October 5th

This week we had a lecture on the abdominal muscles including the Quadratus Lomborum, External Obliques and the Rectus Abs. We continued to draw gesture drawings of the model with the long axis line and the egg of the ribcage in mind as the first step in our drawings. I keep finding myself trying to get close up to my drawing and have to hold myself back. The shoulder work is quite exhausting but it is nice to think that I am building up those muscles to use them in painting too.

October 7th

After a bit of gesture drawing we did the relational angle drawing exercise today. Meanwhile we were drawing with our utensils taped to the end of a pencil to force ourselves to stand back and use our whole arm and body to draw the figure. The angle drawing exercise is where you are constantly measuring and recording the angle and distance of major points on the the model and indicating them on your drawing. I found this to be a fascinating process. First you lay down a very light gesture drawing where the

figure is on your page and then you move back in to specific areas closely measuring their correctness compared with the model using your drawing utensil like the hands on a clock. I found the process to be very consuming of energy trying to get every detail properly placed on my paper. It got difficult at points to clarify what I was really seeing. It was troublesome when we took breaks for the model and slight details were off in areas but I tried my best to work around those.

Over the weekend Gertrude got a nice set of chiseled abs, looks like she might even be smiling. Just a little bit.