Midterm Portfolio!

Gesture Drawing 2

Let me start by saying that I cannot believe we're three weeks away from Thanksgiving vacation, this year is speeding by! It's hard to even judge my progress because I feel like we just started. However, I will start with my gesture drawings. I really disliked gesture drawings when we first began, but I think it was because I wasn't comfortable standing, let alone standing at an arms length away, or using my entire body to draw. I'm definitely a creature of habit and after two consecutive drawing classes of sitting and drawing still life's my old habits are dying hard. Gesture drawings really help me get back into the swing of things and how to proportion the body correctly as well as just getting the model's general movement down.  I feel like my photo "Gesture 2" is a good example of how I mapped the model's movement. When looking at this photo I can actually "feel" the stretch in her side.

I also really enjoy long poses, it's nice to switch it up after drawing gesture drawings for weeks straight. However, they're a totally different animal and doing the first one was a little difficult. I had to remind myself how to start and map the rib cage and pelvis, then use landmarks to map out the rest of the figure. "Long Drawing 2" is a good example of how I used landmarks and angles to double check my proportions.

Maniken assignments have also been an integral part of understanding the human form. While frustrating at times, building the muscles individually really does help me understand how our body moves. I think building the spinal erectors was what really interested me most. I think they're incredible how they support our bodies and keep our torso's up right, of course with the help of our abdominal muscles. I also found it interesting that our abdominal muscles actually create a big asterisk that keep our core "together". 

Lastly we got our first homework assignment where we had to do a cross contour drawing of a shell. My shell is pretty smooth and somewhat boring, so my drawing was a little... boring. Creating contours is also more challenging than I thought it would be. I got a lot of good suggestions in our critique though and feel that I have a good idea of how to improve my next drawing.

For the second half of the semester I'm going to work on my cross contour drawing skills. I feel like these are going to take awhile to get correct. It's a totally different way to draw and I'm not completely comfortable with it yet. I am also going to work on using the page more appropriately, while not the most difficult thing to do I definitely need to be more conscious of it.


LINKS:
Manikens
Gesture Drawings
Long Drawings
Homework
Whole Account