Final Post

My Portfolio
This is my last post for the class, as it is the end of the semester.  This was not the class I was expecting, that's for sure.  I was expecting an easy class just drawing nude models and then discussing them.  Making muscles on a skeleton and drawing shells were definitely not in the class description.  The shell added a nice piece to the course but I don't know if I ever got the cross-contours down as well as some people.  The Manniken, well it was a pain in the ass but it did help somewhat.  It was really difficult but it did give me a better understanding of the body for sure.
I found I had a lot of trouble actually sitting and drawing for the long drawings.  I get restless pretty easily and it probably didn't help that we drew the same person for the whole semester.  K must have made bank this semester though.  It's like the highest paid student job on campus I think.  Anyways, it ended up being a much harder class than I anticipated.  I don't know if I would ever take Life Drawing 2 or not.  The body and the skeleton interest me, but I feel like i didn't understand it quite as well as some of the others in class.
Overall, I am just glad that the semester is over, I am definitely ready for a break.  The class was a success, I may not get the grade I want but I think I will get the grade I deserve, I feel like I didn't not necessarily give it my all, but I guess there's not much I can do about it now.  Have a good break! I know I will!

Here's just a picture that makes me happy, since you have a link to all my other artwork up there and I need at least one image.

Danger Will Robinson!

50 muscles loom ahead of me, and the days keep creeping along, slipping between my fingers.  Honestly, I don't know where all my time goes.  Possibly to my current binge of watching every season and every episode of the Gilmore Girls (currently on season 4 c'mon Luke and Loralai, get it together!!!).  Anyways, that's beside the point, the point is, I am feeling extremely overwhelmed and don't even want to start on the muscles, even though I know I should.  It's just such a daunting task and something that won't be finished in one sitting.  That's a little frustrating for a girl who likes instantaneous results.  Also frusterating (i can't for the life of me spell that word right.  I see the little red line but let me just keep the extra r, you're ruining my typing flow).  See, I'm just all over the place!  I guess I finished my ink drawing, it's better than I expected but I know I can and will do better for the final.  I'm glad we get to do two of them since this ended up being more of an experimentation for me at least.  Can't wait to see all the colors on Tuesday too, no more blacks and browns!  Looking forward for the semester to be over, along with the sexual tension on the Gilmore Girls. Also, still puttering away in the pedantic language of good 'ol Leo, I'll let you know how that goes.  Finally made it to part two, Kitty has fallen ill, but is it for real or is it simply heartache for her wrong choice in suitor.  How can there be like six more parts and 600 more pages of this book.  Grr, I will get this book under my belt if it kills me, and then move onto someone easier, like Steinbeck or Hemmingway.  I'll take crazy underlying symbolism of Hemmingway to Tolstoy any day at this point.

Field Trip

So I had to get home for something on Tuesday and was not able to attend the field trip.  I probably should have gone but I needed to be home and was worried we wouldn't be back in time.  However, I visit the Walker quite frequently so  I at least know of one piece that was of interest to me.  The one that I always like seeing is the Chuck Close one.  It always entrances me and to be honest the first time I went there it was the only piece I recognized.  From where, I don't know.  Anyways, to me, this piece is just interesting and I really like that it is centered in the frame, simply because that's what artist's tell you never to do, centering is like the worst thing you could do, but in this instance, it works.  Haven't started working on my shell yet, try and do that tomorrow.  I'm a little nervous for the ink but hopefully it turns out.

Tolstoy instead of Drawing

This week we had a day off on Tuesday which was nice because I had a major headache and wasn’t looking forward to a three hour class.  Thursday was alright and it was very informative but I’ve got to be honest, not looking forward to using the ink.  I don’t know, I haven’t had too much experience with it but from what I have used of it, it’s not my favorite and I feel like I am going to put it on too dark and ruin my shell contour drawing, maybe not, I guess time will tell.

What I did do this week was start reading Anna Karenina by Tolstoy and so far I am thoroughly enjoying it.  I have only made it about 30 pages but for Tolstoy that’s like a long ways.  He is not very succinct but I am really enjoying the descriptions of Russian culture.  So far, a skating scene and the overall town of Moscow have been discussed and it really seems like a different world, one that hasn’t exactly been on my radar.  I guess it’s a love story, according to the synopsis on Wikipedia, as I said, haven’t gotten that far.  It’s just been something I have always wanted to read.  This really has not much to do with art except for the function and existence of art and fancy architecture in the high society world the character’s live in.

I guess I am just glad that we didn’t have too much work for Life Drawing or rather any of my classes because it gave me time to focus on another part of the arts, literature.  Hopefully, I can add this to my list of books I’ve read and I hope that it can help broaden my sense of the arts as a whole, not just bits and pieces here and there.

Day off!

This week was all about our shells and more muscles.  On Tuesday we discussed our shell drawings and how they improved or still could improve from our last attempts.  I think my shell this week was definitely better than my first attempt so I’ll focus on the positives first before tearing it apart.

First off, my shell was slightly bigger than my last one and it used less contour lines so it looked a lot cleaner.  Also, everyone liked the use of the red conte versus the regular black charcoal which was another plus.  They felt the lines were more descriptive than my last drawing and I could see why since I actually spent time on it this time instead of whipping it out in an hour which is what I did with my last attempt. 

The things that could change or get better is the atmospheric perspective, overall the shell was pretty much one color.  I tried to make the back lines lighter but I always start out drawing too dark and so by the time I got to the back I couldn’t make it any lighter.  I started to on one edge but I can make it more pronounced.  Another thing to work on is just adding a couple more lines going lengthwise on the shell, they said that would really help define the overall shape and it would be easier to see the form of the shell.  Finally, just something I want to work on is the line weight and changing between thick and thin, I tried doing it this time but I really want to focus on it in my next try. 

I am looking forward to discussing our Mannikens on Tuesday because I want to know what I can do to make it better.  I feel like the blue clay I chose is really hard to work with versus the regular brown.  It is harder to smooth out and look nice and maybe people have tips on how to make that happen.  It is definitely getting easier to make the muscles, I don’t know if they are exactly right but I think it’s looking pretty good.

Muscles and Shells

This week was actually a little better than previous weeks.  I found myself a little more motivated when it came to my homework assignments as well as in class.

Tuesday I felt like I didn’t have enough time for the long pose which is always a good thing.  However, I’m still struggling or having trouble with my gesture drawings.  I still don’t have the shapes of everything down.  I may get them in one drawing but in the next I get the pelvis wrong or something like that.  I still feel like the 30 seconds isn’t long enough to get everything in.  I want to try and work on that this week as well as drawing the figure using less lines.  I always draw pretty sketchy and I want to try to make definitive lines instead of hesitant messy marks.

Back to homework assignments,  I thought the  shell drawing number two was due on Thursday of this week so when I found out it was due next Tuesday, I was thoroughly grateful. It gave me a lot of time to spend on the drawing.  I definitely had better time management on this drawing then I did on my first attempt.  I am still not entirely happy with the size but I am getting the idea of cross-contour lines more and I am working on atmospheric perspective more as well. Overall, I see how coming back to a drawing over a period of days creates a better work than getting it all done in one day.

Finally, I want to talk about the muscles.  Thursday night I just redid all of my leg muscles and my hip muscles.  It was a hard task and my back was killing me from sitting on the floor and rolling out clay.  But surprisingly, it wasn’t as challenging or as frustrating as I thought it would be.  I think the muscles turned out well.  All it takes is a little time.

Semester Reflection

So far the semester has been good.  It’s been a lot harder than I would have expected.  The muscles are killing me so far.  I just don’t think they look as clean as they should and it’s bugging me.  No matter how hard I try to fix them, they keep getting worse, even when I start over and put them back on, there’s just no fixing them.  

Another thing I am having trouble with are the gesture drawings again.  Now that we added the ribs and the pelvis, it’s getting harder to make sure all the components are there.  You have to make sure you get the whole body and the tilt of the pelvis and the ribcage without forgetting the spinal curves.  It’s just too much for me to remember in such a short amount of time.  

Finally, I am still having troubles with the ribcage.  I feel like I do not understand which way it should tilt and what it should look like.  My eggs are always too long and I forget the pit of the neck.  I just need to practice drawing it over and over again I think, until it is second nature.  

For the second half of the semester, I just hope to improve on all my worries and struggles.  I am also excited to learn about the other parts of the body we haven’t discussed yet like the hands and feet, this is the part that most interests me.  Also the face would be a good thing to get down (proportion wise).  That’s another thing to work on for the semester, proportions.  I get all the proportions down in theory but then when I go to apply it, I always feel like I need someone watching over my shoulder to make sure I have it right.

My Flickr Page

Slow Week=Bad Shell

So this week went by very slowly.  I still haven’t gotten my stride down for this school year.  It’s not that I am too busy; I just have trouble prioritizing things.  It works out that I am ahead in the easier classes and feel like I am falling behind in others.  Hopefully, this gets cleared up soon because I really enjoy all of my classes, I just haven’t figured out how to balance it all yet.  For example, my shell drawing suffered because of this dilemma.  I had every intention of spending the recommended amount of time on this drawing but for some reason, time just kept slipping away.  I couldn’t focus and because of this I turned out, if I may be frank, a shitty drawing.   I am not happy with it at all.  There are definitely elements where I was trying to grasp the concepts and ideas but it just fell short.  I don’t know where my mind was the day I drew but it was not focusing at the task at hand.  For example, the contour lines just ended up being similar and I didn’t even lay my page out right.  Honestly, it’s like everything went wrong.   The worst part is I knew it was wrong and I didn’t try to fix it.  I really want to try again with this drawing even just sketching out on smaller paper the ins and outs of my shell.  Maybe that will help me for the next drawing.  I plan on working on that right now in fact, I need to focus hard and start again.  I think that was the main problem, my focus and attention.  It probably didn’t help that I was sick and that was my main focus while drawing, but I had more than just this week to draw.  Next time we get a shell assignment I  will start on it right away, no putting it off this time.

Wierd Week

This week was a little different than previous weeks because we didn’t have a full class period on Tuesday and on Thursday I was sick so I wasn’t in class either.  I feel like we haven’t drawn figures in a long time.  This was a hard week because I just didn’t have the motivation to work on the muscles.  I just feel like mine don’t look as good as other peoples and I don’t understand why.  They look messy but when I try to clean them up they just end up looking worse and it all just falls apart.  It’s very frustrating. 

                I feel like I am falling behind a little bit, other homework assignments have taken precedence over things such as my seashell contour drawing.  Now it’s Friday and I haven’t started it yet.  I know I have some time to do it still but I know I have been putting it off and I have been trying really hard not to do that this year. 

                I guess what I have been doing when I have been putting off my homework is going on stumbleupon.com.  The good thing about this site, besides giving me an outlet to waste time, it shows me a lot of cool art that I wouldn’t have found otherwise.  As an example I found a famous celebrity photographer, my favorite is this Johnny Depp one.  

But beyond that it has brought me to a lot of portraits that I have been sketching in my free time.  Also, for one of the first times I sketched (quickly) people during my technology class.  It was during a class presentation and people were sitting and listening, it was easy to sketch because all the people didn’t move much, even those giving the presentation.

So I guess the week wasn’t completely lost.

This week we didn’t have a live model on Tuesday which was a bummer but we got some one-on-one time with our shells and our first homework assignment which involves a cross contour.  As of right now I am having a hard time getting the shape of the shell exactly right.  It has a lot of crests and valleys and I always seem to stretch or lose space somewhere on the shell so hopefully I will get that soon.  I have not yet started on this task but I hope to get going on it sometime this week so it doesn’t sneak up on me. 

                We also learned about the abdominal muscles this week and what they do to the body.  I didn’t know that the abs main purpose was to hold all of the organs in and it was interesting the way they criss-crossed and created a nearly impenetrable bond between the outside world and the inside body.  I think this information is especially helpful for me because I can better teach people how to work on their abdominal muscles when they are in a group fitness class.

                Finally this week I finished re-doing my spinal erectors.  I kept putting it off because I felt like I completely failed the first time I attempted them but this time around I had more focus which helped.  Another thing that was helpful was I knew what the muscles were supposed to look like when they were placed all together.  I still had some trouble with a few of the muscles but I just ended up really looking at the book and where they attached both in writing and in picture form.  I think that now I have a much cleaner looking manniken and a better understanding of how the muscles all work together.  Hopefully the abdominal muscles go as smoothly.

Manniken Fail and the Ribcage

This week we started by looking at our Mannikens and the spinal erectors we built over the weekend.  I had a hard time visualizing where the muscles go and what thickness they should be.  I made mine really thick and they were falling off of the skeleton.  It helped to look at everyone else’s Mannikens and the teacher’s as well.  I think when we start building the abs I will know how to look at the body from every angle and how that way of building muscles is actually helpful.  I’m still contemplating whether or not I want to sign up for the muscle website, I can’t decide if it’s worth it or not.  I still have some time to decide.

Also this week we did some more gesture drawings to get more comfortable with that.  I am still working hard on using my whole arm in the drawings and changing line thickness and pressure.  I feel like doing a lot of gesture drawings will help and pretty soon these things will become second nature to me. 

On Thursday we spent the beginning of class learning about the ribcage and how to draw that piece of the body.  I never would have guessed the simplest way to draw it was in the shape of an egg.  Granted, eggs aren’t so simple as I soon learned when I had to apply it myself but near the end I felt like I was getting the hang of it.  I really like the mix of anatomy and that sort of thing with the artistic aspect.  It’s a really neat approach to learning. The only thing I don’t like is that we have to sit on that hard floor for close to an hour when we have lectures.  It would be nice if we could find a room to go to and talk about things like we did last week.  Anyways, the last drawing we did in class on Thursday was another contour which I’m not sure if I have a grasp on those yet, but again, I’ll just keep working on it. 

Actual Models

This week we got to work with an actual model.  This was slightly terrifying and not weird at all.  That was something I was very worried about.  I knew I could handle it but I noticed when you start drawing, your focusing on the forms of the body and the curves and not so much the fact that the model was nude.  I think the way the drawing times were set up were good too.  The thirty seconds were nothing but after doing a couple of those and then working up the time and then back down was a nice way to keep the three hours short.  I think my favorite drawings came from the ten minute poses.

I have not yet started on the construction of the muscles but I am worried about the three-dimensionality of the whole project.  I seem to have trouble at looking at things in a 3D way but I am hoping that at least I will make a clean manikin.  I want each muscle to be well formed and accurate so I think this project is going to be the most challenging for me.  I think that I am up to that challenge though. 

I am looking forward to learning more parts of the body.  I think the ribcage is next.  I think that the lessons about the skeleton will really help my drawings.  I am especially excited for gesture drawings becoming second nature.  I won’t need to worry about whether I am using correct proportions or if I am using my arm to draw instead of my wrist, it will all come naturally.  This class is just so different from anything I have ever done and I know that it will be frustrating at times but I also know that I will come away with something that I can be truly proud of.

First Week

This week was really hard for me.  It's always difficult to get back into the swing of school, especially drawing again.  I always find my drawings rough and childish when I start drawing once again.  Slowly, things start coming back to me but one trouble I always face is line variation.  I don’t know why that's always a struggle for me but I tried to work on it a little more when we started work on the spinal column.  

My first drawing of the week was my shell.  Here is an image of my blind contour.

I started and stopped a lot during this drawing.  I kept turning the shell around to look at it from different angles where what I should have been doing is slowing down and looking at the shell from a single point of view.  I also drew the shell with no real line variation in width or color; they are all the same darkness.  Those were some the comments that were said in the small group critique.  They did say that I focused on some small details such as in the upper left corner.  This was my first blind contour drawing I have done and it was a very new experience for me.     

            I really enjoyed our next meeting time though when we got to learn about the spine and have a couple attempts at drawing that from the skeleton.  I liked it because when I got certified to be an instructor at stout we learned about the parts of the body such as the spine so it felt like old information, just a refresher course.  Plus, I still get some of them mixed up sometimes but it’s still interesting to learn about.  I also really liked my first attempt at the spine which I didn’t take a picture of but I thought I used a lot more line variation than I did in my shell drawing and I also think I captured the curves of the spine well from the angle the skeleton was at.  The hardest point of view for me to draw from was definitely straight on looking right at the breast bone and the front of the body.  I think this view will be a challenge for me and I am excited to take another swing at it this week.

First Attempt

Hey, I'm Michelle and I wouldn't necessarily consider myself an artist.  
There's those people that you label as artists right off the bat, I would say I more or less fell into this major.  Yes, I enjoy the idea of art, and through sheer hard work and slight talent, I would say I have produced some works I am proud of.  However, I am not a sketcher, I'm not constantly drawing or thinking of artistic ideas.  I believe that I just haven't found a subject that I truly enjoy.  Maybe always having a sketchbook just isn't my style.  I am hoping this class though will change that.  
I find natural forms such as the human body beautiful and forever interesting.  The question is, will I be able to relay that through my hand, my artistic ability. 
I always liked taking photos but that's like taking the easy way out in art.  Drawing takes time and it takes patience, you have to understand techniques and materials.  I liked parts of Drawing I and II but still-life after still-life can get boring.  It was good for working on your overall skill but I think that Life Drawing will be different from any art class that I have taken before.  I want to have another dimension to my artistic ability.  I like the idea of capturing movement, especially in the human from.  I'm excited for the challenge.  I can't wait until I can draw like some of these examples.

http://nelsartmarks.blogspot.com/2009/07/another-saturday-life-drawing-session.html



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I guess I am just ready to get started, no matter how difficult or frustrating this type of drawing may be.  I see myself devoting time to this subject and hopefully I will come away with more works I can be proud of.