. Just need to get back in the habit, and sitting here at my computer definitely isn't helping so maybe I'll do some sketches of anything I want this weekend if I have time. Key word: if.

On Monday I think I worked on my clay assignment the whole time, which was good because I got some input from Amy, but like mentioned above, I didn't get to draw, but it was definitely my choice not work on my drawings so I can't really complain. Wednesday went really well though, that's where my two drawings for this week came from. I had some trouble with the out-zoomed one, I kept making her ridiculously skinny and had to alter my ribcage and hip bone placement. I still feel like I'm a little off, but I like it enough. The close up one of her arm/ribcage was fun. It took a lot less time than the first one and since I had already practiced most of it I felt like it went really easily. Towards the end of the class period I got bored and decided to throw some face marks in there. I think they came out pretty decent.


Since i edited these photos in iPhoto this week (because I used my cell phone again and they looked crappy) I really like how defined the lines look and how you can see where I had drawn and erased. Before taking a stout art class, I always thought that messy look was ugly. I'm kind of a stubborn neat-freak so it's taken me a long time to accept all the different kinds of drawing. Hope everyone enjoyed the weekend and the little bit of sun we got :)