Guess who's Back!

Well we are now back from spring break, and I am sure everyone was eager to get started again. Spring break left us all a little bleary eyed and dazed to be up so early in the morning. Things got off to an unenergetic start, but that was just because of our, or at least my, unusual sleep schedule over spring break. This week our teacher talked to us about the shoulders, it was interesting, but I think this is something I will have trouble with in the future. Since the shoulder blades can change angles and aren’t always the easiest things to see I have had some difficulties in portraying them accurately in my sketches. I still feel a little rusty even thought the week has gone by. It is amazing what one-week of not drawing can do in a negative light. Although on the bright side, I started holding my drawing utensil differently at the beginning of the semester and it now finally feels natural. I do feel that this style of drawing is helpful even if it seemed totally weird at the beginning of the semester.

We also started putting together shoulder and more back muscles on our manikins. These muscles really made the manikin look human, well as human as it gets with a goat head. The back muscles were smooth and added the shape on the back that I am a little more use to, epically at the neck. Although it has been a rough time for Goatman, my maniken, since he has decided that standing up is overrated and leaped from perch. I also fear that his goat face my not be long for this world since I am running out of the red clay that I started this project with. If I do run out I will probably take off his clay head and replace it with a different color, I wouldn’t want to lose its sense of personalization. 

Spring is soon to be a foot!

Picture detailing bones in our feet

            This week was a lot more lax than the previous week. The fear of midterms is now over and the ram up to spring break had begun. To start off the week, we worked on our manikins, which I don’t have a picture of this week so look forward to that in the next post. After our clay adventures on Monday we started class on Wednesday learning about the bones in the foot and how to draw them in gestures. Our teacher broke it down for us and showed us how to draw the feet in a rather complicated box like fashion. It took us a while to understand it but I think the class got it for the most part. Though I am sure if someone who had no idea what class was going on in our room walked in to 15 students drawing feet they might think us mad.

Personally I found the feet rather difficult to draw, but on the bright side I believe that drawing them has help improve my eye to brain connection. What I mean is that staring at feet in weird poses for an hour and a half helped me see how the shapes of the feet turned in space, and thus helped me understand foreshortening better. If there is one thing that I have taken away from my drawing classes, though I take a lot away from them, it is that your eyes right off the bat will probably not be able to guess the correct angle to draw something accurately. There has been more than one occasion where I thought that I must have been seeing things when I measured out an angle with my pencil and put it on paper. However, the end result looks right, after several more lines. Art and in particular drawing classes work to train the eyes as much as train the hands, and if someone had told me that two years ago I probably would have walked away at a quickening pace.

Well I guess that is all for this post, I mean after all I am on spring break after all. There won’t be a blog entry next Sunday because I can’t blog about a week of life drawing class that hasn’t happened. So I will catch you all up in two weeks.

Half way there, before tea time.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/60315374@N08/ (My gallery)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/60315374@N08/5497766587/   (Drawing 7)

So first thoughts, what are these strange links above this? Well we are here at midterms, and that means it is time for the midterm portfolio review. To actually answer the question I asked above, the links are to my flicker account where you can see the work I have done so far in life drawing. Anyway, back to midterm talk. It is hard for me to believe that we have already been in this semester long enough for this week to be the middle. So I guess it is time to reflect on the first half and look at the second half with bright eyes and a bushy tail.

            All right, let us get the scary question out of the way first. What have I learned so far? So far this semester I have mainly learned that I am slow at drawing, 30 seconds is rarely enough time for me to get everything down. Other from that I have learned a lot about the muscle structure of the human body, and how muscles work in general. The teacher has also given us a lot of instruction into how to drawn forms quickly, which helps me see and draw better.

Drawing 7: from my Flicker

Speaking of drawing better, I feel like I have improved. When I walked into life drawing with a stick of charcoal I felt that my drawings were not much better than stick figures. Now I feel that my eyes have been trained to see what is actually happening in a pose that the figure is in. Now that I can see better it is just a matter of training my hand to follow what my mind is seeing. However, measuring techniques help immensely. For example in Drawing 7 in my flicker account, link above, I felt that I wouldn’t have drawn the figure nearly as accurately if I didn’t have these techniques. Although I feel that I am improving, I still have a long way to go.

            On that note, it is time to look forward to the greener side of the hill. So what would I like from the second half of the semester? This is a good question with no one answer. I would like many things with a variety of simplicity, from simple things to drawing faster and more accurately, to more complex things such as getting the pesky pelvis to behave, as it should in my drawings.

            I am hopeful that the next part of the semester will be as useful, if not more so, than the first half has been. Furthermore, I feel this class has helped me improve in my drawing ability, and will continue to do so in the future. I had my doubts taking this class, I will admit, but now that I am half way I don’t regret it for a moment.