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.