Well here we stand.

This is finally the last blog post for this class. I'll be sure to comment on a few other people's posts and such, but this is the closing of the story for this class. Here I sit at 2AM the day of the final, listening to music from the video game Okami. It's a sad song too. Which is kind of fitting. I want to say that I've whined and complained here on this blog in several posts about not getting the point of the blog, and I'd be lying if I said I got it by now. I can understand wanting to display our work and keep it organized but I personally think that there are several better options to it. If you even wanted to keep to a blog format, do it for Word Press. Despite my whining though I sit here finishing this project.

Now I don't want you get to me wrong, I love this life drawing class. I really, really do. I enjoy it thoroughly even though it does get a little monotonous having to draw nearly the same thing every day. But I still love the class and I enjoyed the teacher. She was really laid back and created a wonderful atmosphere for the class which I really enjoyed and her teaching methods were well implemented.

For a reflection of my own work in the process of all of this though, I think I improved some, I got a better understanding of making the body more grounded with a skeleton before making any of the body mass work. I personally don't think that the muscle assignment helped me that much in learning about how the human body is built up, I think I would need a little more than just a single semester to really study how to the body is built up be able to recognize what muscle is being displayed on the body.

Over all, I would like to think that my drawing skill has increased because of this class, but I'm still not as good as I would like to be. In the end, here is the link to my flickr account: http://www.flickr.com/photos/42765524@N04/

This is from the one day in class that we had a nude male model. Unfortunately it's also from one of the days where I had next to zero motivation to draw. I can see many flaws with this picture and I kind of despise this picture entirely because of that. The strange thing is that I had more fun drawing the hand up in the corner than I did drawing the rest of the entire drawing. I think part of it was because the model took such a static and solid pose, it might have disinterested me because how static the pose was. I found drawing from the male model really awkward too. Not because he was a male model, though that did add to the awkwardness quite a bit, but I found it awkward mostly because a lot of the poses that he took were really solid and grounded as opposed to some of the female models who did more fluid poses. This was unfortunately so under my taste of liking that it received some of the dreaded writing that I only really put on some pieces that I really dislike. Other notable piece including this writing being my "Ugly Pear" (not found on this blog or portfolio) charcoal drawing.

I really wish I could redo this drawing with more motivation as I feel I could do a lot better. I know the cross contours are way off as well. Anyway, that's all I have for this piece.

Skull

I have to simply start out saying that I absolutely love this drawing. I do not know what it is but skulls are one of the things I really enjoy drawing the most. Maybe it's a secretly morbid desire or habit? Regardless I think this piece is one of my most successful pieces. I think that the semi minimalistic look of the few contour lines does not distract from the form of the skull and accent it in a way that makes you almost feel like you're looking at a real skull. This is because the lines are so few and far between that the bumpy texture that they imply is stronger told and the white area that is left blank feels more smooth and rounded, like the top of the skull which is mostly just a smooth white ball anyway.

I don't know if there was anything I could really do better about this skull. I like it as is, I could probably try and stray from using strong outline contours and using more cross contours and implied lines. I think that this picture really displays how I like to draw though, because being more of an illustrator I enjoy using heavy contours and lines to define a form more than using implied lines to define a form. I would love to draw over this picture in a smudge charcoal composition though, just to see how it would turn out, given the chance.

This was a longish pose we did in class, I want to say it was done for 10 minutes or slightly more. This pose was done off of a live model, in charcoal on a smooth white compress sheet of paper. This is one of the pieces I enjoy the most personally, I think this is because I believe I got a strong sense of proportion on this piece and was able to capture the entire body without a lot of trouble. Strangely one of my favorite parts of this piece is the simplified face of the model. I know we weren't really supposed to focus on the face to much, but I enjoyed adding that simple detail to this piece of work, because I think it gives the faceless model a bit more personality while keeping the sense that it's not really anyone that we should really focus on. I'm really proud of the hand in the background too, I think I was able to portray the foreshortening really well and make it look like it was grounded to the -admittedly non-existent- platform that the model is sitting on.

If I were to expand on this picture I think I would add a few more cross contours to help flush out the body into a more 3 dimensional form and also work with the line weight to help add to that 3 dimensional form. I think I would work with the legs a little more because while they are portrayed well I keep thinking that I see something off about them. I would appreciate tips if someone is willing to say anything.

Quick sketch 2

This is another picture of one of the live models that we needed to work from. This is before we learned about pelvis'. I really like how this 30 second to 1 minute drawing turned out over all though. I think that the pose was very energetic showing most of the body. I managed to get most of the skeletal work down quickly, though she does seem to be missing a leg. I do like how the pose turned out over all though, I think both arms have a strong energetic feel to them. I also think that most of the proportions on the body are relatively correct at least. I might try and expand on this picture later.

That's all I have to say about this picture.

Quick Sketch Of Model.

This is a bit more of what our instructor was looking for in our quick drawings currently. Although I kind of had a horrible angle for this drawing, namely the fact that there was a pillar between me and most of the model. I do however think this is a great rendition of the pose because it shows good proportions and understanding of how the body was sitting in space. Although the body is partially obstructed by the pillar that was there, I think the pillar actually helps make the picture more interesting. This is because the character is interacting with an object, sort of grounding it further in the environment.

This is one of the 1 minute drawings that we worked on as exercises from a live model. I tried to get the skeleton down on the drawing before getting some of the line of the contour out. I don't really know what else to say about this picture, I do think it's one of my better contour drawings, so I decided to put it in my portfolio.

Field Trip

At one point through the semester our life drawing class took a field trip off to the Walker Art Center and Bell Museum of Natural History. During our trip to the Walker art center we were supposed to find out about one of the artists and write about them unfortunately due to complications we didn't have enough time to simply find one artist and write about their work. Instead this post is about the entire experience in both of the museums.

I myself am sort of a fan of some contemporary art, but some of the art at the Walker Art Center was just a bit to out there for my tastes. Most of the stuff I didn't really understand, much less like. One of the more memorable exhibits I saw there was an exhibit about the phases of life. It had several different parts, ranging from being a star, to playing an online game that simulates life, along with other pieces of work. I didn't understand the exhibit at first but I did recognize the game when they were showing it, which is what caught my attention initially.

Next we went to the Bell Museum of Natural History. This was a small history museum based on exhibiting taxidermy animals. During our trip there we were supposed to draw a picture or two of either a taxidermy animal, a real animal that was there or a skull/ bone that they had upstairs. I did a few pictures but they seem to have gotten lost recently so unfortunately I can't upload them. I did really enjoy the whole trip out to the other museums though and I thought some of it was helpful to our learning experience by seeing what others are doing for art currently in the world and learning about different bone structures and body structures outside of humans.