The Last One

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This is the last post of the semester and, man, has it come quickly!

I have been looking forward to life drawing since I started here at Stout. Coming into this class I thought I could already draw people reasonably well. Guess what; I was wrong.

The gesture drawing came naturally to me. I draw quickly and have done gestures before. My grasp on the movement in the figure was decent but looking back through my work I had no idea about proportion or the form of limbs.

Being fast at drawing actually became a setback once we started on longer drawings. Although I had a reasonably good eye for angles I lacked the focus and patience that my colleagues had. I think, I hope, that I have since remedied this. Now I can easily stay on one drawing for two hours, though much over that is a stretch.

One thing I have learned is the logical application of light. This has always been troublesome for me. The introduction of planes to my thought process allowed me to visualize lighting without having to see an example, something that will definitely come in handy.

The mannequin was also a wonderful tool in allowing me to visualize. As every muscle looks different angle it forced us to process it three dimensionally, making us register how each muscle works together with all the others.  It was probably the most frustrating part of the class, to spend hours on the muscles just to come into class and find that they are all wrong. Despite this, by the end I loved it. It was nice to use my hands, and work with a media other than the computer or paper.

I hope to find my place somewhere in the animating world and for this goal knowledge of the figure is essential. To know which muscles are needed for each motion. Which parts of the form can be manipulated without and which ones can’t. 

Although I took this class hoping to gain knowledge of the realistic figure (which I did) I have also seen my stylized drawings improve drastically. This I credit to the class. I have enjoyed it and hope to take the next one eventually.

 

The Face and all

I enjoyed drawing this week. On Monday we started a long drawing of the head, features and all. It was more difficult than I expected even though we had already been working on all of the features separately. But we did it anyway. The class split into two groups to draw the two models. In retrospect the view I drew from was too straight on. I feel that I still did a decent job of it. On Wednesday we continued the portraits. I worked on this drawing for almost four hours. At the start of the semester I found it hard to spend over five minutes on one picture. What a difference!

On Friday we returned to the full figure. It was bad. We’ve been working on the head and facial features for about two weeks now and while it was really enjoyable and definitely good to know, it showed me how huge a difference not practicing makes. Friday’s drawing started with quick gestures as we used to do. The break really showed. The first ten of them were terrible but I picked it up again pretty quickly. It’s nice to know that even if I do let my practice slide a little that I’ll be able to come back to it. Especially as I won’t be able to take life-drawing-two next semester. Maybe in the Spring.

For the long drawing I originally got a bad angle where most of the drawing would have been leg and wanted to do a full figure. So I moved when I got the chance. It was as though I had completely forgotten how to draw. I honestly didn’t know where to start. After about 20 minutes worth or failure I thought, ‘I don’t know what to do, so lets start from the start’. I went from spine to egg through all the limbs. This may seem obvious but I didn’t use to follow the formula that specifically. Anyway the drawing turned out ok. When we finished up for the day there was still something off about it. That’s ok though, we work on it again on Monday and I’ll have fresh eyes for it.

As we near the end of the semester the classes and weeks blur together. I don’t think this is a good sign. Maybe I’m getting old. I do remember that this week has been more sociable than most. We have been pairing up (or in my case clumping together with at least two others) and drawing each other. It has definitely given me a new appreciation for the models. I discovered that I could never do it. I don’t know why I thought I’d be able to sit still for that long... An absolutely impossible event.

Anyway, we didn’t have class on Monday due to Spring break. I am looking forward to the lecture on the structure of the skull. I hope it will help me improve on the structure of my skulls, they were looking either very squished or very stretched last week.

We also learnt eyes and nose time. Noses were difficult at first, at least until I started to think of them as a series of planes. It definitely helps, the only drawback is that then I make them a little over defined. 

Actually now that I look at this one again I think I need to work on noses. It looks a little wonky. 

Eyes weren’t too bad from the start. I don’t know how well I followed Amy’s way of drawing them but I like the way they turned out. Do you guys  think I need to improve on anything specifically?

Mouths and ears were harder. My ears looked like flat objects with patterns on them but Amy reminded me to use contour lines ( which I had been forgetting for no apparent reason) and they stated to look much better. Mouths were straight forward except I kept making them fuller than they need to be. Also I need to remember not to let the corners of the mouth meet.

I heard that the final project for this class will be a self portrait but I haven't decided if I'm happy about this or not yet. I have never drawn a realistic self portrait that I've been happy with. Not even close. It will definitely be a challenge.