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!