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.

Life Drawing: Week 9

Hi everyone, welcome to my 9th week posting.  It has been a difficult week getting back into school mode, especially getting back into the habit of drawing again. Aside from the life drawing class I have had an interesting week catching up with my other classes. Anyways, this week we focused on areas of the shoulder, back, and obliques. This week we had time to work on both our manikin and our drawings.  As the course moves forward it becomes more difficult to draw all the components of the body within the 30 seconds gesture drawings. Although it has been getting harder, I believe it will help benefit our drawings when we do our 45 to an hour drawing.

On Friday, it was interesting to get a different perspective rather than the female model. In this drawing of the male model, he was positioned awkwardly making it difficult to begin the drawing. As I observe the drawing it appears that the torso area was a bit too long. I had trouble locating most of body parts, especially the shoulder blades. I hope as the class move forwards I will learn to locate the body parts easier. Overall I think this drawing turned out okay, but I just wish I could have located the main body parts.

This week we were assigned several muscle groups such as the teres minor, infraspinatus, supraspinatus, teres major, serratus anterior, rhomboid minor, and rhomboid major. It was quite intimidating after receiving the assignment as it seemed like a never ending list of muscle parts. I was amazed how quickly I completed the assignment. Although I have completed the assignment I was still confused if all the muscles I attached were put on correctly. I believe one of the hardest parts about the manikin assignments are just determining if they are attached correctly. Hopefully sometime this week I can get my manikin checked by our instructor. Overall, I like how the manikin is looking.

Life Drawing: Week 7

Hello, welcome to my new posting. This week we moved away from the body of our life figures and began focusing more on the leg and feet. Unlike the previous weeks I believe we were able to balance out working with both the manikin and drawing in class. I felt it was quite beneficial to have a sense of balance rather than focusing more on one than the other. As we looked closer at the form and shape of the feet it was interesting to break down the individual parts into box like forms before going in into details. I think this approach was a good learning experience that I can apply to more of what I do in my Industrial Design work. So far in class I have noticed that the feet has been one of the most difficult forms to draw. I found it quite challenging than most of the other features we have focused in class. If we were to draw the some part of the feet incorrectly then I felt the whole drawing was destroyed. In addition, It was difficult to distinguish where the planes of the feet met. This made it difficult to draw a realistic replication of the foot.

1 Hour-Foot Drawing

This drawing was drawn towards the end of the class on Friday of our male model. As I was drawing the feet I had trouble maintaining the individual planes on the toes and from making them appear like little sausages. After some addition help from the instructor, it was interesting to see that even the toe nails had a certain thickness. By giving the toe nails each individual planes I was able to create a more three dimensional image of the nails. Overall, I was satisfied with the results of my drawing. As the class continues I hope to improve my drawing skills in this class.

Midterm Blog Posting

This first half of the semester has been an incredible journey. It has gone by so quickly yet I have learned so much within the time period. The class has been one of the most interesting classes I have taken so far. It was fun to experience a different drawing style that I am not traditionally used to. I can say my ability to draw the human body has improved significantly from when I first entered the class. Although I have had similar classes in the past, this has been one of the most beneficial. It was interesting to explore all the unique features of the human anatomy that helps form the figure. I enjoyed how the class broke down each section of the human body. This allowed us have a better understanding of each piece, rather than trying to learn everything at once. I enjoyed working with the manikin because it helped me develop a greater perspective on how the muscles were aligned and layered together. By being able to work with the manikins and incorporate what we learn to the drawings it helped make a dramatic difference when drawing the life figure. I was able to see where the rib cage and pelvis where located easier, unlike before when I was not aware of their placement.

30 Minute Drawing

This is probably one of my better drawings I have done in class. I tried to incorporate everything we have learned in class by capturing the rib cage, spine, and pelvic regions. I tried to capture the proper form of each region using simple contour lines to represent to roundness of the forms. Overall I thought the drawing was pretty successful and portrayed the life figure well. I believe as the class progresses I hope I will be able to draw the rest of the figure in correct proportion and form. 

Please check out my other drawings and the manikin on my Flickr account:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/59964810@N07/