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.