3rd week already!

I cannot believe how fast the first couple of weeks has flown by! This past week has been full of new experiences. On Tuesday we had the opportunity to draw from a model, which was a new experience for me. The model was great and I was quite pleased with my skill level and myself.  Drawing for thirty seconds was a little interesting. I know I’m a fast drawer, but thirty seconds leaves a lot to be desired. I feel like I started to get the drift of gesture drawings though. I really appreciated the time that we took to slow down and do line contour drawings of the model.  This is also a new skill to acquire and hone in on though. It’s very challenging to think of how to express the curves of a form using only lines. Maybe I wasn’t really paying attention in my other drawing classes, but I don’t remember ever doing this before! I’m a little anxious to do our first homework assignment because I really have no idea how I’m going to tackle doing a shell with only contour lines. I really didn't think I would like life drawing much, but the more we draw and exercises we do, the more comfortable I am with it. I’m already seeing positive benefits from it. My sketches seem to be more realistic and my line work has gotten much better. I feel like it’s helping me to understand form and space much more quickly that I thought I would. They say it takes 10,000 hours to learn and be proficient at a new skill.  I’m not sure how much I’ve dedicated thus far, but I can’t wait until the end of the semester to see how much my skills have improved.  

first long drawing!

spinal erectors!

Today  (Thursday) we got our mannequins! Mine has thus far been very patient with me as I scraped all of his old muscles off and started to create his new ones.  I actually didn't think that creating the muscles was that complicated. Although, they do look as if it's just one big block of clay, not layers and layers of clay layered on top of one another. I'll be anxious to get to class on Tuesday to see if I did everything correctly. I've always been very interested in the human body so piecing this mannequin together is very interesting to me. We are amazing creatures, really! Our body has the ability to do things that our brain can't even comprehend.