Summary of the semester

I feel as though I have learned a lot about bone structure, line drawing, cross contour lines in three dimensional space and the use of ink with drawing materials. It has been helpful to me to catalogue all of these things with my camera and place them online on this blog and my flickr account as well.

Shell Drawing 3

I am proud of the collection of various length drawings, maniken, and shell drawings I completed this semester and overcoming my fears of drawing from life. There are many ways in which I will continue to pursue the goals I set out for myself at the beginning of the semester in this class. I want to gain more confidence in my drawing skills in order to draw on the board as an art teacher as Amy draws three dimensional skeletal structure on the board in demonstrations. I feel like that skill will come with time and experience but it is something I am looking forward to.

Shell Drawing 4

One thing I believe I will continue to work on is my sense of identity in my drawings. As I traveled around the room during drawing sessions with the figure I noticed how distinctly different styles appeared on many classmates drawing boards. I want to be able to express my own style through my drawings as I do through my paintings. There are many ways in which Life Drawing has informed the figures I paint through proportions and tools I can utilize as though I am drawing through paint. I would like the opposite to ring true as well and have my painting style inform my drawing.

FINAL PORTFOLIO

Tuesday December 7th

Shell drawing three Critique

Some things in critique we needed to pay attention to and make note of were:

Did the shell demonstrate a strong long axis line?

Was the ink integrated well enough into the whole composition?

What kind of strokes were used and were they in the correct direction?

Do the contour lines and ink feel as though they were created by waves as the shell was?

Are the recessed areas darkened and protrusions or closer areas lighter?

What can be done to make the next shell drawing the best?

Today in class we critiqued our third shell drawing and I got some feedback from my group of classmates about good qualities in my drawings and things to improve on for the next and final drawing. My group said there was a nice depth of tonal range in the ink on my drawing. One way to improve on my next shell drawing is to pay attention to the front small spiral portion of the shell and make sure that it has the roundness that will make it feel three dimensional. In my drawing it did come off feeling a little flat in that area. I also need to go back in and darken the cross contour drawing. I initially drew the shell in very lightly in pencil and planned to go back in and darken the contour drawing but haven’t yet because I want to make sure it is well enough integrated into the ink.

For my next shell drawing I am looking forward to knowing what to expect with the ink and employing some new strategies we discussed in group critique. I am going to start out my ink use with lighter dilutions so that the areas can build up tonally slower. Then I will go in later on with darker concentration of ink into the recesses of the shell.

After the critique of our shells we drew the hands of our partner and traded off drawing for a half hour and then modeling for a half an hour. It was more difficult than I thought it would be but here was me giving it a shot.

On Thursday we talked about the skull and went over some interesting concepts of what makes up the basic shape of it. These are my hour long drawings from the skeletons in class.

December 4^th, 2010

As I was flipping through my biggie pad I noticed that I haven’t blogged about my figure work in some time. A while back we learned about the feet with the muscles and tendons over top. We completed a long drawing of the model’s feet and a long drawing of her seated up on the podium. These are photographs of my work from that day.

Study of the feet, long drawing

Long pose drawing

Most recently we worked on our manikins on correcting problems with the leg muscles in class and beginning the rest of the work to finish out the semester. I had some issues with my manikins thighs being too thin and some issues with blending the clay together too much on the back of the thigh. I went back in a couple days ago to delineate the muscles from one another and make them more distinct. Amy gave us books to look at that show how the muscles look together as a whole and I have been going back and forth from this book to the atlas to see how the muscles interact together. Now they look how better than they initially did with more roundness and attention paid to the separation between individual muscles.

As we learned about the arms and shoulders we learned how the clavicle and scapula work together on the figure. The shoulder blades should take up half of the length of the spine on the medial border of the ribcage on the back from the 2^nd to 7^th ribs. The shoulder blades will do whatever the arms do. After learning about the shoulder blades and clavicle we drew from the maniken with a series of gesture drawings and then a long drawing to become familiar with the form of the bone and connection to the arm and shoulder. I thought it was funny to be drawing from a skeleton but it was very informative to see where the bones form the shape and

contours of muscle tissue that will lay on top of them. In some ways I wished that we would have been drawing from the skeleton simultaneously from the beginning of the semester on days when the model was sick.

5 minute gestures of the skeleton with scapula and clavicle

Long drawing of the skeleton with scapula and clavicle