Field Trip Day!!

Today we spent the day in the cities at the Walker and the Bell museum.  The walker was interesting as usual, after being there umpteen times I still get lost! They had a lot of interesting works though, most noteably a large amount of Yves Klein's work.  I was very intrigued with the fire paintings.  It was great to see them up close instead of from a picture, I feel like so much gets distorted in photos.  I was also excited to see a photograph by Cindy Sherman, I find her whole process very interesting.  After the Walker and a short bus ride we ended up at the Bell Museum, which I had never been to before. I quickly made myself at home in the fossil room.  After wandering around for a little while I found a skeleton of a bird that I thought was interesting, little did I know that it was a turkey skeleton, very festive! The bird was in pretty rough condition, I'm thinking he was from quite a few Thanksgivings' ago.  His neck vertebrae was pretty wonky and looked a little beat up, so I did the best I could to understand how it all connected. I also took the opportunity today to use shading and crosshatching to my hearts content and it was great :)!  Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of my drawing before jetting off for home, but I'll take a picture next week when I get back and post it.  Until then, here's a little diagram to see what I was working from.

  Between breaks we were able to pet a resident snake and a few turtles that live in the museum, very friendly little guys! It was nice to sit and relax for awhile and draw from non living things (they tend to be a little more patient). Overall it was a very fun trip, but I was definitely ready to get home for Thanksgiving break! Bring on the Turkey!  I hope everyone had a safe drive home and has a good break!

India Ink!

 First off, let me mention that "Four Right Angles" is being showcased in the student gallery (AA 209) for the week and weekend.  It showcases the work of Trey King, Chealsey Sword, Mallory Weir, and myself! It's such a relief to be done, I'm very proud of what we all accomplished!

Andy Ducett and I discussing "A Split Second"

"A Split Second"

Action shot of hanging all the portraits!

Anyways, back to life drawing.  We ended up not having class on Tuesday, which was a nice break and I used the time wisely to work like a mad woman on other projects that needed to be finished. Today we got to work with India ink, which I have a love/hate relationship with. First off,  I was somewhat excited because ever since starting contour drawings I've had an itch to shade the forms in. India ink is definitely a way I can incorporate shading into my drawings.  I've also had some practice with this medium since I just hung up my senior show (see pictures!!!). For my show I showcased an entire wall of tea portraits.  I also included somewhat of a collage entitled "In this light" (pictures can be see at the end of the post)  I roughly painted around 130 and close to 120 made it onto the wall. I'm very comfortable working with tea, but the permanence of the India ink somewhat intimidates me.  I don't want to be a creature of comfort but I might start to include tea into the shading of the shells.  There something very ethereal and calm about working with tea and I love the look of how it sits on paper. Amy also made it a point for the ink to act as another means for us to make our drawings look alive. So, that's about what's going on in life drawing this week, short and sweet since we only went to class once.  However, next Tuesday we get to spend the day in the cities at the walker and the Bell museum. I love to draw bones, so I'm really excited to spend some time in the Bell just sitting and drawing.  Meanwhile, I will be working like crazy to get as much homework done as possible so that Tuesday night after we get back I can get in my car and go home for Thanksgiving! I'm in dire need of a break from Stout and classes!

feels like week 1,203...

Long Drawing from Last week

This week is dragging by at a turtles pace! I keep hoping I wake up tomorrow and it's Christmas vacation.  This week we only had one day of class because of mid program review, good luck to all of those going through that! I hated going through mid-program review, I was very disappointed that I had to supply a large amount of artwork when in reality, they only looked at 1/3 of it.  Anyways, on Tuesday we went over the foot and did a long drawing of feet.

This was a little tricky when it came to dealing with foreshortening and being able to be detailed. Toes are  a tad bit hard to see when you're standing a little ways from the model, that or I need new contacts. Before that we went over our homework which was our second contour drawing of our shells. I was a little dissappointed with my second drawing, but in general I'm just having a really hard time drawing my shell.  I WISH there were spines or something interesting on it because I feel like it's so smooth that once I incorrectly place one line, the whole shell is off.  It's frustrating because I actually take time and study the shell and do a couple sketches of it, which usually turn out better than my final drawing (see images).

Sketch

Final Drawing

As a group we compared our second drawings to our first. My group said that the tail end of my shell was very nice and that I did a good job with line weight. However they said to try to push darkness more towards the front. They also said that this drawing looked more rushed and not as meticulous. As I stated I'm still having a really rough time with this shell and getting it just right.  I wish I could have turned my sketch in! I'm not sure what happened when I went to draw that final one? The anxiety of drawing on expensive paper must have gotten to me.

Ready for pumpkin pie and homemade cranberry sauce....

(Yum.)

Oh my gosh, where do I even start? My senior show is in TWO weeks, and I have SO much to do! Between two studio classes, art history courses, and two classes that are requiring three separate case studies all due on the same day (you figure that one out.) I'm freaking out. This past Sunday I woke up very.. itchy.. when I got up I felt slightly light headed but made it to the bathroom to discover that i was entirely covered in HIVES. Seriously, hives? It couldn't have been something a little more exiting? I've actually never had hives before but it was quite a shock to have my entire body covered in this red itchy bumpy rash (ew).  So after a trip to Urgent Care I had a diagnosis and quite a bit of anti-histamines which did nothing but make me sleep.  So anyways, this week has been insane. I've been trying to "keep calm" since they believe my hives are from stress since I don't have any outstanding allergies to anything. This concept kind of makes me laugh inside...but not for very long. I guess on the plus side I did get to register today, I think I was seriously one of the first, it was great! Amy was also very sweet and is letting me switch into one of her classes but as a Drawing 3 student, she has no idea how much it helps me. I feel like this year has been so close to being intolerable many many times. Anyways, sorry about the rant, I needed that. This week we worked on long poses and on the manikins a little bit. We went over the knee and let me tell you, I really appreciate my knees a lot more! I've really started to like long drawings more than I did when we started. It's my chance to just stop for an hour, slow down, focus on ONE thing and just breathe.  It's frustrating at the same time, but it's also very nice to just slow down for awhile.  I was pretty pleased with the drawings that have come from them, but unfortunately I don't have pictures right now.  However, because I've constantly been feeling like I'm not drawing enough I've been going online in my downtime and just looking at random pictures and sketching them. It's a little strange sometimes sitting in a public place sketching from a picture of a nude person. I just figure it anyone asks or gives me a goofy look I'll say I'm an art student, it usually seems to answer a lot of questions. So I have a couple of pictures for you of those sketches. 

sketch 2

sketch 3

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

first quarter is approaching!!

Contour Shell Drawing #1

I think it's a pretty safe assumption to say that you can tell first quarter is approaching because it seems like everyone on campus is in this mad rush and there's a lot of tensity in the air.  I feel like this year, more than others, I'm just in way over my head. However, I never expected senior year to be easy-just wish it were a little less intense. I'm spending more money on coffee and art supplies than on actual food.  So anyways, Tuesday we had contour line drawings of our shell due. After redoing mine three times over the weekend I was fairly satisfied with my shell. I made a really conscious effort to follow the rules that Amy had laid out and felt pretty good about it. The one major thing I would have changed would have been the use of the page. My shell ended up taking up the entire top half of the page, I'll definitely work on this in the next drawing.  We also did a short little group critique which was very informative. we had a couple critieria in which to evaluate them with:
-achieve the illusion of form
-is there a believable diagonal long axis?
-is the whole shell drawn? how well did they use the page?
-no outlines.
-ever line should be different, specificity of line and form
-evident plane changes, changing the direction of the line.
-does the drawing portray a sense of life?
-why/how is that life being portrayed
-how could it be given more life?

The critique definitely helped a lot.  Critiques always make me want to rip my drawing down, run away and fix it and then quick bring it back. I always have to remind myself that they're to enhance learning and that I should sit still and learn from them. the critique of my shell went something like this: My shell created the illusion of form and my group members liked my line variation.  However, they would have liked to see more contour lines drawn and show more "roundness". They also suggested that I draw the lines depicting the cavity of the shell a little lighter.  The diagonal long axis was evident however it could have been pushed a little bit more, which I agree with. I did depict the whole shell but I think we can all see the problem with the use of my page, no arguments there. They felt that I did a good job trying to be conscious of not drawing an outline and that my line variation helped this.  They said I should try to vary my lines and push plane changes a little more, however after I showed them how smooth my shell was they saw where I was coming from.  They felt that my drawing did portray a sense of life, mainly from the use of line variation and being conscious of not outlining the shell.  Pushing the diagonal long axis and depth of my shell, as well as being more conscious of the use of page space could have helped push this more. I agree with everything they said and am a little anxious about starting the next one!

I feel rusty.

Said "Shell"

I hate to admit that I haven't drawn all week.  Okay, I take that back, I've sat in class and sketched people from behind but I don't think that entirely counts.  I've also been on a "doodling" kick. It's interesting to me that I have a ton of homework to do and am preparing for my senior show and all I want to do is sit and doodle.  Not sure how that correlates to anything, but hey, maybe it's reducing my stress level.  So anyways, this week it was so ungodly hot in our classroom that Amy was nice enough to give a short lecture on the hip muscles for our manikin and then let us go for the day.  So, I got down to working on the hips, which don't quite look like they should, but I don't think the first time you make any of them muscles they are exactly right. However I must say that Charlie looks much better with a little meat on his bones. He has also grown a curious looking handlebar mustache-what an individual.  Class today was canceled, but none of us knew that because the sign was placed on the wrong side of the door, so none of us saw it and sat in the classroom for a good twenty minutes after a very enjoyable fire drill. For next week we have a contour line drawing assignment due on Tuesday. I'm a little nervous to even start this because I feel like it's learning a foreign language.  My shell is currently sitting on my desk and whenever I get bored I'll stare at it for awhile. I hate to be stereotypical, but how "Hippy" did that sound? Anyways, I'll probably start sketching some stuff out tonight on scrap paper just to get the motions going again, then actually start this weekend when the inspiration hits me.  We'll see how it turns out. I did find an interesting artist while doing some searching online. I must say she has to be the queen of contour line drawings. Here's her website! You can follow her on her blog as well.  She's seriously incredible! Although she draws very abstractly and organic in nature and I don't think the forms she creates necessarily represent anything the way her lines form space is amazing! I was very taken aback when I found her work, what a steady hand she must have!

  I also realized that I should have been posting pictures everyday (oops.), I'll just call it an opportunity for learning.