vacaciones!!!

I'm dying for Christmas vacation! after hearing people brag all week about not having anything to do during finals week I'm about ready to snap. I swear finals week was designed to torture art students. This week we had our third shell drawing due.  I was really pleased with how mine turned out. I'm really comfortable working with India ink so I'm looking for new ways that I can push myself to do interesting things with the ink.  I'm also feeling more comfortable drawing my shell.  We had small group critiques and I received very nice compliments. Really, the only suggestion was to make the contour of the inside of the shell a little deeper so that the outside wall of the shell doesn't look so thick.  I also enjoyed looking at everyone's work and was very inspired by how people used bright colors.  I stuck mainly to brown and black and feel very comfortable with them.  So, color might just be a way to push myself.  We also learned about the structure of the hand.  I always thought that our hands were incredible tools.  If you think about it, it would be really difficult to function without hands. I've always had difficulty drawing hands. I attempted it in Drawing one for an assignment and they turned out.. alright.  We were to depict emotions such as mad and joyful through hand gestures and marks. 

hands! from drawing 1 way back when, I apologize for the less than perfect quality of this photo, I had to go digging to find it!

Life Drawing 1 hands

Thursday we worked on the skull. I'm a little frustrated that we're working on the skull last when I feel like it's the most intricate structure. I find it so interesting that each skull is unique and literally shapes our face.  In my drawings I've notice that I've had a hard time making the size of the skull proportional to the rest of the body.  I think understanding the structure will help me keep the skull more proportional. 

this one got a little comical, I tried to exaggerate the cheekbones and add some contour lines.