Final

I can't believe the semester has already come to an end. The time has flown, but I feel as though I have learned a year's worth of information from this class. When drawing a person I never really knew how to start. Should I begin with the head? What about the body? Do I put detail in the face first? Or should I focus on the muscles? Most of the time, I would get frustrated and end up merely drawing the face itself because it's something I have done before. Now that I have completed this course, I am confident in drawing the entire form, starting with the spine, ribcage, and pelvis. When drawing the spine, I have great fluidity in my lines. The pelvis, however, is my weak point. I have a rough time "seeing" the pelvis through the outer shell of our bodies. On our final drawing day, I had a side profile view of the model and I was completely thrown off trying to figure out what the pelvis looks like at that angle. After the spine, ribcage, and pelvis have been completed, I move on to the larger appendages: arms, legs, and head. I try not to draw them in outline, but rather and quick, straight lines, similar to the bones inside. Last, I focus on the hands, feet, and details.

It is amazing how far my drawings have come since the first day. My lines were inconsistent, messy, and overwhelming on the page. I am now more confident in my line making and I do my best to keep things clean. I am still struggling with the line weights, but I have switched my medium, starting with a 5H pencil, before adding the charcoal. I wish I would have tried this sooner in the semester so that I didn't rip holes in the paper trying to erase the original lines I began with.

As I mentioned earlier, the face is something that I have drawn before, and it was definitely the most interesting part of the class for me. Before this course, I could draw a face, just not geometrically. Now I know how to structure it without relying on shading to make it look realistic.

My least favorite part of the class, this semester, was the skeletons. Trying to figure out what muscle goes where, which way it curves, if it has a belly or if it's flatter, is it under or over the other muscle that is already there... the questions are too many to count. In the future, it would benefit students to have more in-class time to work on them as well as a visual of a skeleton with the completed muscles already on it. This way, comparing could be done and students could help each other. It would also be beneficial if a skeleton was given to pairs of students instead of individuals. Two heads are better than one, right? Your partner might see something that you don't or you might better understand with their perspective.

I also disliked the shell drawings. I was never able to spend the actual alloted time on these large scale drawings because I didn't have the time with all my other classes. This last shell drawing was the worst because we were asked to use a medium that we haven't tried before, so it has been stressful figuring it out, to say the least.

Overall, the semester has been successful for me and I am walking away with a better knowledge of my body.

"Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom." - Aristotle

View my photos.

Amazing

I am SO pleased with the work that I have done this week. Faces, although tough, are my favorite thing to draw. So much emotion can be shown with the smallest details! I am excited that this week all of the different planes of each feature are coming out in my drawings, I FINALLY GET IT! It's about time. I think it helped that the face is something that I have studied and drawn frequently before entering this class. I noticed that my drawings have taken a more geometrical perspective now, with all of the plane shifting. It is interesting compared to my usual outline drawings. I have also been working on keeping my line weights lighter, using pencil and coming back in to darken parts with charcoal. I am looking forward to trying to put it all together next week, drawing the entire body as a whole with all limbs and features, but I am also scared. It has been so long since we have done the entire figure, I am afraid I will go back to my old habits! Next class period should be compelling for me and I hope I do well!

Large Shell

I have to admit that drawing in this scale is one of the hardest things I have had to do for this class, so far. I didn't enjoy this project because I have a really hard time getting my contour drawings to read as three dimensional. I actually ended up doing my shell twice. The first time around, I did a view with lots of texture on top (the outside of the shell). The peaks seem to give me the most trouble. I never know which way to draw my contours so that they look as though they are coming off of the page at the viewer. The two ends of the shell are my strong point for the first one. In the second one, I chose a view of the inside of the shell and it seemed to work much better for me. I am pleased with the fluidity of the lines and the interesting perspective. It seems abstract for the view that I used, but it still reads as a shell. I have no idea what I am going to do for the second shell drawing since I had such a difficult time with the first one, and I have never worked with ink before, so that should be interesting as well.

I definitely need more work on my contours.

Feet

I have a really hard time drawing feet. This could be because I hate feet, and that it is something I have never focused on. During the gesture drawings I don't even have time to put them in and they always end up being more of an outline. One of the hardest things for me is seeing how the toes connect to the foot, especially since the pinky and second to last toe are connected to the heel while the other three toes are connected to the top part of the foot. The contour drawing I did of a foot has two major issues. First off, it is very flat because I started with an outline. Second it is hard to read because the line weight is all the same. Since the beginning of this class, that has been the biggest challenge for me. I tend to draw heavy and I am not confident with my lines, so the sketches are confusing and messy. The second foot contour went much better (shown above).

Body World

I think that so far this semester, Body World has been my favorite experience. It excites me to see the body scientifically taken apart and explained. I could spend hours in that exhibit just looking over each detail of every bone, muscle, ligament, artery, etc. The section of the exhibit that intrigued me the most was the fetal/baby area. It is something that we haven't been able to discuss as a class or study in our drawings and it is weird to think that we started out so small. The drawing I chose to do while I was there was of a fetus at 20 weeks. I thought it was a good chance to expand my horizon. The main focus I had was the head and the arm. Unlike the adult body, the fetus head is much larger than the rest of the body and it seems quite out of proportion! It was also interesting that the skull isn't fused together... it is in pieces!

I have started to become worn out on the human figure and I am really looking forward to the large shell drawings, as well as getting to use ink instead of pencil and charcoal. It will be a nice change of pace!