Midterm Post

I can honestly say that this has been a very successful semester, so far, in Life Drawing I. In the beginning I was nervous because I hadn't had a drawing class is over a year and I wasn't certain of how I would do. My sketches started out unproportional, messy, and just barely getting the idea of how the human form really looked. I was cautious to go into any sort of detail because I wasn't confident with how my drawings came together, and my line weights, well, I really only had one: dark. After even just the first week I began to see improvements. My lines were less sketchy and more confident and the proportions were getting closer to a real form/figure. I guess my biggest strength, so far, is allowing myself to fall out of old drawing habits and gaining new ones allowing me to become a better artist.

I have learned that the ribcage is an egg shape with the spine going through the center and that our pelvis is a long 'U' shape with a triangle in the middle. Generally, when doing a gesture drawing you are to start with these three main elements. I have also learned that the body overall creates a zig-zag from head to toe. The skeleton we are building has given me insight as to where each muscle lies and how it shapes our body into that zig-zag. It is so unbelievable how little we know about our OWN bodies!

I am looking forward to our trip to the Mall of America and the Minnesota Institute of Arts in November. I think it will be a great opportunity to see exactly what we've been learning in an environment outside the classroom.

By the end of the semester I would like to improve my gesture drawing skills and my line weights/pressure. Right now the gesture drawings I do are very minimal and my line weights need varying, as well as the pressure I use on my pencils to create those line weights.

Overall, I have impressed myself and I am proud of all that I have accomplished.

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