Final! (Life Drawing)

Looking back on this semester I can really see how much I have improved because of this class. Specifically when I see the gesture drawings that I did at the beginning of the semester and compare them to the more recent ones that I have done I can see a drastic improvement in many different things. The variation of line is much better, and I am not so caught up in drawing the outline of the shapes or only drawing what I see as opposed to how the object is actually formed. I think a lot of this has to do with the fact that over the semester I have learned to look at the object that I am drawing instead of looking at only my drawing. When you focus so much on trying to create a good drawing, you forget about the actual process that you are doing and it hinders your work, but if you only focus on doing what you are able to do, you will have much better results because you aren't so worried about doing a good job. I think that is the biggest thing that I have learned this semester. But I have also learned many other things. Another thing that I have learned is that there is more to an object than what is on it's exterior, and when you learn the interior of the object you are drawing, you will be much more successful. I have also learned about controlling the tool that you are using to draw by the position in which you hold it. As well many many other drawing techniques. Finally, one thing that I will take away from this class is the knowledge that from the moment your tool touches the paper, there will always be something that you can fix about the drawing, so it is not helpful to get so caught up in perfection. Instead you need to do the best that you can to create the art in the way that you want to create it. This was a very good semester and while I was very skeptical to take this class, I am glad that I did.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/55438972@N04/sets/72157625521403763/

Skull Drawing (Life Drawing)

I have just finished my skull drawing. This was a very fun subject for me to draw because I like skulls a lot. I think they look really cool. And I also drew it in a very different style than I have been drawing the rest of the semester. Instead of using contour lines I used shading again, and when I did this, I realized that over the semester I have forgotten how to shade. For some reason it completely escaped my memory. It was so weird because shading used to be something that I loved to do, but since it had been so long since I have done it I didn't know how to do it anymore. This drawing felt very rushed because I didn't have very much time to work on it, and it was much harder than I thought it was going to be. There are a lot of parts of skulls that you don't usually think about. But I think it turned out pretty cool. I tried to make it look dark and mysterious. This is also something I don't do very often. But I think I achieved the affect that I want it to have. It was really fun to not have as many guidelines with this drawing as there were with all of the rest that we have done this semester. It allowed me to be a lot more creative with this drawing.

Fourth Shell Drawing ( Life Drawing)

I am also done with my fourth and final shell drawing! This time, I took the advice of some of my peers and tried to use the blue ink in the background in order to create a shadow which would give the drawing some dimension by making it darker than I did in the first one which they said looked flat. At first, I thought it looked really funny and I thought it was too dark and I didn't like it, but then after I spread it out so that it was more even, I started to like the way it looked and agreed that it did give the overall drawing extra dimension. I also originally just used black india ink on the inside of the shell, but it looked really flat again, so my friend suggested that I add another color and said I should use brown because it would go really well with the blue background, so I tried it and I also really liked the way that that looked. I really enjoyed this assignment because it allowed for me to give the drawing some creativity and do more of that I want with it instead of following strict guidelines. Maybe the reason why I liked this assignment so much was because I really like drawing things realistically, and that was the point of this assignment. While the shell was hard to draw using only contours at first because I was not used to it, after doing it so many times it eventually became really easy to do. I am again not completely happy with how this turned out, but for the most part I am quite satisfied with it. I think this was a really creative idea for an assignment. I am very relieved to be done with everything because it was so much work and so time consuming, but it is also bittersweet, because I did enjoy this class a lot and I learned a lot from it as well.

Mannequin (Life Drawing)

I am FINALLY done with my mannequin! It did not turn out as well as I would have hoped it would, but I am fairly satisfied with it considering the struggles that happened with it along the way. I was running out of clay and there was no more in the classroom so in my attempts to be conservative in my usage of it, some muscles look smaller than they should, which makes it look funny. Also, because I ran out of clay, I had to resort to using different colors like yellow and blue instead of just using green and it looks really funny. Especially when they run together at certain spots. It was also really, really difficult for me to get the clay as smooth as I wanted it to, and as small as I wanted to in certain parts like then tendons on the hands. This was incredibly meticulous. This project was also so time consuming, but I am really used to projects that are time consuming. Certain parts of it were fun. It felt like I was playing with play-doh. And I definitely learned a lot about how the human body works. The most helpful thing for me was looking at the model in the classroom and seeing how that one was put together then trying to recreate it on my mannequin. After doing that it was much easier to understand exactly what I was supposed to do. I think that was much more helpful that trying to follow the book and recreate it from that. Probably because it was all put together right in front of me. I am fairly please with how it turned out, but not completely satisfied with it. But I am very glad to be done with it!

Seventh Week (Life Drawing)

We only had class on Tuesday of this week, because we had finals on Thursday, but on Tuesday we started out by doing some gesture drawings. For some reason mine did not turn out very well. It was very disappointing. There's a possibility that it is because I haven't done as many of them as I usually do in a while, but I wasn't happy with a single one of them. It felt like the time to do them was going by so quickly that I could barely get anything drawn. Maybe that is because I am taking more time on certain things to make sure I am doing it correctly, so it takes me longer to get it to look the way I want it to now. After that, we did a long pose and that one actually turned out really well. I seemed to do it in a good amount of time as well, I got done with it fairly quickly, but I felt like I spent enough time on it to do it accurately. I think that I am learning how to manage my time efficiently when I draw, but the gesture drawings do not allow for enough time for me to do that. That is probably my problem. But I am happy with the way that the long pose turned out so I will most likely use it in my final. Now I need to get ready for my final by finishing my fourth shell drawing, and finishing up my maniken. These are both going to be kind of difficult to do, but as long as I spend a decent amount of time on each of them they should turn out fine.

Third Shell Drawing (Life Drawing)

This is my third shell drawing in which we needed to use India ink in order to create the black cross contour lines of the shell, and use a wash on the background and incorporate that into the shell. I did not incorporate the color into the shell, but during the critique my classmates said that they liked the style of that. For my next shell drawing, though, I think I will attempt to incorporate the color into the shell. They also said that the way the shell was drawn was very well done and that I had a good use of diagonal lines. They liked the color of blue that I used, and I do as well, but I might want to make it more vibrant for my next drawing. This was a very fun project for me. I am not used to working with ink so it was new for me, but I liked it a lot. It gave me an opportunity to draw the shell more realistically than in the last ones because you could use shading in order to create depth, as opposed to creating depth strictly using contour lines like we did in the last drawings. For the next shell drawing I will use what I learned from this one and apply that to it.

This week, we also learned how to draw hands using contour lines. I have always liked drawing hands because they are so beautiful, but doing this using contour lines was very difficult. I think the most difficult thing with the hands was getting the proportions right because I am used to only having to draw the outline of the hands and not all of the lines on the inside that make up the hands. I enjoyed it a lot, though.

Second Shell Drawing (Life Drawing)

I decided to redo my second shell drawing because the first attempt was not accurate.

I think this time it turned out much better.