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.