Final Blog

http://www.flickr.com/photos/62805068@N04/sets/

(Flickr kicked me out of my old account and sent me to this link instead, so PLEASE let me know if this link doesn't work because I have everything on there but I don't want it to affect my grade if the link doesn't work.)

Well, this semester has definitely been interesting.  I started off as someone who was always extremely meticulous with every mark I made, and it would take me far longer than most people to do the simplest of drawings.  However, after all of the gesture drawings which really forced me out of my comfort zone, I feel that I have really gotten out of my own way and let myself be a lot more free with the use of my shoulder.  I'm really pleased with that, because by the end of the semester I was able to get drawings done twice as fast as usual.  Another thing that I'm really excited about is the new way that I hold my pencil while I draw.  I used to hold it like I was writing, and my wrist would move too much and just butcher my work.  But now that I've changed my grip and really integrated the use of my shoulder, my drawings have improved so much.  There's a lot less meticulous, short strokes, and a lot more long, fluid strokes.  I'm so grateful for the new grip!

As far as strengths and weaknesses of my drawings, I feel like a strength of mine is probably that I pay attention to detail and really strive to focus on the curves and angles of even the most miniscule details.  To me, every detail is just as important as the next, because the little complexities in a drawing form together to make the drawing complete.  One of my weaknesses is that I can really get inside my own head when it comes to drawing the face.  I'm so focused on getting a likeness that I forget to just draw and let it come naturally.

Although the maniken was very challenging for me, because I really struggle with 3-D work, it really helped some of the drawings.  It was nice to know the inner workings of the bones and muscles because then I had certain points of interest to look for that helped me structure the drawing.  It makes it a lot easier that way.

Drawing has changed for me so much.  This is the fourth drawing class that I've taken at Stout, and honestly it is the most useful one I've taken.  Even though I took Drawing II twice (as an elective), it wasn't nearly as useful as this.  I learned so much about how to STRUCTURE drawings and how to really build them piece by piece into a finished work.  I used to look at the whole thing and just start drawing, and my proportions would be off by the time I got to the end, but I was already too far along to fix it.  But this way I can do bit by bit and my proportions are so much better than they used to be.  I love it.

My self-portrait was really frustrating for me.  Drawing myself from a mirror is by far the most challenging and irritating thing I've ever done, although I'm sure it would get a lot easier with practice.  It was just frustrating because I would look in the mirror, judge the angle of a certain feature, put it on the paper, look back up at my face and my head was in a completely different spot.  So that's why the likeness in this drawing is so lacking.  However, I'm very proud of my lips and nose.  I feel that I nailed them.  My eyes, size of my head, and jaw, however, are definitely off.  I really wish I had gotten them right, but I just couldn't seem to get them, no matter how long I spent on them.  One thing that I'm very proud of, though, is my use of line weights.  I used to have such light drawings and they were all the same line weight.  But now I've really learned how to use certain line weights to show how certain things are closer, and how others are farther away.  I'm really happy about that.

I'm really excited to continue this knowledge on into other classes, because I feel like I've just gained so much insight about how to structure my drawings.  That's by far the biggest thing I've learned in this class and the thing that I will take away from here and incorporate into any of my drawings for the rest of my life.

Such an interesting semester.  So glad I decided to take this class!

May 9th

Today was our last class!!  We just did a long drawing of the model the whole class and I LOVED the view that I had.  A great way to end the class!  I don't know why, but I really like being able to work on the back of the model.  Maybe it just seems easier?  No idea haha.

I'm not the quickest drawer in the world, so I may not have accomplished as much as other people did, but I at least got to draw some of the key points of the figure.  I did my egg for the ribcage and then the butterfly for the pelvis (that's what I think of it as haha), and went on from there.  I also got to spend a little more time on the leg muscles, especially right around the back of the knees.  I really thought that even by just adding these few lines, it helped to make the drawing look so much more polished.

I didn't spend very much time on the arms at all, because the arms just really don't intrigue me all that much.  So I just got them done pretty quickly and focused more on the lower half of the model.

I'm pretty pleased with this drawing, though!  I went over some of my long drawings from the beginning of the semester just for fun, and wow!  I have gotten so much better, it's unreal.  Not that I think I'm great by any means, but I just really sucked at the beginning of this class haha.  I'm getting nervous to draw the self-portrait, but I'm starting that soon.  Scared to see what it will look like!

May 2nd - May 6th

This week we finally got lectured on the skull.  We got in small groups and some of us drew the skull of the skeleton and some of us worked on the skull of the model.  I did the skeleton's skull.  In the very beginning of the class I positioned myself so that I had a frontal 3/4 view, but someone (not naming names but he's been doing it all semester) decided once again to stand right in front of me, so I had to move...again.  Anyways, enough venting :)

So I moved places and ended up having a 3/4 view of the back of the skull.  And it sucked.  I just really did not like drawing from this view.  The majority of the drawing was just the cranium, and then I had to draw some of the outside of the upper jaw as well as the inside of the opposite jaw.  It was really complicated to look at, and I just really didn't enjoy drawing it.  I don't know why, because it was complicated, which I usually like to do.  Maybe I was just bitter from getting my spot jacked.  I don't know haha.  But anyways, I added some value to this drawing as well because there was just so much shadow that I felt like I should at least show it a little bit.  I did some cross contour lines on the top of the skull and wrapping around the skull, but on this picture you can hardly see it.  If you click on it and make it larger you should be able to see it, though.

Once I finished and stepped away from my drawing, though, I noticed that the jaw should have been just a tiny bit lower.  It's not really that noticeable, but as I'm my own worst critic, it's something that I obviously notice.  But it's really not that bad.  I just wish that I had gotten to draw a frontal 3/4 view, because that looked so much more interesting to draw!  Oh well.

I'm really getting nervous, though, because I know that we have to do a self-portrait for our last project and I'm not sure if I'll be able to put all of the facial features together on a skull and make it look convincing.  I guess we'll find out!!

April 25th - April 29th

We're done with the hands and finally started the skull and face!  This is something I'd been looking forward to, although I can't deny that I was terrified haha.  Drawing the head, and especially the face, is something that you either hit or miss.  I've never been great at it, but I was hoping that with this class it might be different, since we actually get to learn the structural make-up of how to form the drawings.

Instead of starting the skull right away, we actually went to the nose, lips, and eyes before we did the skull drawing.  I felt like I did pretty good at working on just the specific facial features, but I'm scared to throw it all together and incorporate the shape of the head into the drawing as well.

This first image is of Lu's nose, philtrum, and a little outline of his upper lip.  I had some help with Amy on this one, but I have to say that I feel like I nailed it.  This is exactly what his nose looks like.  I'm very happy with this drawing.  I actually really like drawing noses now.  I used to hate them, but now that I know how to structure them, I really like them.

I can't remember what this girl's name is, but this is her eye.  I feel like I did a good job of drawing the structural lines in order to form the eye socket.  But as far as likeness goes, I'm not sure that I did all that great.  I've always been really bad at drawing eyes, and apparently this class isn't going to help that at all haha.  I'm just going to have to accept that.

This is Cliff's nose and lips.  I actually think that I did a pretty good job of capturing likeness here, as well as incorporating all of the structural lines that are necessary to get successful proportions.  Cliff is pretty tall, and I'm really short, plus I was hunched over on the drawing horse, so I'm a little below him here, which is why his nose looks the way that it does.  He doesn't really have some crazy nose that's pointed straight up; that's just how I was sitting!  Next week, we're going to be drawing the skull and trying to put the face with it (I think), so I'm kind of nervous.

Until then.

April 18th - April 22nd

This week, we still worked on the hands for a couple of class periods.  On Monday we were still doing either the skeleton or the model's hand, but on Wednesday we got together as a group and had the model hold a bowl while we drew her hands.  This is the image from that drawing session.

I was actually pretty far away from the model on this day, so I don't think that I perfectly captured the look of the model's hands, but I think that I did a relatively good job considering how much of a distance there was between me and her hands.  The only parts that I'm really not sure about are the middle finger and the relationship between the size of her wrist and the size of her hand.  She looks like she either has baseball mitts for hands or like she has the wrists of a 7-year-old.  Now, she is a skinny model, but she's not THAT skinny haha.  I'm not completely upset about it, because the focus of this drawing was the hand, but it still would have been nice to get that relationship correct.

I decided to use a little shading again today, because the shadows that were being cast on the hands were just too good not to at least show them a little bit.  Plus, I thought that maybe if I added a little value that it would be a nice way of showing some of the muscles and showing the plane changes between some of the bones.

April 11th - April 15th

Wow.  Now that I had missed drawing for a week, I was RUSTY!  I had forgotten since spring break that taking even a week off can make you feel completely stupid when you get back.  We were officially in the full swing of working on hands, and I had some catching up to do since I had been in Texas the last week.

We were supposed to do at least one drawing of the skeleton hand and at least one drawing of the model's hand, so I'm going to post both and talk a little about each of them.  I decided to do the skeleton hand first, because I thought that maybe seeing the inner-workings of the bones might help me to understand what I'm looking at when I see the real thing.  And honestly, I think I definitely made the right decision.  Even though it was extremely frustrating and challenging to work on the skeleton, it really gave me a better grasp of what's going on.  I didn't have a whole lot of time to work on any cross-contours, because this honestly took me forever to just get the bones right.

Once I had finished drawing the skeleton, the next class period I did a couple of hand drawings of the model.  I'm only putting this one up, but only because it's a little more of a dynamic drawing, not because I feel like I drew it poorly.  I really enjoyed the way the model held her hand in this pose, because it really gave you a lot of stuff to work with visually.  The shadows cast by the knuckles and on the fingertips were very strong here, so I decided to do just a little bit of shading to show that.  I have NEVER been able to do convincing hands before, but after really learning about the bones and studying the skeletal hand, I think that this actually turned out pretty good.  Especially since before when I would draw hands it just looked like five sausages coming off of a stump haha.  So I'm definitely pleased with this drawing!

April 4th - April 8th

Well, I'm on the men's volleyball team here at Stout, and this week we had our national volleyball tournament in Houston, Texas.  So I was only in class on Monday and we mostly just lectured on the hands and then I had to leave.  So I don't really have anything to say about this week.  I'll be back soon!

March 28th - April 1st

Once I got back from being sick, we had not only talked about the upper back and shoulders, but also the collar bone and the arms.  One thing that was challenging for me at first was understanding how the collar bone and the shoulder blade look when you move the arms around.  Thankfully they are both relatively easy to spot, depending on the position of the arms, but they were still difficult at first.  The more we practiced them, though, the easier it became.

In the long drawing image that I have for this week, the model was sitting in a chair and we were supposed to draw her torso area along with her collar bone and arms.  I included a little bit of her upper thighs and decided not to draw her hands, as we hadn't gotten that far yet and I didn't want to screw them up.  I also really tried to focus on working on line weights in order to add spacial dynamics.  I wanted the closer body parts to be closer than the ones that were farther away.  I also added darker lines underneath the breasts to indicate a severe shadow, and darker lines on the collar bone since that was one of the emphases of the week.

Honestly, I have to say that this is probably my favorite drawing so far that I've done throughout the semester.  I think I really captured the model this week, and did a much better job on incorporating the heavier and thinner line weights to emphasize 3-dimensionality.  Maybe that's just me, but I really like this one.  

I definitely think that drawing the torso is my favorite part of this class so far.  Maybe it's just because once you incorporate the whole body, including the hands/feet/head, it looks too finished almost.  I don't know; I kind of like the sketchy look sometimes and that's how this drawing looks.  I'm excited to start drawing the hands soon, though, because I really like the complexity of the hands and how challenging they are.

March 21st-25th

This week we completely switched everything up and we went from working on the legs and feet to starting to talk about the back/arms/shoulders.  I was really really sick this whole week and ended up only able to go to any of my classes on Monday, so I only have one image of my long drawing from Monday.

I thought it was pretty complicated at first trying to find some of the muscles, but after putting the muscles on the maniken it made it a little easier knowing where they were.  And as long as there is a good enough light source, it makes it easier when you can see the shadows.  In this particular image, I was having a hard time with the foreshortening of the elbow, but after Amy came around and showed me how to think of it as a rectangle, it made it a lot easier.  I've also been trying to play with the line weights in order to show depth in a work that is primarily line drawing.  The one area, however, that I know I should've adjusted was right around the breast.  I tried to make the line darker to show how it was laying and folding over itself, but I think I may have made the line too dark and it doesn't look quite as realistic as it could.

Well, since I was really sick this whole week I don't have a whole lot to say as I was only there for two hours this week.  Until next time.

March 7th-11th

During this week, we focused on learning how to draw the lower legs and feet.  During the gesture drawings, it was kind of nice because all we had to do was really draw a single line to signify how the legs and feet would work together, but once we got to the long drawings it got a lot more complicated.

I actually feel that I did pretty well on the feet.  Following the lecture on how the foot bones and toes work together, I still don't think I have the greatest understanding of how the bones line up and how they interact with eachother.  We did some 5-minute long drawings just to get some practice before the long poses, and here is an image of 4 different 5-minute poses.

I still think that the toes are pretty complicated to draw, and I don't know if I'll ever get them exactly right.  But for a first attempt and also considering how far we all are from the model's toes, I think I did okay.  It would obviously be a lot easier being right up close.  The one thing that really stuck with me was Amy telling us that the high point of the foot comes up from the 2nd toe.  I made sure to draw that line from the 2nd toe up to the top of the foot to make sure to show the contour lines on the two drawings to the right.  I didn't on the left since I couldn't really see that line.

On Friday we got to the longer drawings, and we had a lot more time to focus in on the feet and really see them.  We also had the male model, and so the poses weren't nearly as feminine.  Here is an image of my long drawing from Friday.

In this drawing, I focused a lot more on the foot on the right, because it was closer to me and I could see more of it.  I really tried to show all of the different plane changes with my contour lines, and Amy came around and told me that I had done the toes well, but to try to also show the bones on the inside, even though obviously we can't see them.  For the ankle bone, I tried to show how the bone is really formed with the tibia and fibula.  I think it turned out pretty decent.  I was happy with it.  Feet normally gross me out, but I actually really liked how complicated and intricate the feet are.  It takes a lot more time to draw and a lot more attention to detail, which I love doing.

Midterm Post (Reflection on 1st Half of Semester)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/butlerj3/

(I organized these into sets on the page, but I'm not sure if I did it correctly.)

Well, this has been a real learning experience.  That's for sure.  I can't deny that I was extremely intimidated when I walked in the first day and saw all of the huge drawings of the skeletons.  I didn't think I'd be able to make it through, but it's going all right.  The gesture drawings have really helped me a lot in the way I see things.  I'm always so meticulous and want to jump right into the detail, but this has forced me to look at the big picture first, and then work my way to the details (which is how you should do it).

The manikens have been really intimidating at times as well.  3-dimensional work is not my niche, and I really struggle with that kind of work, but I do my best to pore over the book and get the muscles as correct as possible.  A lot of the times I'm just not sure which muscles are supposed to go over the top or under other ones.  It's very confusing sometimes.

So as far as my Flickr pictures go, I included a few gesture drawings, which I honestly could NOT get any better quality than they are.  I took like 5 pictures of each one and those were the best ones.  So I apologize for that, but hopefully you can at least see them.  I included the pictures that I already have posted on my blog as well as a few others.  And there are two of them (Drawings 8 and 9) that are actually of my boyfriend.  I wanted some practice and so I convinced him to let me draw him.  He wasn't too happy about it at first, but now that I drew them he wants to keep doing it haha.  So I hope it's okay that I included these in my midterm portfolio.  I thought they actually turned out really well.  I was surprised because I only did 10 minute poses and I did them really quickly, but I'm happy with them.  Here is one of them.

I'm definitely glad, though, that I've taken this class, because it really makes me appreciate the human body a lot more.  I always knew that it was complicated and that it sucks to draw, but now I like the challenge and I have a better understanding of how to build it.  It's all about those babysteps!

4th Week

Well, in the 4th week I really felt like I started getting some things down a little better.  I'll be honest, the ribcage and pelvis relationship still eludes me, but I'm doing my best.  For whatever reason, I seem to draw everybody like they're anorexic or something.  The drawing that I posted above is a 20 minute drawing of our female model.  The arms were actually in front of her and not behind, which is how it sort of looks, but I wanted to focus more on the torso and not worry about the arms, which we haven't even covered yet.  I figured I would get them wrong if I tried, so I just didn't even bother.

I was really worried when I saw the pose that we were doing for 20 minutes, because I'm normally really bad at doing foreshortening, but I think that this actually turned out all right.

3rd Week

The third week in Life Drawing was very helpful, because the core area of the human form became much clearer to me.  I started to understand the spinal column, the ribcage, and tried to understand the relationship between the pelvis and the ribcage.  Although I have been struggling with the distance between the two, I'm doing my best to slowly figure it out.

The gesture drawings, as monotonous as they may seem to some, are honestly really helping me.  It really helps to get me out of my meticulous manner of drawing and throw me into a quick gesture drawing.  It forces me to look at the human form as larger shapes, rather than particular, miniscule forms.  I really enjoy being able to scrutinize what the model is doing, and portray that on paper.  It's challenging, of course, but I have been doing my best to illustrate what I see.

The following image that I'm going to submit is from Friday of this week.  We had our first day of drawing with a male model, and it was very different.  The difference between the male and female body is great, and definitely shows in my drawings.  The female body is much softer, whereas the male form tends to show much more muscle definition.  Our particular male model was skinny, and therefore we could see a lot of the muscles and bones.  It really helped in all of our drawings, I'm sure.  Here is the drawing that I did during our long drawing on Friday.

This is the drawing I did of the male model on Friday.  I started out drawing the line of the spinal column, added in the "egg" of the ribcage, and added the pelvis.  From there, I began to illustrate the body, which I actually feel (or at least hope) was fairly accurate.

Jake

2nd Week

The second week of class, I felt like I learned a lot.  Between doing the quick, 15-30 second gesture drawings, to the longer 10 minute drawings, I felt like I was able to look at the body in a much broader sense.  And drawing with no detail is very hard for me, as I'm all about the detail.  The one thing that really has seemed to help with my understanding of the form (at least for now) is learning the curve of the spinal column.  Just understanding how there are always 4 different curves, no matter what, has helped give my gesture drawings a more dynamic shape.  I really enjoy doing these gesture drawings because it's forcing me outside of my comfort zone and not allowing me to work in a detailed manner, which is what I'm definitely used to.

After doing gesture drawings, we moved on to our first cross-contour drawing, and I felt extremely humbled.  Not that I think I'm some great artist, but I thought I would be fairly capable of rendering a successful cross-contour drawing.  This was definitely not the case, at least not on the first attempt.  I chose to draw the model's foot, thinking that the complexity of it would make for easy recognition from the viewer when I was finished.  I made sure that I didn't outline anything, and I just started with the cross-contour lines, and I thought eventually it would just form itself into the shape of the form.  Well, when I got done, all I saw on the page were a bunch of wiggly lines that didn't combine to make anything, especially a foot.

On Friday, however, when we did another cross-contour drawing, I had a lot more success.  I began drawing the back of the model, and Amy came around to tell me to work on making sure that there was a difference in the planes between the back and the side, and so I adjusted all of my lines.  After this adjustment, everything seemed to fall right into place.  I could definitely see the mistakes that I had been making the first time around, and it was exactly what she said: I had no plane changes.

I finally just got access to a digital camera.  It's not my sister's, but it turns out that my neighbor has a camera.  Here is a picture of one of my cross-contour drawings from this week.  This is actually the second cross-contour drawing of the week that I did, where Amy came around and helped me to understand the difference between the planes.

Until next time.

Jake

Introduction of Myself

Well, I guess I should introduce myself.  I'm Jake Butler, and this is my blog for Life Drawing I.

I'm a Graphic Design major, and I feel like I've been at Stout forever.  I changed my major to Hospitality and Tourism for a year, and then came back to Graphic Design because I realized how much I missed the Art and Design program.  I also took this past semester off, so I'm definitely going to be a bit rusty.

As far as strengths and weaknesses go when it comes to drawing, I would say that a strength of mine is that I pay a lot of attention to detail.  However, that can also be a weakness because I also tend to get so wrapped up in them that it will take me three times as long to complete a drawing as most people.  I'm also very meticulous and a perfectionist, which is almost always a recipe for pulling all-nighters.

As of right now, I'm in the process of meeting up with my sister so that I can use her digital camera for this class to take pictures for these blog assignments, but I don't have it yet.  So, I'm not able to post any pictures of previous work that I'm proud of, but I will on my next blog post.  However, I can at least tell you about it.  I took Drawing II a second time as one of my two 2-D studio requirements over this past summer with Bob Atwell, and that's probably when I produced my best work because I had a lot of time to work.  We had classes for four hours a day, and then if I wasn't working, I would usually just stay in the classroom all day long so that I could try to get the best out of my drawing.  Like I said before, I'm a perfectionist and I usually spend way too long on my work.  So, the next blog post I can submit a picture or two of these works.

Anyways, enough rambling.  I hope this gives you a little introduction to myself.  I'm not sure if this was at all helpful, but after the exhausting weekend I've had, this will have to do!  Looking forward to the rest of the semester and figuring out how to draw the human body.  I'm a little scared to work on the self-portrait, but I'm up for the challenge!

Jake

P.S. Now that I have access to a camera, I thought I would post a few pictures of recent drawings.