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
I also felt like after only the second week of class I could see a great deal of improvement. I’m glad you reminded me of the four curve rule. That still often slips my mind as I’m looking for the spine to be one fluid line form. From the sounds of it, although gesture drawings are pushing you out of your comfort zone, it’s a good thing. As an artist, it is not always easy to try other ways of doing something when you’re so used to it a different way.
ReplyDeleteYour sentence about doing the cross contour of the foot resulting in “…a bunch of wiggly lines that didn’t combine to make anything…” made me laugh. It seems so easy to draw lines to make a shape, but it’s not. In your drawing here, I like how each line has a different value. You seem to have gotten the light/ bold areas spot on. I think you took Amy’s advice of difference in planes very well. The viewer can feel the roundness of the change in planes.