Back at Stout

It was great to be home but this week wasn’t the nice slow start I would have liked after a break. Personal drama was definitely foreshadowing the tough couple of weeks in the future.

For this week Monday was the start of a new area of the body- the shoulders. I have been looking forward to this as I had always had a problem with the idea that the rib cage is an egg. I thought it should be an upside down egg because the torso seems larger at the top. With my new understanding of the scapula and the clavicles I can follow this approach.

The muscles of those bones were assigned next and they were fairly easy. The only question is how accurate mine are. I think I finally have a decent idea how to use the text book.

The next class was only half full thanks to unfortunate weather but I didn’t mind at all. We were drawing the scapula on the back and the clavicles on the front. As I drew the scapula I realized how little I knew of it before. I picked it up pretty easily. Part way through the class we heard that afternoon classes were cancelled and the model was chatty for the first time. It’s good that she feels comfortable enough to talk to us, as an awkwardly silence wouldn’t help me focus.

Friday was not as easy. Though the muscles were easier to pick out on our other model I had a much harder time depicting them. I think this is because I was trying to place the new muscles that we had been assigned but not yet built. There were loads of them. I am looking forward to drawing next week, after I finish this week’s muscles, as the figure will be almost complete.

... feet...

This week dragged. I hadn’t been looking forward to Spring break too much then on Monday I hit the wall. I was totally exhausted. But that’s life I suppose.

Anyway, art wise it was a struggle. Monday was spent on clay, doing the foot muscles.  This was fiddly as they were tiny and layered over each other. I had to redo them a couple of times because the foot was starting to look like a boot.  On a positive note, at work on Tuesday I drew a figure from memory using all the muscles and landmarks that I’ve learnt in class. And it was good! I guess you’ve gotta take the good with the bad.

We continued with feet on Wednesday, drawing only the main planes of the foot. I felt that it went ok. It was easier to draw the more complex positions than the normal angle of the foot.  Probably because the feet have very subtle angles … and are all too easily made into hooves. They are not great to look at anyway and my drawings did them no favors as you can see.

Friday’s drawings did not go according to plan. I was just as frustrated, if not more than those first few weeks. I crossed out more than one of my drawings and couldn’t stick to the subject. You can see my temper tantrum at the bottom.

I really tried hard because I know how important it is to get right. If you can’t get the feet right the sense of weight gets messed up for the whole figure. I can’t understand why they are so much more difficult for me than the rest of the figure. Usually I can get it if I can focus but not with this. Hopefully it’ll be better after a weeks’ break.

Midterm Madness

My Flickr

I have been looking forward to life drawing and we’re already halfway through it! Coming into this class I thought I could already draw a decent figure, now I know that I was wrong! At least I came with the determination to improve. The first day’s gesture work was a lot of fun for me as I had done a lot of it in the past but once we moved beyond that it started getting seriously frustrating. This is one of my first gestures link

I always drew quickly and without restriction, so drawing an egg on a stick, even a very specifically curving stick, was infuriating. Drawing only a few parts at a time lacked the instant gratification that I was used to.

I struggled with my motivation through the first weeks, keeping myself going with the knowledge that it was for good reason.  I had already been using the egg and spinal column in my drawings before class so it was when we added the pelvis that I began really seeing the benefits. ­My first attempts at the pelvis had the same problems as most other people- I put it too far away from the ribcage.

Drawing skills was the main thing I wanted to get out of this class but there is another big side to it- the mannequins. linkThey have many benefits. Firstly, though very, very difficult, it helps cement the forms of the muscles and their movements and is very different to anything I have been doing in my other classes. It’s a refreshing change of pace.

I have always had a problem with contour drawings but this class seems to have remedied that. I have seen improvement in the variation of my lines, something that my drawing 1 & 2 professors always stressed. Today we did an extended drawing of just the leg and it is my best contour yet and a good example of this.

As we add more and more muscles to our repertoire I enjoy this class more and more. It’s great to see an improvement in such a short period of time.