Life Drawing: Week 15

 Hi welcome to my blog. Throughout this semester course of life drawing it has introduced me to a different approach drawing as well as a greater understanding of the human body. In traditional drawing courses that I have taken it teaches us to draw what we see rather than what we really know. In life drawing we learn to develop an understanding of the body to draw what we know rather than what we see.  It also teaches that by breaking objects down to different parts and planes we can create each component of the human body.  When first being introduced to this class I felt confident that I was able to learn the gestural drawing style. It was a particular style I was not very used to, as I am more a neat freak rather than a sketching drawer. I feel that from this class it has also contributed to my drawings outside of class, such as my industrial design courses. It allowed me to just express all my ideas on a page without the fear of having a messy drawing. It some cases this sketchiness has an attractive feel that I like.  Aside from drawings in class, we were given the opportunity to learn more about the human body through the use of our manikins. We were given assignments weekly to add muscles on the skeletal surface of the manikin. It was an interesting experience to learn from adding muscles onto the manikin. It allowed me to gain a greater understanding of how the muscles are positioned, layered, and grouped. It has contributed greatly to our drawings when by allowing us to drawing what we know sometimes when we are not able to see certain parts to the model. Overall, I struggled most with learning how the muscles were grouped together. I felt sometimes the course might have moved a little too quickly with little explanation. In addition I had difficulties with our with our 30 second drawings. I felt it was difficult to apply all the components of the body within that little time frame, although it contributes to making me a better drawer.  As for my strengths I felt I had a pretty good understanding of gesture drawing. As an art student I feel it is important to learn this style early on as it can be applied to other courses to represent your ideas quickly. From this course I feel my ability to drawing quickly to represent an idea has improves tremendously. So thank you life drawing and may everyone have a safe summer.

view my final 10 short drawings here. http://www.flickr.com/photos/59964810@N07/sets/72157626577803451/

view my final 10 long drawings here. http://www.flickr.com/photos/59964810@N07/sets/72157626577782789/

Sorry there will not be any manikin pictures posted on my flickr account as I am having trouble getting into getting into it.

Life Drawing: Week 14

Hello, welcome to my 14th week posting. This week has been a stressful week with my grandmother's funeral going on I am unable to get any work done. With her burial going on tomorrow I will not be able to come to class to get my manikin checked. In class we continued with our head drawings of the eyes, nose, lips, and ears. I feel I need to spend a bit more time focusing on the skull of the head so I can get a better understanding of how all the parts that make up the face fits within the head. As the semester is getting closer to an end I feel things in this class are getting so rushed with little time to explain what we maybe drawing. As a final for our class we were given the assignment to do a self portrait as well as putting together a portfolio.

This image is a drawing of the male model's head we started last Friday and continued with this past week. I felt it was a challenge getting used to this unique style of drawing rather than the typical style we have used in our drawing 1 and 2 classes. While I was drawing I had trouble getting the curvature of the facial structures. In addition I had trouble creating a difference in line weights, but then I felt I overcame this problem when I switched from a pencil to a charcoal pencil to create a great depth in the lines. At the end of the course I hope to gain a better understanding of how to draw the hair for the eye brows and on the head. Another aspect I would like to learn more about are the areas around the eyes and underneath the jaw.

Life Drawing: Week 13

Hello everyone, welcome to my 13th week posting. As always this week has been pretty hectic with all the assignments piling up and trying make to time to apply to summer jobs. Lately I have been having a great lack in motivation to finish the semester strong. I do not know what it is, but I have been focusing a lot of my attention towards all the activities I have got planned for the summer. My car especially is going to be my largest summer project with rust starting to build up, dents, and scratches that needs repair. In addition I need to start training for volleyball tournaments this summer. I feel we have a great chance of getting placed within the top three. Anyways, as of right now I have got to focus on other priorities that matter most in my future. In life drawing we started working more with the facial features of the eyes, nose, lips, and ears. Out of all the features I feel the nose is the most challenging to get just right proportionately and three-dimensionally. Personally I feel if the nose is drawn incorrectly and moved slightly in any direction just a little bit from the proper area it ruins the person's entire face. This is probably the case because I feel the nose is the most focal point due to its location on the center of the face. Another feature aside from the nose that I find also difficult to draw are the eyes. Throughout my experience drawing people I have always had a difficult time drawing the eyes especially when it came to making them appear three-dimensional. I guess a problem that a lot of people and I share are making the outlines of the eyes the same thickness. By doing this I feel it makes the eyes appear more like a cartoons rather than an actual person's eyes.

 In this image was a drawing of one of our classmates I partnered with to draw each others nose. It was interesting just to observe all the details and different structures that go within the construction of a nose. Overall, I was not too satisfied with my drawing perhaps cause it still appeared a bit flat to me. I had a difficult time getting all the shadows in the right area and right shade of darkness. Perhaps, sometime this summer I can spend some of time working with drawing faces to get more experience drawing the nose.

This drawing of my partner's eye was quite interesting to see all the planes that make it up. I think I should try using a charcoal pencil next time so I can really get the dark areas darker, such as the upper lid of the eye where the lashes start to extend from. Again l was not satisfied with the outcome of this drawing. I think I just need to play around with changing the thicknesses of my line quality and the highlights of the eye.

Life Drawing: Week 12

Hello everyone, welcome to my 12th week posting. Amazingly this week went by pretty quick, probably due to having no classes on Friday. In life drawing we continued to work on the hands and started on the areas of the skull. As the class progresses I feel that we are being introduced to too many different parts that I am unable to understand any of the parts well. At this point I am just looking forward to an end to the class with a good grade. Anyways, this week  I thought it was interesting how Amy allowed us to start drawing the skull without any sort of instructions on how the skull should be drawn. I guess perhaps it was just an exercise to see what we have learned and know about the subject. Overall, when Amy came around to check my skull drawing I was able to get some of the parts to the skull correct, however there were some things I needed some clarification on. 

This is an image of my hand drawing of the female model done on Wednesday. This was my second attempt to draw the hands. In my first drawing I had the difficult time preventing the fingers from looking like sausages as well as maintaining a three-dimensional appearance. In this drawing it was tremendously better than the first. The only trouble I had was with drawing the pinky finger. It was positioned awkwardly with the tip of the finger curving inwards. Overall, the drawing turned out okay. I could have worked a lot more with the atmospheric perspective.

In this image it is a drawing of one of the skulls we did in class. It was interesting to observe how all the forms on the skull has some sort of dimensional quality. After getting some help from Amy I guess I was able to see this a little bit more. Overall, the drawing turned out pretty good. I am just hoping to get a better understanding of the skull when Amy explains it next class.

Life Drawing: Week 11

Hello everyone, welcome to my 11th week posting. This week was a pretty rough week for me physically and emotionally. Aside from all the homework that has piling up, my family and I have been dealing with the death of my grandmother 2 days ago. It has just been 9 months ago that my grandfather passed away and now my mother is having to deal with the fact that she will never see both her parents. Although I was not as close to them, I can only imagine how hard it must be for my mother. Now after spending several thousand dollars on my grandfather's funeral, my family is struggling to find to money to pay for my grandmother's funeral. So I guess I just had to get that out of the way. Anyways, as far as life drawing goes we are getting closer to the end of our semester, which I am definitely looking forward to. We have also started focusing on the regions of the hand and arms, which is quite similar to the feet. My understandings stands to same as last week, still clueless as ever about what I am doing. I feel as if I have been lacking a lot on my drawing abilities in life drawing as well as other art classes. At this point I really need to find motivation to push me further in everything that I am doing. Sometimes I forget why I continue to work hard in college and how much it will really benefit me. As for the manikin, we have been receiving quite a bit of assignments. Thankfully they are some of the last manikin assignments we will be receiving. So far I have not been keeping up with the manikin as much as I would like to, but hopefully I will get that done by tonight.

In this image it is a drawing of our female figure where we were to practice drawing the hands and incorporate some of the muscles. My understanding of the muscles are not as great as I would like them, but I have gotten a better understand after Amy started drawing them in for me. All the muscles drawn in was by Amy so I can not take any credit for that. Overall, this drawing was okay. I just need to take more time to understand everything that goes within the figure.

Life Drawing: Week 11

Hello, welcome to my 11th week posting. This week has been a busy for me, as I can guess for a lot of other art students as well. I've been so overcome by so many projects that its been difficult to work on all my assignments. As usual I am still having trouble understanding the concepts of the manikin's body structures. So it difficult when we keep getting assigned all these muscle assignments. Moving forward, the class has been focusing a lot on the muscles that make up the arms. After a while I was unsure if I was even attaching muscles on correctly because the muscles seemed as though they kept layering on top of the same area. As far as the drawings go in class, I feel as though I have not been improving much on anything. I would just like come out of this course having a greater understanding of the human body. I just feel it would help my drawing abilities tremendously when I incorporate life figures with my product designs I create in my design classes.

In this image it was of our female model we did on Monday. It may be difficult to tell but the model is sitting in a chair where you can see the arm is rested on. I believe this drawing was to be more of a focus on the areas of the arms. From when I was drawing the model it seemed to look correct, but I can not be too sure. For the most part I believe I did a pretty good job on the overall drawing. It would have been interesting to have done a male model to see the differences in the male and female. In addition a male model would most likely have more muscle definition so that would have been fun to draw. Perhaps as the semester ends everything would get cleared up, I hope.

Life Drawing: Week 10

Hello everyone, welcome to my 10th week posting. This week we continued learn and add several more muscles groups to the back and sides of our manikin. These parts consisted of the latissimus dorsi, pectoralis, trapezius, and deltoid. This week was quite nice to have a choice to work on our manikins or work on our drawings. I spent a great deal of my time this week working on the manikin assignments, as I was a bit behind due to my other class assignments. I feel as though I'm not understanding any of the material we are learning now we are going more in depth with the manikin. As far as the drawings go I still not sure if I am locating the right areas to draw in the parts that make up the shoulder and back. I still continue to struggle a bit with the 30 second drawings, as I get nothing more than the basic center line and rib cage of the body that we have been working on since the beginning of the semester. I hope to get a clearer understanding of what is going on with each component of the body so I can feel more comfortable drawing.

As we are continue with our manikins, this is my progress of what was done so far. The latest parts added were the muscles talked about earlier at the beginning of the post. I feel as though these manikin assignments are beginning to take me longer and longer to do. This it may be due to the long list of muscles we are assignment or perhaps that the parts are becoming more intricate to create and apply. Either way, it is still work that needs to be done and done correctly so as long as it is worth it in the final grade I have no actual complaints. Overall I am pretty pleased with the outcome of what I have done so far. I only hope that they are in the correct locations and shape.