Final Refelection!

Life drawing has been my best drawing class to date. I feel like I have learned the most and improved the most from this class than ANY other art class I have taken. The best part is that I’m not quite sure when or how this happened, but looking through my past drawings to what I’m creating now is like night and day. It’s kind of strange, but I can honestly say I really like most of the drawings that I have created. Which is very rare in general that I’m proud of my work without being hypercritical.

After I get my degree in Multimedia Design I’m hoping to work with storyboarding, animations, movies, and films as well as photography focused on photojournalism, documentary, fashion and portraiture. I really love the idea of being able to draw portraits and understanding the human form so that I can use varied techniques but still know how to properly represent it. Already I can see a significant improvement in my drawings. I’m leaning towards the explanation that because my approach to how I draw has changed that’s why my skill has changed too.. if that makes sense. I’ve found standing up allows me to use my shoulder much more easily to draw. That alone should account for the majority of my progress, being able to draw with my shoulder more than my wrist and holding my media loosely instead of tightly really helped my range with lines, weights, and movement.

Because we learned how to create movement and evoke life from static poses as well as plain seashells, I feel like any drawing I create is going to take on the same characteristics. If we can make something as static and solid as a shell show motion and a sense of ‘life’ every drawing is going to just be better from experience.

This class has helped so much I’m really surprised, I just can’t get over how big of a change I’ve seen in myself. The only criticism I can give to the class is that the critiques were very unfulfilling and not at all satisfying, also I wish there would have been less super short gesture drawings and more longer gestures, well, in a perfect world---way more long poses and more working with the full skeletons. I understand the purpose to working with the short gestures to warm us up, but an hour of 30 second to 2 minute gestures got really disheartening and just frustrating. The Manikens I also think in idea form to learn the muscles is an interesting approach to learning the muscles and I understand why we needed to… but I also feel like it was unnecessary to base SO much of our grade on a clay Maniken when it’s a drawing class. I think the way our grades are averaged is kind of upsetting in a way. 2/5 of our grade have nothing to do with actually drawing---physically drawing, the blog and the Maniken. By all means we should definitely be expected to create the muscles on a Maniken and it is not asking a lot to write a blog entry every week but to base that much of our grade on it is a little excessive when we really should be focusing on drawing. BUT! This was my favorite class this semester, I learned a lot from it, took a lot out of it, and met some really amazing people. Definitely a great experience.

Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/54280697@N02/collections/72157625499981807/

(Dec. 9?)

This was our 3rd shell critique, also known as the first shell with ink! This was when I really realized that the group critiques aren’t the way I’d like to get criticism on my work, or give it for that matter on other’s work. It’s not like I’m afraid to give or take feedback, but without sounding too snobby, I would rather hear what my teacher’s ideas for improvement, what I did well from them than from my classmates. For the most part, I have little to no experience with drawing shells or ink washing them. I’m assuming (if I’m wrong, I’m sorry) the others in class have little to no experience as well in this area. So honestly, I can’t really effectively take or give the criticism. We’re all new to this idea and technique, I feel like Amy should have just made a big group critique and taken a class period to go over inking techniques and overall how to improve it.

I’m just overall really annoyed with the inked shells. This is going to sound whiney and annoying but… I have no experience with ink and I did play around with it but I still got almost nothing in terms of an outcome. It would have been more helpful to have demonstrations on how to actually ink the shells or SOMETHING. I really don’t feel like I learned anything from the lecture, it was kind of just a waste of a class period… Too much complaining I know. I’m overall disappointed with all of my shell drawings and especially my inking skills. It’s frustrating.

One other thing to complain about (bear with me) is that I wish we would have been able to draw the skeleton in correlation with the model. I think it would have been a lot easier to envision the gestures and the placement of bones in a live figure with the familiarity of the skeleton. The Maniken works, but it’s not the same and I hated the Maniken…

(Dec. 4)

This week we looked at drawing the feet and hands of the model. We were lectured on how similar the bone structure is between the two parts. Initially I was dreading any and all drawings that would have to be centered on hands and feet. They’re the two body parts that are extremely difficult to draw well. The proportions are difficult and hands and feet will look goofy with even the slightest error. No pressure.

I didn’t really like my first attempts at drawing feet, however, my fourth attempt (yes, fourth) was satisfactory, I think the contour lines helped a lot to show the form of the different toes and such. Originally Amy I think told us to concentrate on how the tendons and muscles were working as a cohesive group to create the shape and form of the calf part of the leg as well as the foot. I think I drew too quickly still with this particular drawing and again I drew really dark. I have been trying to be aware of how frequently I outline, it’s becoming rather annoying to say the least. I really like the drawings where they’re light and subtle with implied lines, but either I am not there yet or it is just not my style.

We also drew hands. We drew each other’s hands and needless to say I think with all of the stress from Thanksgiving break being over and all the coming up deadlines being right around the corner, people were getting rather annoyed. It’s weird when we are the ones being drawn, opposed to the ones doing the actual drawing. I would much rather do the drawing from now on. Please and Thank you. My hand drawings were pretty hideous. Feet, meh. I’m just going to stick with full body forms…. The End!

almost-but-not-quite-thanksgiving-post

Today was the field trip to the Walker Art Center/Thang in MN and then the History Museum afterwards to draw taxidermy and things of that nature.

After the bus mishap… at the Walker, I wasn’t really feelin’ it. I didn’t really see anything that I thought was all that specatacular to be honest. I don’t know if I’m just not into interpretive art or modern art or whatever but I really didn’t see anything that I liked. Well, I take that back—the photography part was tolerable. But everything else was kind of just there.

Can I just say that the nude live models in the feather nest thing were strange and I didn’t get it at all? Can I say that? Cause I did. The only part of the Walker that I liked (besides the photog stuff) was the very top level of the Walker, it was this big room with shapes on the wall in red, blue, and yellow. Pretty sure that wasn’t even an exhibit, just a regular room.. but it was better than everything else in there. We didn’t go out by the Sculpture Garden, kind of just said forget it and waited to leave.

Originally I thought that the loss of time because of the bus was going to be really unfortunate and that we wouldn’t be able to see anything but… I’m glad we lost time, I’m not sure why I didn’t like anything in there, but I just couldn’t get amped about it. Oh well, better luck next time I ‘spose.

Now, at the History Museum that I thought was going to be boring, I really liked it. I ended up drawing a beaver eating some tree trunks and stuff. My drawing I spent wayyy more time on the tree trunks than the actual animal, fur is kind of difficult to draw, ferreal. Um, yeah at the end I was just kind of listening to my iPod and there was some really upbeat punk and ska music playing so I just made really really fast marks going to the beats of the songs for the fur, so it’s kind of sporadic…

(Nov. 18-ish)

This week we were focusing on more of the inking for our shell drawings. By this time I was kind of sick of doing just the contour lines of the shell so adding ink sounded really interesting. Of course in class the examples that Amy showed us were super fantastic final drawings of students from another teacher’s Life Drawing blog. Not to say that was intimidating but…. I was definitely intimidated. Hah. I picked up purple ink for my shell, thinking it would look good with the black and… definitely didn’t use it correctly or just bought too bright of a color.

But anyways---most of the class was a lecture about inking the shells and being aware of how the ink would affect the shell. We were advised to not let the ink take over or look like it was just added and wasn’t really apart of the drawing as a whole, but to make it look like it helped create the form give it a more realistic ‘life-like’ look. After the lecture we were allowed the last part of class to get a basic contour drawing of either our shell or the random fragments of skulls and bones to do our test on it. I chose to draw a skull as my testing object because I forgot to bring my shell into class that day. I really like drawing skulls. Someday I’d really like to be able to draw people accurately and the skull is … obviously really important. But anyways, with my skull drawing overall I was happy with it for not knowing how to draw it I guess. Then…. I added the purple ink. It was discouraging. I had been really excited to use the purple ink I thought it was going to look amazing, and then I put it on the paper and literally could not control the ink and then I just kept on adding and adding to it because I didn’t like what it looked like. I wasn’t letting it really dry either I just kept adding ink and well… yeah. Bad.

(Nov.9)

(original shell)

That week we had been comparing and contrasting our original contour shell drawings with the second attempt. Originally I didn’t have my shell done on time, so I wasn’t able to actually get feedback on my shell drawings, but I know from my own criticism that my first shell was much better overall. My second shell I tried to execute the contours a bit better but for some reason I couldn’t get past the urge to outline it.

While listening to the other critiques it seemed that most people improved slightly. A lot of the previous mistakes/harder aspects of the drawing seemed to arise in the second drawing also. I think it would have been a little more helpful to draw the shell at the same angle? Or not. I’m not too sure. I think it might have been easier to recognize the problem areas and then fix them if it had been the same angle.. Definitely wouldn’t have been as interesting as a different angle, but it would have been easier to compare and contrast by far.

I don’t think I like the small group critiques as much as the critiques in other classes. Where the entire class focuses on one drawing rather than 5 people on 5 different ones. I found that it was a lot harder for others to get feedback from people on their drawings in comparison to the big group critique. A lot of people didn’t really want to talk or didn’t know what to say? We all would have been able to get more feedback and improvements from a large room critique. The downside of those critiques is that it would have taken about ten times longer to complete, but mayyybe for our second drawings that we need to improve even further—it would have been far more helpful. Something to try out perhaps? Who knows.

(This is my favorite drawing so far; I had to keep on working on it, keep on working on it, but afterwards (minus the feet) I really was happy with it)

This semester I think is probably my best drawing class to date. I was initially incredibly nervous to draw nude figures, but I think I've produced my most self-pleasing drawings yet. I like that finishing a drawing isn't the main focus. I've also come to be more dependent on my ability to draw lightly and map down a quick light gesture drawing opposed to putting marks on the paper, fairly dark, only to become frustrated with them and go to town with my eraser. I don't really use my eraser all that much and I'm liking the organized mess.

I have always wanted to learn how to draw people, body forms and I finally feel like I'm able to do that in this class. So far I'm quite pleased with how I've been transforming in my style of drawing. I'm slowly getting out of the outlining phase and trying to let the implied lines outline the forms, but it's really quite difficult. For some reason, I like the bold, hard outline and I'm trying to stray away from it, but I'm not at the point I'd like to be quite yet. Sometimes I'll outline without even thinking about it, then realize I did and veolia it's already too late, my eraser has a hard time erasing my outlines.

The only part of the class that has become a kind of hassle, has got to be the skeleton. I just can't seem to mold the forms correctly, I'm looking at the book, but they just don't turn out right... I'm positive my grade for the Maniken is going to be less than satisfactory, but I've started over so many times, I'm not going to do it again. The main thing I'm concerned about is making sure that my drawing abilities improve and they are. Looking at the Manikens helps, but making the clay muscles-although it's a fantastic approach to learning the muscles...I'm much better off just studying what each muscle group is called, where they're all located and looking at Amy's Maniken for reference or the book. For whatever reason, clay and I do not get along, at all.

Also I really hated drawing with my arm in the beginning, rather than my wrist, but it's vastly improved my drawings. Standing up rather than sitting has also helped. While I'm standing I'm able to step back from it frequently and move to the side, then the other to get a better look at the subject.

In terms of expectations, I would just say I expect to continue to evolve in my drawings and hopefully get better with the Manikens.

My flickr account, just click on 'flickr'

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Flickr: lizzaylizz!

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