My last post

My Flicker account            

I can’t believe all that I have learned over this semester.  When I think back to last semester when I was in open drawing I was so daunted by the beautiful human body because back then it was about drawing outlines.  I know I have stated this multiple times before but truly this was the first drawing class that got it in my head that we are merely drawing the edges of a form rather than an outline.  I think that the reason that this was enforced was perhaps because of the manikins.  Because I was able to use clay to mold the muscles in a three dimensional view I was able to understand what we were drawing was not just 2d but something 3d occupying 2d space.

            Even though I learned this early on in the semester I perfected it throughout.  At the beginning that would have to be my biggest weakness that I had, that and a lack of understanding of what everything was and where everything went.  However now that I am done with this semester I can proudly say that I can fit most bones into the places that they should reside and countless muscles as well.  You can see this in many of my long drawings however I am most proud of my long pose number 2 because I was not able to put them in but the angle made them foreshortened.

            One of my biggest weaknesses is however that I don’t know all the muscles yet.  I hope over the summer to work on my comprehension of these and learning how the are in the body. 

            Although I think the thing that I appreciate the most from this course is the fact that I will be able to take what I learned, which is being able to draw the body in countless positions and knowing the body structure and use it in being an animator.  I will be able to now take what I know and pass it on to learning different animal anatomy, or come up with my own creature with distorting the human anatomy.

 I am so glad that life drawing was everything that I was hoping it to be.  I really hated some parts such as the manikins that I had to work on after class and still not looking correct but other parts I really enjoyed like learning to see and learning to enjoy what I was drawing.  All of these parts came together wonderfully and created a class that I will never forget and always appreciate, and that is with no exaggeration.

One week left

Once again this week flew by, and here we are on Sunday wondering how it has gone by so quickly.  Only one thing is different this week since we only have one Monday left before the final on Friday.  This really makes me sad because I feel like this class was so important and was always excited to go to.  I know next semester I will have more classes but I will really miss this class. 

            This week was especially fun because we had longer drawings which is a fun switch up then our normal hour tops pose.  The first one is the head, which we drew for two whole class periods.  It was frustrating but fun to try to see and correct what you thought you knew about the head.  I though that the skull was much smaller than it was but Amy pointed out that it needed to be elongated even further.  I think that its going to be tough to do the final piece the self portrait just because of the short notice.  Luckily our portfolios aren’t due on Friday otherwise I would be way more overwhelmed than I already am.

            On Friday we started out doing some gesture poses, and was I surprised to see how off they were since I had not practiced them in a while.  After the gesturing we did a long pose that we will continue on Monday.  I decided since this is the last pose of the semester I was going to take up a place that was a difficult angle.  And I found the perfect place; I am directly behind the model and above him which creates a pose you normally don’t see and lots of foreshortening.  I forgot to take a picture of it but I was having difficulty with the hands because of the way they looked on him.  

hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil

This week we only had Wednesday and Friday.  Even though it was a short week I feel that we have learned a lot.  We started in on the nose and eye on  Wednesday taking advantage of our fellow classmates and drawing.  I thought this was harder than normal because I have this horrible knack to laugh at the most inappropriate times.  Then trying hard not to laugh makes it all the much worse.  So I don’t think I was the best model but it got the job done.  I was able to draw the nose two times on Wednesday since I had three partners but still need to make up the eye by holding my sister hostage sometime. 

            On Friday we worked on the ear and the lips.  I found the ear extremely fascinating since the ear is so different on each and every person and I had never known that before.  It truly is a wonder that I was able to go through every day in my life and not notice the things that I have learned in life drawing.  It really is amazing to be able to draw the human body and learn how similar but different every single person is from one another.  Anyway I was able to draw the whole day on Friday and not model which was good for me but even better for those drawing. 

            This week I did a little research again for myself on the human nose and even ended up going through my yearbook and looking at the differences in faces and structures.  I think that perhaps next week ill look more into ears but they are daunting and therefore I am procrastinating on actually working on them.  I’m very excited for tomorrow because Amy will be giving us the lecture on the skull.

 While I was looking up things on animation which is something I usually do in my free time I saw an interesting video that was talking about Tarzan and the amazing animator Glen Keane He drew the underdrawing and then when they were in france looking at different sculptures he had a anatomy professional come in and draw where the muscles would be in the actual body.  They also did this for some of the gorillas, I thought it was really interesting using what we have learned in the actual art.  I cant wait to be able to draw really dynamic poses like these and be able to place all the muscles in.  Maybe once school is over this semester I'll have more time to do so.