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 :)

Head, shoulders, knees, and toes

Monday and Tuesday this week dragged so ridiculously slowly by. Wednesday with the whole snow day thing made it go by faster, but it still seemed like a longggg week. With life drawing more specifically, we worked on our clay mannequins to put the shoulder muscles in. The muscles helped me a little, but the shoulder bone is one of the most confusing parts on the body for me. I just don't understand what it looks like underneath with all the different angles that the models give us. It's getting really frustrating because this is the first real roadblock I've felt like I've come up against so far in life drawing. Maybe I just need to give it more time, but right now I just don't understand it for some reason.

Wednesday's long drawing went pretty well though. I think because we're adding so much to our drawings now, I hate the 30 second ones and love the 3 minute ones. I just feel rushed and like I'm doing a poor job with the shorter timed drawings. And that definitely adds to my frustration with my shoulder bone issues. But anyways, the long drawings was fun. I had a side angle which didn't help my shoulder bone problem because I really didn't practice it. But I did get to practice one angle of it as well as getting the clavicles in there which was good. I like this drawing for the most part. I didn't get to finish it because I didn't have enough time to put her left arm in, up on the pillows which was kind of a bummer. The super large muscle assignment this weekend will probably keep me busy, hopefully it goes well. Hope everyone else had a good first week back and it didn't drag on as slowly as mine!

Little Feet

First off, yay! It's spring break! So excited to have this week to relax a little, and catch up on some homework so when I get back I don't feel like I'm behind. Secondly, this week, like I assumed was pretty stressful. Life drawing wasn't bad because we just had some muscle assignments due though. Monday when we worked on our clay assignments I felt like it was time well spent, I got feedback and finished my assignment during class which is always nice. Wednesday was an awesome day. I felt really positive about how my foot drawings were going, and it was a nice change from the hectic week to slow down and draw for a long period of time.

The foot drawing I included isn't the best quality again because it's off my cell phone, but I think it's clear at least just a little dark. Our female model made the best foot positions I think we could have gotten. They were interesting and just complicated enough. Below my drawing, you can see Amy's sketch that she drew while helping me with mine. For the most part, I think they follow the same structure.
Once we get back it'll be interesting to see if I'm not as intune with my drawings as I was before I left. Taking a week off can really make a difference, but hopefully it won't affect me too much. Who knows, over break I'd like to work on a painting that's been unfinished for a couple months now at my house but we'll see. I imagine I'll just want to do the bare minimum while on break. I hope everyone that's traveling is safe in their journeys and have a great break! :)

Midterm? No way. Already? Sheesh!

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

Above is the link to my Flickr account as requested. I hope i included the right link, Flickr is completely new to me and super foreign.
So... onto discussing this semester thus far. I honestly can't believe its already midterm. Sure I've learned a lot but I also feel like just yesterday I started drawing again. It's been since last spring semester that I've had a drawing class, by the way. I guess when I break it down proportions is the biggest thing I've learned. I feel like I really am starting to understand the proportion between the upper body compared to the lower body, then comparing the ribcage to the pelvis, etc. I think one of my best examples of this is seen in "Two Minute Gesture Drawing 2" Where you can see the rib cage and pelvis, as well as the shoulder and pelvis angles.

  

I never really understood the spine until this class. The different sections, especially the lumbar on women, is extremely important in the defining the rest of the figure. I probably wouldn't have realized that on my own or used it as such a deciding factor of the body's angles. I think what I want to learn most about next is strange angles of the body. We've been doing the crisp, clean straight from the front, side, or back; but I'm interested in learning how to draw things that are more like everyday life. Not too crazy, but just things we haven't drawn yet. A figure sitting Indian style, or crossing their legs. I guess I'm not completely sure what I want to learn, just some different angles I suppose. That's why I drew "Fifteen Minute Long Drawing" because it was a completely new angle for me, I had never drawn anything like that before. I really enjoyed it and challenging myself. Just a breath of fresh air.

Looking at the long drawing I drew on Wednesday (in this week's blog) I notice my ribcage and pelvis are pretty accurate... but I don't know what I was thinking when I drew her thighs. I'm pretty sure I did them last and apparently didn't check them over enough because they don't match up well to the rest of the body. Other than that I'm decently happy with it. Overall, I'm excited for the rest of this semester, it's pretty promising I'll be able to get some strong human figure knowledge and drawings out of it.

Blink, blink, gone

This week kind of flew by for me. Maybe its in preparation for spring break, but all classes are starting to escalate towards projects that I know will consume my life for the next two weeks. Which makes me have my love hate relationship with art. Kind of like I can't relax with it, wouldn't be able to relax without it. It's not so much that way with drawing though. Drawing is something I've always known how to do and have always enjoyed the most. That's why I think this class is so good for me, I enjoy the work and the learning and it calms me down better than most projects. Not trying to sound like a suck up, I just prefer a drawing class, especially one I can apply to real life.

This week, since it flew by I can't even really remember what I drew. I remember it being a good week. At first it was hard to draw in the thigh lines, it just didn't look right. But the more I practiced I started having fun with it again and things came together. I'm starting to like 30 second drawings less because we have so much more too add, but its a good warm up, always gets my mind focused for the one minute drawings, then the two, and however long we go for.

I'm including two drawings this week because neither one really shows the thighs like I was supposed to, but I figure two examples of all the other lines is better than just one. The first drawing was a really difficult strange one--which is why I wanted to draw it, to challenge myself a little. I get bored sometimes with drawing things straight on or straight from the side, so I was pretty excited to have something different. The second drawing doesn't show the thighs at all, so I just focused more on the back muscles/pelvis. I think they turned out alright for 5 or 10 minute drawings I can't remember how long they were. They're horrible quality because they're off my cellphone by the way. Sorry!

Body land marks

Life drawing this week was mainly focused on the pelvis for the drawing portion, and the glutes and quads for the clay mannequin part. It felt good to get another land mark down in my drawings. Kind of made me want to go back and look at my original gesture drawings. I wonder if I drew the spinal column, egg, and now pelvis into my old drawings, how close I would match up? Like how far off was I when I was making my original drawings? Just something I was curious about.

For my included picture this week I'm doing the 45 minute drawing we did today of our male model's torso and pelvis. It's not a great drawing, but I liked it more than most of my gestures so I decided to include it. I added a little shading, which I don't think I was supposed to do, but oh well. I've always liked to put details like that in on drawings and because we had 45 minutes I definitely couldn't resist. I also threw in the mini heater just for fun haha. I've been posting on of my Friday pieces lately I think and that's probably because I feel like throughout the week I have learned more and more, and by Friday I've had so much consistent practice that week that I'm at my best.

This is a minor detail, but lately at the gym I've been doing shoulder workouts so that my shoulder won't cramp up or get sore if I'm doing an extremely active drawing. I don't know if it helped because I never felt pain in the first place, I just did it because I didn't ever want to have a sore shoulder! But anyways, figured if anyone is feeling shoulder pain it might help, just grab like a 5 lb weight, and do some exercises.

How do you like your eggs?

In life drawing this week we focused on the ribcage and spinal column. We repeatedly practiced the 'egg' shape of the ribcage and drew the line that followed the spine or the front of the body. Some of the poses proved to be a difficulty if you couldn't see the back or front definitively, but with practice I feel like I'm pretty close to understanding where to imagine the lines are.

My picture this week is of a longer detailed drawing of the model's back. I started out with the egg and spinal column line which I thought was pretty close to accurately placed and then went on to draw in muscles and important lines. It's a little rough and the muscles look a bit exaggerated but for the most part I'm pretty proud of it. I feel like I'm getting better at line placement faster than I was when I started.
I'm beginning to enjoy gesture drawing more too, it takes a couple of the first drawings for me to get back in the groove but once I loosen up my shoulder and am focused on the task at hand, I really enjoy it. We also worked on our clay mannequins quite a bit this week building the abdominal muscles. This weekend we're supposed to build the gluteus muscles. I imagine once I put these muscles in, the torso will really start coming together and looking more natural and human.
Since I've been in life drawing I've been more aware of what muscles I use when I pick something off a high up shelf, or bend over to put my shoes on. It's made me more aware of my movements and imagine how it would feel to draw what I'm doing. Its kind of cool, definitely a new perspective of my drawings that I've never thought of before.

Spines and Lines

So this week we focused more on bone/muscle structure than we did on actually drawing. Which is good because I definitely need to learn those things. I found the lesson on spines really interesting because I enjoy breaking things down. I like that approach because it makes things easier to tackle and less overwhelming. Drawing lines based on the neck, back and hip angles was exciting, almost like I felt that the simple line I was drawing had a lot more to say than a regular line would (if that makes any sense!).

I’m starting to miss shading already though. I know this class is going to be based a lot on gesture drawings and quick things that might not look completed. This kind of bums me out because I love details. I thrive on the tiny things that people have to get up close to the drawing to examine. So, needless to say I will miss that this semester. In a way though, it’s good for me to learn about new styles/approaches. I’m a pretty stubborn person and when it comes to my art I’m even less willing to budge. Because of this I think I miss out on exploring new techniques. I had a really defined style in high school and I kind of miss that because I was great at what I did. But I have to realize that being great at one thing definitely isn’t everything. 

In class on Friday we practiced drawing the spinal column again. Then we went on to a detailed spinal contour lines drawing, which is the picture I added in this week’s blog. I originally drew an outline of the figure, but erased it so it wasn’t as prominent as my intentional lines, but still slightly visible to help guide your eyes. I think for the most part, my proportions are pretty close to accurate this time. I’m sure some of my lines don’t describe the figure as well as I’d like, but hopefully the more I practice contour lines I’ll get a better hold on how to do it.

The first post!

Hello! I'm Jessica Weinkam, a sophomore at UW Stout majoring in Studio Art and minoring in Psychology. I still haven’t decided on my Studio concentration but I’m definitely leaning towards drawing, just not sure what kind of drawing (who knows, maybe life drawing! :D) My game plan after this is to go to grad school to become an Art Therapist. I want to change lives, and not to sound like a commercial for poor African kids, but literally one child at a time. Children are our future. If we don’t help them grow emotionally and mentally, then what kind of leaders will we have tomorrow? 

The first two images included are of pieces I created last spring in Drawing II. One is a small charcoal drawing of a zebra I saw at the zoo. The assignment was to portray something in 35 inches. You could space out those inches in whatever proportion you’d like to on the page; I chose 3x11.6 inches to give a thin window of the picture. I wanted to portray my love of photo-realism and black and white. Two very simple concepts, but if executed correctly, in my opinion, can be very effective/interesting.

 

The second is a self-portrait in pastel of my ‘alter’ 

ego. I chose to represent myself through jealousy/envy (a not so attractive quality of mine) and my protective nature. I used ‘green envious wide eyes’ and my protective hand placements to try and get my idea across.
Also included are three sketches from class. They’re one or two minute sketches. I need to work on my proportions but I’m sure with time I’ll get better at the quick sketches and showing muscle mass with only a few lines.

 I'm pretty excited for Life Drawing. Since I’m considering life drawing as my concentration I’m really taking this class seriously. Even though I’d rather work on a drawing for two weeks off of a picture than work on a still life for a couple hours, but I’m pretty sure most people are like that. And I don’t think there’s a class offered like that at Stout anyways. But overall, I’ve got pretty high expectations for this class to learn the structure behind the human body to improve my art.