5th week of Life Drawing

HIPS HIPS HIPS! This week of Life Drawing was mostly about discovering and learning about hips (for me anyways).  Looking at earlier drawings that I have done when I was younger I noticed that I was completely wrong when I would locate the hipbones on my figure drawings.  My hips were much lower in my older sketches.  After finding that the “wings” of the hips are much higher than I thought, my drawings have taken a more realistic and proportional form.  Also learning the shape of the hips from the front, back, and sides has also improved the proportion and figure of my drawings.  I also have caught myself up on my model.  Since I was absent all last week I was a little bit behind on my model but was able to get up to speed without any confusion on muscles placement and proportion (which is good news).   I feel like my drawings are gradually becoming lighter, which is good for me because multiple teachers have told me that I am quite heavy handed.  So drawing/sketching lighter is most definitely a positive change for me.  I have noticed that my perspective as become more and more real and in better proportion in comparison to my older figure drawings.  Although depicting which angle arms and legs are coming from is in need of a little more work and practice.  The longer drawings are also kind of frustrating because one-minute drawings are much quicker and much easier to over see small mistakes.  The one-hour drawings are more frustrating because I have time to point out and fix mistakes in the drawing, rather than just drawing for a quick 30 seconds and ignore mistakes because I simply would not have any time to go back and fix them.

3rd-4th week of class

Well since I was gone over the last week I figured I would get into details about my third week of Life Drawing and talk about my absence (which still involves art).  The clay models are becoming more fun and ‘do-able’.  I almost like working on them, although I have begun talking to my manikin on a regular basis.  I am starting to believe it’s kind of cool and almost fun to see how each individual muscle creates types of movements.  While I was absent this past week, I was at a Funeral so I had the opportunity to hangout with my cousin, Dirk, who is two years older than me and is an illustration major at University of Minnesota Moorhead.  My cousin and I have always drawn pictures together when we were little, although he has always been better than me.  His drawings are amazingly detailed; most of his drawings are like looking at comic book pages that were redone in pencil or a ‘bic’ pen.  Dirk showed me some of his sketches and his sketchbook; they were full of quick figure sketches of people he sees in the Fargo/Moorhead area.  The sketches just looked like scribbles on a piece of paper but they were in perfect proportion and he was able to portray the person’s emotion through the figure without details. My cousin drew a few characters from a graphic novel he is making for his senior project.  Seeing his drawings always inspire me to sketch and draw everyday (even though I don’t).  He’s not a famous artist but I’ve always admired and looked up to my cousin for his ability to draw and his creative way of portraying characters he makes.  But I would have to say that comic books have been a major inspiration in both of our styles and drawing techniques.

2nd FullWeekOfClass

The second week of class has been very eye opening to my view of the human body.  First off, I would like to say how scared and excited I am to be working on a clay model as part of class.  Cleaning off the clay from the previous classes models was frustrating because of the small space and crevices of the skeleton model.  I will definitely be purchasing some type of tools for clay.  I think that in my case the clay tools will not only come in handy but will be necessary because I’ve been none to have clumsy hands and I would like to have a somewhat detailed muscle model.  I am scared to have the model because it sounds like a number of our drawings may be dependant on our own models.  If my model looks off or not proportioned then my drawing will probably reflect my clay modeling skills.  So far having the live model to view has been different.  I have never used a life model as a reference to draw from because I have never thought it was necessary but just from the few times we’ve had a model in class my insight to the human anatomy has already be improved.  Many of my thoughts about the map of the human body have been questioned and/or completely changed due to the model.  For example I feel like I have never seen hips, lower chest and lower abs of a human being before having this class.  All of the poses have shown me how a person is stiff and flexible according to which part of the body is being used.  The backbone has become particularly difficult to trace in good scale and proportion.  But I believe both the clay and live model will help me become a more realistic artist in general. Thanks for reading.