Midterm

We are halfway through the semester and it has gone by so fast!

I feel that I have a much better understanding of the body and of some of the larger muscle groups. I feel much better about gesture drawings and although I get anxious to do longer poses, its always a good way to start out the class and get into the swing of things and the drawing mindset. I still feel like I could work on my speed though and making sure I get the whole body. With longer poses I feel that I just need more practice. I have difficulty with proportion at times, especially with limbs, and with figuring out planes. I think more exploration with contour drawings will help in gaining better knowledge and awareness of planes and how the body moves in space. I think one of my strengths is the use of line and the weight of lines and would like to see that transfer into some longer poses or in details. I still really enjoy building the muscles on my manikin and gaining a better understanding of their interaction and form on the body. I think I can work on really forming and developing the transitions from one muscle to another and the interaction in groups of muscles.

To see what I have done so far please take a look at my pictures on flicker

And we are back

After a week off from lifedrawing...which was kinda nice to have some extra time seeing that my computer crashed and I lost everything and had some catching up to do with a few things at that point...we are back to working on our manikins and drawing. We have talked about the ribcage and the position of that with the body which I find helps a lot while drawing. We have also added abs to our manikins so they are starting to take shape!

(pictures to come)

Meet ______________

Meet ________...ok so I don't have a name for my manikin yet but I will keep you posted...

We continue to work from the model this week. We also got our manikins and started to talk about the muscles. We are starting with the back muscles. I really like this part of class, its really cool to see how individual muscles are on the body and how they build up on each other.

Contours

Drawing has been going well, getting into the feel for things and feeling more comfortable with it all. We received shells that we will be working with for the semester and had an assignment to do a contour drawing of our shell. I thought this assignment was rather difficult, we only talked about contour drawing once in class and I didn't feel very comfortable with it but I guess I really just need practice. I struggled the most with how much information I should really include, I have a shell with lots of ripples and didn't know if I should include them or some of them or just concentrate on the form. Being that we haven't done many contour drawings I stuck with just the form of my shell and our critique discussion really helped in understanding contour drawing better. (picture to be posted soon)

First Week

I will admit I was nervous the first week to draw from a nude model, I thought it was going to be rather awkward and uncomfortable, but to my great surprise it really wasn't for the most part. I find that if the model is comfortable enough with posing it makes it that much better for everyone else and a much better atmosphere.

It has been nice to get back into drawing and have a setting where I can kinda just zone out and concentrate on one thing. It has been over two years I think since I have had a drawing class that we draw from a still life. It has been a little difficult getting back into really observing things and spending more time looking at the model rather than the paper, but I think I will adjust rather quickly.

Life Drawing Fall 2009

I am very excited to be taking life drawing this semester! I have an odd combination with a Graphic Design major and a Coaching minor and this is one class that really ties the two together...in a way.

Being in dance and track, muscles and the body form have always been important and an interest of mine. I have taken Human Bio, Kinesiology, and a couple other classes that cover the use of the muscles, where they are and how they function, but it was always difficult to really visualize where they are in relevance to everything else and how they really form the body. Being more of a visual person I hope to build a better awareness of these things through this class.

I know that I will be challenged in this class because I tend to be much more value oriented in my drawings and in my past drawing classes as well as concentrating on specific details for compositions.

This summer I spent some time working with digital photography and manipulating the light of images.

Life Drawing

Starting Life Drawing 1 Fall 2009!

Final Project

Final Drawing 3 Project

Ornamentation

Here is my project for Ornamentation. While working on this project I was thinking about the human form and what really effects it, society, food, and exercise especially for women. Ideally I would like to make the figure full size and if I were to work on this project further I would choose a different form that can be more relatable.

Science vs. Nature

Here is my science vs. nature project. 

If I were to do anything different it would be to concentrate on one set of foot prints, making it a longer stretch and thinking more about how I would present it.

Nature or Science

For our first assignment our topic has to be something form Nature or Science. Both I find to be very broad areas to narrow down and find something that interests me to create a piece. I am torn between the two but here is what interests me in each.

In nature flowers have always been of great interest in their tones and colors and what kind of emotion that they can provoke. If I were to go in this direction I am definitely influenced by Georgia O'Keefe and her abstraction of the flower, but I would also like to work on conveying an emotion with the use of the flower.

As for science, I am very interested in human movement and kinesiology kind of things. I am leaning more towards this approach for the assignment. 

When thinking about movement of the human body right away legs and feet come to mind as a main form of movement. Everyone has a different stride, a different way of walking, and with different movements the foot strikes differently. I would like to look more into foot prints through different movement and actions and different ways of creating them. 

Here are some different artists that I am doing to draw some influences from for this project:

Ilkido Kalapacs

Albert Normandin

Miriam Perez

Valerio Doval

...along with some advertisement...

What is Drawing?

In Thursday's class we got together in our groups and talked about the following:

What drawings have been used for in the past?

Medical purposes

Story telling

Memorializing things

Communication-Symbols

Language

Personal enjoyment

Maps

Construction-Blue prints

Rituals

Decorations

Protest

Records-recording territory

Diagrams

To figure something out

Instruction

Compare and contrast how they are used in the present

Objects and media are not the same

Drawings are now in different forms

How each of us have encountered drawing as a viewer

Intimidating-skill level

Inspiring

New ideas

Challenging

Your view is going to depend on

Sketchbook

Can always keep drawing, need to set final point

How we have experienced drawing as a maker of art

More ideas-Inspirations

Technique

Process

Reference point

Rough draft

Critical

Level of relate ability with other artists

The more you see of other artists the better you own work will become

When has drawing been most interesting?

Art History-more personal depth

High School

Early years

What should drawing be for/how should it function?

Practical purposes

Medical

Communication

Story telling

Thought provoking

For the Artist

Found Drawing Experience

Through our discussion in our group we came up with the definition of drawing as a "moving point." A point as it moves creates a line, eventually a shape, form, volume, texture, repeated form or pattern, in which singly or in combination can define an excellent drawing.

Within our group we all went about looking for found drawings a little differently. Some common things we all seemed to look for though was strong lines, repetition, pattern, and form.

I think almost anything can be seen as a found drawing, depending on the person and what they see and what attracts them to a specific thing. The things that we found were very comparable to those posted on tracey and were well within our group's definition of drawing.

Found Drawings

Visit my flicker page to see more of what I found...