Final Post

Life Drawing has been one of my favorite studies so far at Stout. I feel like I need to invest more time into studying the complexities of form so I can invent. For my Italian Renaissance Art History Course, I created an illustration based off of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel Ceiling. Although I don't have pictures, it's an example of how these techniques can be applied to design. I always wanted to create human form, and learn expressions and emotions, especially to the application of illustration and storytelling.
Drawing other people may not be important to some artists, but it is the base and the foundation for many painters and illustrators. My drawings have greatly improved, I was able to go and do a long drawing during one of the open drawing sessions and produce the profile view of one of the models as a semi-finished drawing, or at least, less of a study than what we do in class. I still have a long way to go but nonetheless, my knowledge of drawing human form is vastly greater than it first was.
I honestly didn't really get the connection between yoga and life drawing, that is to say I understand the connections but I'm not sure if they actually benefited my drawings. Thinking back though, even if I don't consciously remember applying the feeling of my muscles to the drawing of others, I might have subliminally been affected by the practice. Regardless, Yoga is an amazing practice, and I really want to make it a staple of my routine.
Muscle building was frustrating sometimes and relaxing others, but I think it was helpful. I should have sat down and actually drawn the mannequin, but for some reason I never did. I guess I was so sick of it after carving minuscule tendons of clay that I didn't really want to stare at it. It was still a good practice though I wish we had some kind of reference of it rather than just pictures. I will have to take some good photographs to make it a useful tool even after it is destroyed. I think I did a good job on building it. I didn't spend time perfecting it, but I think overall, I spent a lot of time reworking it to make sure it would still be able to teach me something, not just so I would get a decent grade on it. I saw that some people in the class just sort of threw clay onto it, but I think if anyone really pays attention to the book, uses their tools and takes some time, they can produce an accurate muscle structure
My professor, Bob Atwell, once told me that he has to forget everything he knows about color theory in order to produce the intuitive choices of color schemes for his paintings. I always wondered how this carried on into other aspects of art and design. Do you think that knowing the human form makes it more difficult to create unique abstractions, or does it give you a better understanding and therefore the ability to distort more freely? I just was thinking wondering about that.
So now I'm done with the first life drawing class, and I know I can further explore on my own and through more education in this field. Amy is an excellent professor, she's understanding, knowledgeable, and creates an atmosphere of education based on trial and error. She understands how difficult the human form is, and makes sure to be constructive at all times with her criticism. I can't wait for LDII.

This is Life (Drawing)

Life drawing has been really helpful so far this semester. I want to try to stem into creating and inventing characters. Becoming an illustrator and a painter is my passion, and I want to try to major in life drawing and painting, and eventually merge that into illustration as a freelance artist and eventually to teach. I know it is going to be tough, and I'm not even confident right now that it will work out for me, but I'de rather be doing something I love rather than just doing something to get by. Wealth is of little importance to me. In the next six weeks I hope I can get a simple overview of the face, and I also want to explore expressions and postures that convey emotions. I'm interested in mural painting, and want to try my shot at that some day, but this will take practice. Life drawing takes practice. I just would like a better foundation with which to practice on this winter, spring and summer.

If blogs were Smurfs I'de have a blogging good time smurfing my thoughts on one.

Blogs... they don't seem to work when forced on someone. BUT! That does not mean that having a blog for an assignment is a bad idea. It's a great idea. I just think there aren't enough people in the class that actually care about the blog or the blog format enough to want to share Ideas. I frequently look through other's blogs, but I am also to blame. I made few comments where I should have, but a good chunk of the blogs have the bare minimum for what we were supposed to add, which is understandable. Some might not think they have time to post something new every week. There were a few blogs of mine where I offered to bring in some books, or suggested some graphic novels to read, but I never got any responses for any of these things. I responded to my groups blogs when they put their artwork from school up, but again, got no response to that, or even to my own artwork I had posted. Blogging is something that needs to be self motivated. I tried to post several different blogs relating to life drawing and other interests of mine, but was discouraged because I didn't feel like anyone was reading them or really concerned at all with it. What Amy is trying to do is to get us to talk with one another, learn about different styles of art, or maybe even something that has nothing even to do with art, just something- new. To connect, because an artist is nothing by themselves, it is the people, culture, surroundings, and the individual's awareness of these things that makes them an effective artist, whether their input to society is through some philosophical message, or just to dazzling imagery, whether it is visual, literal, or something else. The blog is a step towards that, a way for us to take interaction into our own hands. Sometimes days at school seem like walking through the crowded city or something. Everyone is so busy, everything is so fast. We have so much to do, but at the same time we don't. Our generation and society is so distracted I think from everything. We all want to be successful, but why do we hurry so much? Not to try to sound above anyone, believe me. I just think there are a lot of questions everyone has about the application of art and design, it's correlation with our current society which seems so commercial. I have a lot of questions about the way this country was founded on expansionism. We discovered the West long ago, and now the only thing to explore is technology, progression, economic stability, wealth, but what of ourselves? Everything is so complicated, and so impersonal these days. The blog format seems a bit impersonal,so it makes it harder to be critical and easy to be shy. but it's a gateway if anything. I am switching into studio art and I know the importance of self-motivation, but it's difficult. I don't know what I want to do, but I want to interact with people.. There are so many things to do in one day, it's 1:15 in the morning right now and I'm writing about this and I still have 50 other things I could be doing right now. If anything a blog is a good way to vent, to discuss, critique, and ultimately learn from our peers and hope they can learn from us. It seems like life-drawing is such a quiet and contemplative, almost meditative class, and that silence between students made its way to the blogs, at least from what I could see.

I did enjoy some of the posts I did read however, I just finished reading one on Shelly's blog about the relevance of life-drawing in secondary education. These are the types of blogs I like to read, where someone debates a topic and leaves it for others to comment on. I should have definetly taken more time to comment on other peoples, but of the comments I did leave for my group members, I thought they were thoughtful and insightful. I will leave more in the future, but I like others have been just doing my blog, and not really thinking about why I'm doing it. I would read other people's but I sometimes feel shy to express something about that topic or about their drawings.

I tried to keep my blog updated, and the quality of the images are high, but sometimes creating a blog is so frustrating. There's something with the interface and uploading that's sort of annoying, mainly trying to move pictures around. I'm really interested in reading forums, but I hardly ever contribute, so I tried to do that with my peers a little on the blog at the beginning, but seemed to have lost sight of the community aspect. Community is so important, I always forget that. If I could give one blogging assignment, it'd be to talk about something that bothers you about the art and design world, some uncertainties about the future, and to debate the topic with some other person or just talk about it in their blog. Everyone thinks, we're all somewhat unsure of the future (hopefully).. that's what college is about. We don't have to all believe our thoughts and emotions need be contained as weaknesses. Conversation brings consultation from contributions of controversy. If your father's father is your grandfather, is blogging about blogs your grandblogger? just a thought.

Methods of the red man

In this posterior view of the lower limbs and hips. I'm starting to notice somethings that look a bit off. First of all there is some huge gap in the right side of the thigh where the gluteus maximus meets the biceps femoris. I'm not sure where that comes from, but this was another set that was extremely difficult to imagine the relationships. I think the clay is crafted well, but some form is off. I was really confused about the soleus; I wasn;t sure how thick it should be because of the othe muscles on top. I don't think these atlases honestly do a job of illustrating any type of relationship in size or even location. This is extremely important, and you are supposed to use other sources, but why not just have it in the book? At least some kind of diagram? I enjoyed building the gastrocnemius, because it really made the shape of the leg recognizable to me.





The strongest aspect from this anterior view of the torso is my clay craft. Some edges could be trimmed, but the overall smoothness of the clay makes it easy to define the form of the obliques. I think adding in the ligaments of the abs was also a good choice for details. I had fun building these muscles and shaping them around the torso. As I stated before there is something about the curve between the ribcage and the hips that I find quite beautiful.












I think craft is lacking a bit in the anterior thigh muscles, but only in the definition of the bulk of the muscles. Otherwise I think this area looks pretty accurate, comparing it to others and also some anatomy books I was looking at. The tibialis anterior was a difficult set of muscles to build. I couldn't understand the thickness of them, it seemed like there wsa too much there for so little muscle, and I was having trouble trying to fix some of these problems. The craft could be better in the lower leg as well. I should probably try to add more of a rounded form than a lumpy mass to this section.








Another shot of the posterior muscles of the upper torso, the longisimus and thoracis, and spinal erectors. I think I did a fairly good job on this section. This is the section I worked and reworked the most when I was working on my model. I really enjoy the smooth liquid feeling of these muscles slithering up one another, the way they interact, twisting the spine and neck. I think this is a gorgeous mass of muscle, and looking at these photos, I think I could go in and round some of the clumped forms out.








These muscles are kind of fun to build, but I don't feel like I'm getting enough use out of the model. Considering they will be destroyed and rebuilt next semester, I would like to use them more in class so that these muscles are implanted into my memory. Building them doesn't seem like enough. I almost wish I could keep it for reference, but these pictures will be really helpful to stir up my memory about building them, but still, I would really like to draw more muscles and draw from the clay models while we draw from the live models, maybe I will have to do some of this during the open drawing sessions. I am enjoying this part of class I think it adds a touch of variety.

Loooooonnnng Drawings

Long Drawing One (30)

I feel like some of my early long drawings are not representative of what I've been learning, because I was working too hard on aspects which were not important, and also I have a lot of trouble with proportion on larger scale. This drawing shows my strengths in line quality. I have trouble fighting the urge to fill things in (1) but I refer to my understanding of the word "study" so that I could get over it. This is the first drawing that we drew the longissimus and the spinal erectors (2) and where they meet at the sacrum(4) I'm still not sure If the bulk of these muscles are correct. In this drawing I was working at getting the muscles, but also to try to make a bit of a finished looking sketch, or at least something with some visual interest. Adding in the obliques (3) gives the figure a bit of interest, at least to me. For some reason, I am always drawn to this area on Renaissance drawings and paintings of Titian and Michelangelo. There is something very soft and substantial in the where these muscles fold over the hip. I'm not sure why I enjoy it so much, but I thought since we are talking so much about the physicality and technicality, we also should talk about the subtleties of elegance in the human body which encouraged the great masters to study it realistically and technically in the first place.

I was going to put in a drawing that illustrated my shot at doing studies, but I found one that represents as accurate a replication of the form in deep space. This drawing lacks in line quality as it takes on a heavy hand (by the way, Amy, this is the drawing I did to make up for the day I left early.) When I was doing this, I was really paying attention to negative space in the form, or at least I was carefuly observing the space objects create between eachother, not just the background. The overlapping of the ribs on the hips (2) was kind of tough to imagine, because the breasts are in the way in tis position. I think it is a decent form however, and foreshortening is extremely difficult. I had some problems with the left leg (1). I never realized how hard it is to draw limbs foreshortened. The leg muscles are a compound and complex mass. When seen from the side they are difficult to draw; drawing them foreshortened is another story. It looks alright in this drawing, but I need to practice more. This is one of my best attempts at getting the entire drawing on the page and taking up as much space as I could to utilize the drawing surface. The figure is concrete as it rests on the ground (3) but I still have a long way to go before I really understand the figure in deeeeeeep space. By the way, I drew this during open drawing when amy wasn't around (4).

This drawing is not as successful in attention to form, but I think it does show foreshortening semi-accurately. The hips (3) are outlined beneath the ribcage, but it is really difficult to try to draw them in at this angle, because you really can't see them, you simply have to imagine them. The most dificult aspect of foreshortening is observing where drastic changes in forms meet (2) and where they overlap (1). I think this is where this drawing suffers. Because the egg seems to meet awkwardly, it looks like the model is a sort of hunchback, but actually it is just the egg in deep space, becoming more of a sphere from this perspective. The line weight in this work is some of the most careful I've done, it ranges from some almost invisible areas (5) to stark black outline (2). This helps me to emphasize what I'm working on, and in this drawing, it was the relationship between the egg and the hips, the arm was not as important. I will need to do some more of these drawings to get a better idea of the body in space, because this type of observation and drawing is really tough.

Three (Newer) Gestures

30 SECONDS

I believe for the time frame, this is one of my most successful gesture drawings. You can really see confidence in the drawing with a shorter time frame (3). Lines are drawn without the fidgeting and reworking of larger and more detailed drawings. Because you have little time, you don't think about the final product, or worry about the proportions. Yet they seem to just come to you. I love the simplicity of this drawing, there is so little there, but I can tell exactly the form of the figure, the stance, where each limb even should be. Because so much is hidden (1) the eye fills in the rest. This is the most difficult aspect of figure drawing. When something is foreshortened, or falls behind something, or juts from behind a head or shoulder, the mind wants to fill this part in. The leg, (2) on a two dimensional plane, seems to jut out of the head like some mutant fiend, but that's what I love about drawing. We understand that this is going into the distance ( I could have varied the line weight here so that it appears even more so to recede) If it does not make sense, we automatically are confused because we can't seem to fill in the missing limb or whatever it may be. This drawing has some difference in line weight, but mostly it's the form that makes it successful.

1 MINUTE

One minute drawings seem to lend a bit more to the forms of the hips and the ribcage. I put this one in because I like the stance, the subtle arch of the ribcage, ( I think it should be exaggerated a bit more actually) but I think it illustrates the relationship of the hips and ribcage nicely (2). This relationship is key, and I used some heavy line weight to really put an emphasis on these areas, where muscle and skin fold over bone. The proportions in some of the areas are a bit off, mainly, the small head makes everything look enormous, or the legs and lower body are a bit small compared to the rest.(3) Here is another example of the subtleties of line (2) and how the sketchiest looking lines can help to define forms in one way or another. The figure seems to be captured by these lines. I almost get a sense of contemplation and an emotion of attitude from the strokes. Figure drawing is important because our body language conveys emotion just as well as facial expression. It's important that we are able to recognize these things even in "stick figures" or in the long axis' of the drawings.

3 MINUTE

I believe this is my most successful gesture from the semester. There is something about the relationship between elements that intrigues me. The shape of the ribcage was worked a few times, but the proportions seem to make sense, even if I didn't draw the egg all the way through. The line weight (3) of the left thigh, brings it out from the body, and gives the figure a bit of depth. The way everything connects seems to work too. In my earlier drawings, I would use circles to connect thighs to hips, but getting rid of that makes for a more sensual, and less cartoonish approach and feel. Instead of drawing a circle for the elbow, I drew the contour of only the elbow (1). This makes it evident that the forearm is being covered up by the rest, instead of just having a line, which would render the figure an amputee. Something about that detail puts the forearms somewhere, maybe it's just because I know where they are, but I think enough detail is there to suggest, as well as detail from the emotion as well which leads us to believe the hands are somewhere near the face or head, even if not drawn in. The figure is grounded (4) and solid, but still with a sort of whimpering or stumbly sense of its center of gravity. I see a despaired individual in this gesture, and that's another reason I chose it. I think it is the best example of emotion in a gesture drawing of mine. Again, it's amazing how much personality can be contained within these small gestures, it inspires me to think of what can be portrayed in the hardness of muscle, softness of skin, aging, facial expression, body gestures, scabs, scratches, and wrinkles.

Early Gestures

My first early gesture drawing shows some of the beginning stages of developing a core frame with which to build on top of. The most essential part of figure drawing I believe, is structure, and these drawings help to understand the underlying form with the human body. I'm beginning to develop some line variation (2) in the arms and limbs, but it does not illustrate a certain depth of form as it should. The figure is contained within the picture plane (3) but is not a finished figure, later we would add feet. Even the basic outline of the feet can give you a sense of where the figure meets the ground and how, even though structure is most important now. Since we hadn't yet discovered the egg and hip shapes and relationships, my spine is elongated (1). Without the aid of the egg guide, it is hard to tell exactly how long the spinal column is, and where the lumbar and thorasic curve reside. This was a 30 second pose.

Here is another early gesture drawing that shows some developments from the first one. First of all, I am now using boxes, a technique a friend showed me in high-school (2) to develop the base for the frame.The spine connects the two, and here I have exaggerated the curve. The frame consists of two boxes, one for the shoulder and one for the hips. While these structures are similar in width, simplifying them to this extent probably won't help me to fully visually understand their function. (the most important function being their connection to the arms and legs.) The elbows and knees are represented by a circle for the joints (1), but this technique will make it difficult to drawing muscles over and is generally unnecessary. The proportions of the upper torso are looking alright, but I seem to have rushed through the lower half. The figure doesn't seem complete (3) as it cuts off somewhere around the shin. The line weight differs, but again, not enough to really signify it as a valid approach to implying depth. This was a one minute pose.

This drawing was still done before we studied the ribcage. The shape of my ribcage doesn't have the convex edge of the lower rib (3). Instead I have more of a pointed, 2-dimensional oval, rather than a 3-dimensional egg. I am starting to utilized line weight (2), and the drawing fits on the page, and the figure even sits on the ground. The addition of the feet help to give put it in a context of space and weight, even on a small, less detailed gesture. I still have not stepped away from illustrating the box hip (4) and the circle joints (1), but I can see a lot of development in form and structure, as well as proportion. The arm on the left is a bit long, but overall, I am please with the look of this early gesture drawing.

My gestures done at the beginning of the semester have developed. The very first drawings I did were simple contour outlines, but I felt for sake of comparison, those drawings are so far away from the intent of this class that I left them out and decided to post these, which I believe are representative of my first few weeks of drawing the human figure.