Final Portfolio

http://www.flickr.com/photos/23462614@N05/

Although it was a little difficult to gauge my progress with life drawing throughout the semester, looking at my entire portfolio of drawings from the beginning to the end has really allowed me to see that I have made  quite a bit of progress. One of the first things I noticed was the extreme difference in my gesture drawings. At the beginning of the semester, my gesture drawings only depicted the outlines of the figure rather than the cross contour lines, and they were also very sketchy. The gesture drawings from the end of the semester show the different components that make up the figure, such as the rib cage, spinal column, and pelvis. The lack of sketchiness in these drawings show that I started to draw more from my shoulder and less from my wrist.

Line variation is something that I need to continue to work on in my drawings, but I think I've progressed in that area a bit over the course of the semester. Varying the weight of lines has always been more of an afterthought for me, and it's something that I would usually address after I already had the whole figure drawn. So being able to do a lot of gesture drawing has helped me learn how to think about all of these different aspects of drawing at the same time.

I've learned over the semester that I'm a very slow drawer, and while I first saw it as a weakness, I learned to see it as more of a strength. A successful drawing should not only be dynamic, it should be accurate as well. Because I give myself more time to observe whatever it is I'm drawing, I think my drawings end up looking much more accurate than someone who tends to jump into drawing before closely observing what it is they're drawing. Although I like for my drawings to be accurate, I also really appreciate the character that some of the other student's drawings have despite them not being as accurate. I don't feel as if I've developed my own style of drawing yet, whereas a lot of the other students have a very distinct style that allows for their drawings to stand apart.

I think the only negative thing about being a slow drawer is not being able to complete a drawing within the 2-hour time slot. I had an especially hard time at the end of the semester trying to get a complete drawing of the entire figure. I have one drawing where the entire upper half is complete, and another where the entire bottom half is complete, but they're from two different people. In the end, I feel like I have a good understanding of the entire figure and I so much more confident with my abilities to draw the figure.

I can easily say that I've learned more in Life Drawing than any of my other studio classes. Amy's knowledge of the human body and of drawing as a whole is beyond impressive, and it makes for an incredible learning experience. Although the building of the muscles on the manikens ended up being much more difficult than I had anticipated, it was also extremely helpful in getting a better understanding of the lines and curves of the body. I started to become more confident in showing the different muscles in my long pose drawings towards the end of the semester, and I know it was because of all of the work we did with the manikens.

Even though Life Drawing may seem like it would be more beneficial to an Industrial Design major or a Studio major, I think I will definitely be using what I have learned in this class in my career as Graphic Designer. Today's Graphic Designers aren't just doing print work, they're doing a whole lot of product design as well. Having an understanding of the human body will come in handy when the task is to design a product that is more ergonomical. I long to work in the fashion industry, so I might be working with apparel and accessories some day, and these types of products directly focus on the human body.

I admit that I was really nervous about taking Life Drawing, mainly because I didn't have a lot of experience drawing people. The whole flow of the class ended up being perfect for someone like me who really had a lot to learn. I never felt like I was falling behind or like I wasn't getting enough feedback from the instructor. Amy was always so involved in our work, and she made the whole idea of drawing the figure a lot less intimidating. Bravo to her and I will continue to recommend this course to other students.

Here's to new adventures....

Not only was this the last full week of Life Drawing, but it was my last full week of class EVER! That's right folks, this girl is moving on to the big leagues. It's scary to think that I'm going to actually have to start designing in the real world, and the design industry isn't exactly the easiest place to find success. In the words of Nagesh, "you've got to be in the top 2% to get a good design job", which isn't exactly reassuring news when there's an abundance of amazing designers out there. In my opinion, Minneapolis has been tapped out for design jobs, but I'm going to keep trying until I get where I want to be.

Okay, moving on. So for our last full week of drawing we focused mainly on the head. On Monday and Wednesday, we worked on portraits of the models, where Amy really encouraged us to look closely at the relationships between the cranium and the face. It's surprising how easy it is to mix up the cranium to face ratio, as mostly everyone in the class did. We all seemed to make the face too big and the cranium too small. I think Amy said the ratio is supposed to be 2:3, with the cranium being the larger of the two. I had a profile view of the model for my portrait, and while it was fairly easy to get the overall shape of the head and face, I had a hard time fully developing the facial features. The nose wasn't bad because I feel really comfortable recognizing all of the different planes of the nose, but I found the eye to be really difficult. Getting the eyes to look right is one of the keys to a successful portrait, and my eye just kept looking so flat. When Amy finally came around to look at our drawings, she reminded me how the eye lid wraps around the eyeball, and by making just a tiny cross contour line for the edge of the lid, the eye immediately becomes dimensional. It was like a total ah-ha! moment for me because I just couldn't figure out why it wasn't looking right.

We finished up our portrait drawings on Wednesday, and I'm fairly happy with how mine turned out. It may not be as developed as some of the other student's drawings, but I'm a really slow drawer so that's to be expected. On Friday, we began our first drawing of the entire figure while Amy checked over our clay models for the last time before we photograph them. I went into the drawing thinking it was going to be relatively easy since we've basically been practicing for this moment the entire semester. I was totally wrong though, and I immediately began feeling overwhelmed after starting to draw. First of all, I didn't know where to start. I know we're supposed to always start with the line of the spine and the egg of the rib cage, but it's so hard to go back to that when we've developed our drawings so much over the course of the semester. I ended up drawing the midline of the model's body first, which helped me to determine the positioning of the legs, which I drew next. I've really been trying to map out the various muscles of the body in this final drawing in order to show Amy that I've progressed. So far it's going well and I'm eager to finish the drawing up on Monday. I got about half of the figure done on Friday, so I still have to do a little bit on the torso, the head, and the arms. I'm most concerned about the arms because that was not an easy study for me. Luckily, we're drawing from a male model, which means more defined muscles.

Eyes and Ears and Mouth and Nose (Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes, Knees and Toes)

This week, we focused on the different elements that make up the face. We started out with a lecture on the eyes and nose. Amy does such a great job in making the techniques for drawing the different body parts as uncomplicated as possible. We got a really great in-depth lecture on the facial features this week, which were so helpful when it came to drawing from the models. I found the nose to be the hardest of all the facial features because the plane changes didn't seem as obvious to me. I didn't really get a decent nose drawing until we started learning about the mouth on Friday. I found that it's much easier to understand the plane changes if you draw the curve of the upper lip first and use it as a sort of guide for the rest of the nose. I also noticed that it's very easy to make the nose too small, which is something Amy pointed out during her lecture. Like we've been taught through out the semester, it's better to exaggerate the features than to make them too small or flat.

The plane changes with the eye were easier to recognize and I ended up getting a much more complete drawing of an eye than of a nose. As soon as I tried adding the cornea, however, my eye started looking strange, so I just left the eyeball blank with no cornea or retina.

The mouth was somewhere in the middle as far as difficulty. It was nice to have already learned the nose which acted as a started point for drawing the mouth. I had more of a three quarter few of the model's mouth, so I had some difficulty figuring out where the front plane of the lips transitioned to the side plane. One thing I tried to focus on was making sure the lips were of different widths so the drawing would feel more realistic. As always, I'm a really slow drawer so I think I ended up with a fairly complete nose and top lip, and a somewhat rushed bottom lip that still needs some adjustment.

We learned about the ears this week too, but I didn't get to any ear drawings in class. Amy has a way of making everything look really easy because she's obviously very experienced and talented, so my first impressions of the ear were that it wouldn't be too hard. I'm sure I'll think differently about that once I attempt my first ear drawing.

I'm anxious to start putting my final portfolio together, and I'm curious about what Amy wants us to include. I feel like we've rushed through the past few studies due to time constraints, so I'm not sure that all of us have drawings of every single facial feature. I guess I'm hoping that we'll just be able to pick our ten best drawings again, which ever body parts they may be. Ugh...so much work in the next couple weeks!

The Skull

It was a short week for drawing because of Easter break, but we managed a brief study of the skull on Wednesday. I wasn't feeling good on Monday, so I didn't make it to class. I guess it just ended up being another day of drawing hands. I feel fairly confident with my hand drawings. I only ended up getting about three or four fingers done on the skeleton hand drawing, but I managed to get two or three drawings from the model's hand. I really enjoyed drawing the hands, and I felt as if it was one of the easier studies for me. The skull, on the other hand, is a whole other story. I found it pretty difficult to draw the skull because there's so many different planes and it's kind of overwhelming trying to figure out where the plane changes are. I ended up getting stuck on the main bulk of the skull for most of the our drawing time, but once Amy came over and pointed out the different planes of the face, I got a much better understanding of how it all worked. I've finally realized that I'm an extremely slow drawer, and it surprises me how many people seem to get a fairly complete drawing after only an hour long session or less. I like for my drawings to be as accurate as possible, which is the main reason why it takes me so long.

I'm hoping to get a nice, in-depth lecture on the skull sometime, but we're nearing the end of the semester and we still have to do some more facial features, so we'll see.

Hands

We focused completely on the hands this week, starting with a very in-depth lecture on all of the different components of the hand. I'm not sure that it felt easier to draw the hands after already having drawn the feet, but it wasn't as difficult as I expected. With the feet, I found it easiest to map out the four different planes first, and then go back in to add all of the detail of the ankle and toes. With the hands, I found it easiest to figure out all of the angles of each finger, which was basically a series of lines, and then going back in to draw each finger in detail. So my process for drawing the hands was similar to my process for drawing the feet, I just didn't focus so much on the different planes of the hand, but rather the angles. In the end, I found that I had a much easier time drawing hands than feet.

One of the things that we did different this week, was we were able to draw directly from a skeleton hand. I ended up drawing from the skeleton before I drew from the model, and I think it was actually quite beneficial to do it in this order. Since I had a better understanding of the inner structure of the hand, I was able to better understand the different planes of the outer surface of the hand.

I never ended up getting a complete drawing of either the skeleton hand or the model's hand, but I think the partial drawings I have show my understanding of the overall structure.

Amy also had us bring in our clay models this week so she could check our forearm muscles. It seemed like everyone had some difficulty making the muscles thin enough so that the forearm wouldn't look completely disproportionate to the upper arm. Overall, the clay muscle building ended up being much more difficult than I expected. The book is extremely confusing and unless you're someone who has the patience and time to spend  hours upon hours building muscles, they're just never going to look 100% perfect.

Oh my gosh, it's not snowing.

So this week we worked more on the arms, but tried to focus mostly on the forearm. It was a short week due to Mid-Program Review, but we managed to get a couple long drawings in. One thing that was different about this week was that we didn't get the usual feedback from Amy during the long poses because she was inspecting our clay models. I didn't mind this at all because we rarely get a chance to get feedback on our muscles that we've been building throughout the semester, so it was really nice to get some help in making sure everything looked correct. I think I've been doing fairly well with my manikin, but I still seem to have some trouble giving the muscles enough mass. Francois does have a relatively impressive calf, however, but it makes him look a little bottom-heavy in comparison to his thigh.

Back to the drawings...
I definitely struggled with the arms for the past two weeks, but I think I'm slowly improving. I'm so used to including the entire figure in my drawings, so it's been a little difficult trying to zero in and focus solely on the arms. Unless the model has really defined arm muscles, the whole arm just feels like a cylindrical mass, So it would have been awesome to have been able to draw from a male model this week because they usually have more defined arms.

I'm not sure if I'm just getting used to building the muscles on the manikin, or if it's because I have a better understanding of the arm muscles, but I've really enjoyed the past few muscle assignments. Maybe it's because they were easier to build? I don't know, but it's okay with me. I can honestly say though, that I'm anxious to be done with the manikins. As much as I've gotten to know and love Francois, at least when his muscles aren't falling off in the back seat of my car, I'm ready to adopt him out to a new parent.

As of now, this post is technically 6 minutes late, but that's the affect that Senior Show seems to have on one's life....there's little, and I mean little, time for anything else.  

Arms

We focused mainly on the shoulders again this past week, but by Wednesday, we were doing some long poses where we were supposed to focus specifically on the arms.

For our long pose on Wednesday, I decided to use a drawing horse rather than an easel. This allowed me to get much closer to the model than I've been able to thus far. It took me a while, however, to get used to the new perspective, and I ended up starting my drawing over again a few times before I got the figure scaled correctly on the page. I've been used to focusing on the legs and seeing the entire figure in my drawing, so I kept drawing the figure too big, which then ended up cutting off most of the arm. It's times like this when it would be nice to have three hours to draw, and one thing I've learned this semester so far is that I'm a relatively slow drawer. By the time I got the figure scaled correctly, I found another challenge in seeing the different muscles that make up the arm. I'm sure part of it was because of the perspective I was viewing the arm at, with the elbow pointed out towards me. It was great when Amy came over to look at my drawing, because she was able to basically map out the muscles, which immediately gave me a better understanding of the arm.

We also had a few lectures on the arm this week, along with a couple of muscle assignments. Our muscle assignments were a bit larger than they've been with past assignments, but all of the muscles were pretty small so they didn't take too long to construct. I've probably enjoyed these past couple of muscle assignments for the arms and shoulders the most out of all of our muscle assignments so far. I'm not exactly sure why, but perhaps it's because it's much easier to see how they relate to one another, as opposed to the leg muscles which seemed to intertwine and overlap all over the place.

We're getting closer and closer to being finished learning about the different parts of the figure, and I'm anxious to see what we're going to be doing next!

More Snow...

So this week we learned about the upper body. We mainly focused on the shoulders, but also started exploring the arms.

For our gesture drawings, we did the usual ribcage-pelvis-legs, but we added the spines of the shoulder blades. This consisted of two simple lines placed according to however the model was posed. I have to say that I think this is the hardest study so far. The shoulders aren't really that complicated, but it's difficult to recognize and point out the spine of the shoulder blades on the model. It was interesting how Amy could immediately point out where the angles of the shoulder blades were on the models, and I'm sure most of us in class were wondering how in the world she could see that. It's obviously something that comes with a greater knowledge of the human body. I'm sure we'll all get it soon.

Being able to draw from a male model on Friday was really great for the study we did this week. A man's body tends to be more defined than a woman's, so it was a lot easier to recognize the different parts of the shoulder and all of the upper-body muscles.

I've also enjoyed being able to add some little stick arms to my gesture drawings. It's just exciting to see our drawings become more and more complete.

Overall, it was a snowy and hectic week following spring break, but I'm looking forward to spending some more time learning about the shoulders and arms.

Feetsies

I'm writing this post while relaxing on a white, sandy beach on an island in the Maldives.

Just kidding...

My spring break has been hijacked by Senior Show, so I don't plan on returning to class with a golden tan.

But anyway...

This week's study was definitely the hardest so far, but the techniques Amy taught us were incredibly helpful. We started out with shorter drawings where the foot was represented by simple, rectilinear shapes. This allowed us to recognize the different planes of the feet, and really helped to get the right perspective. It ended up being a little more difficult to distinguish the top plane from the side plane, but we learned how to use the ankle as a sort of landmark to separate the two planes. 

Everyone's feet are different, so that's one thing that not only makes them fun to draw, but more difficult as well. The toes are by far the hardest part. Our goal is to avoid "sausage toes", and to think about toes as having different planes as well. I think it's important to really study the bones in the toes to see how they relate to each other. 

By Friday, we were ready to do a long pose and execute what we've learned thus far about drawing feet. I think the pose was about an hour, and I spent most of the hour getting the perspective to look right. I didn't have enough to time to draw all five toes, but I think at this point, it's more important to make really close observations rather than trying to end up with a complete drawing.

Mid-Term Post

http://www.flickr.com/photos/23462614@N05/

It's incredible how much I've learned in this class in just the first half of the semester. Since I haven't had a drawing class since Drawing 2 my freshman year, I was a little nervous about getting back in touch with my newsprint and charcoal. Being able to do nothing but gesture drawings the first week of class was great because it allowed us to become comfortable with drawing again without any pressure to perform. I've never been very good at drawing figures, so I wasn't sure how I would do with life drawing. Amy has made it much easier though with her lectures and having us focus on only one part of the body at a time. We're really given a lot of time to understand each part of the body and how it relates to the rest of the body, so I've never really felt like I was being rushed to learn everything.

I see a little bit of improvement with my drawings every week, but I'm really finding the most amount of progress to be in my understanding of the human body. Before taking this class I knew very little about the muscles in the body, but with the clay manikens and lectures, I now feel knowledgeable enough to be able to draw figures more accurately. When I think about it, it seems like everything I've learned in this class so far has all been new to me. I'd never heard the egg technique for drawing the rib cage, and I'd never been taught to draw the mid-line of the body first. I actually still find myself having to think about the rib cage, but I feel as if I'm almost to the point of immediately knowing how it's positioned. I've also noticed that my gesture drawings have become a lot less sketchy. You can see the difference between Gesture 1 and Gesture 5. I think I've slowly been becoming more confident in my mark-making.

I have really enjoyed being able to spend the whole first half of the semester on just learning and slowly developing a complete figure drawing. We just finished learning about the thigh, so I assume we will soon be learning about the knees, lower leg, and the arms. I'm excited about being able to draw a complete human figure, but I'm also a little bit nervous because it will be the time when we're really expected to produce our best work. At this point, I'm definitely not comfortable enough to confidently draw a complete figure, but we still have another half of a semester to go so there's still a ton of stuff to learn!

Snow

It already feels like forever ago that we got a foot of snow and I never made it out of the parking lot to go to class. So this was kind of a short week for drawing, but we learned a lot about hamstrings and thighs. I actually found it quite difficult to build the hamstrings on my mannequin, and I'll probably end up re-doing them after a closer study of the pictures in the book.

It's crazy to think that there's only two more weeks until spring break, which means it's almost midterm! We have to put together a portfolio of some of our best drawings so far, as well as take pictures of our mannequins. I'll have to start looking through the gesture drawings we've done so far, but it will be interesting to see the progress from a month ago. I actually feel like things are starting to get tougher as add more and more elements to our drawings. I've never been that great at drawing figures, so life drawing doesn't come as naturally for me as it does some of the other students. It's really interesting to see how we each have our own unique style when it comes to drawing. No two drawings are ever the same.

I'm not exactly sure what we're focusing on for this upcoming week, but I'm looking forward to having a more organized week, and not missing any classes!

The Pelvis

The area of focus for this week was the pelvis. It's a little bit more difficult than the rib cage to recognize on the model, but it's been awesome to see our drawings progress into figures that look more like humans. When the model does a more intricate pose, it's definitely easier to imagine what position the egg would be in than what position the pelvis is in. Although both the rib cage and the pelvis are vertically symmetrical, the pelvis looks much different in the posterior view from the anterior view, so that makes it more difficult to draw as well. Now that we're adding more components to our drawings, some of the poses that were easy to draw a week ago are now becoming a lot harder to draw. You really have to think about whether you're looking at the anterior view or the posterior view of the pelvis, and whether the left hip is higher or the right hip is higher so the perspective doesn't look distorted. Now that we've added another element to our drawings, we have to think about how both elements relate to each other. We're looking deeper into proportions and how the rib cage relates to the pelvis in different poses. I've struggled a little bit with getting the pelvis to be the same width as the rib cage, but I'm starting to become more consistent in my drawings. I really enjoyed doing the longer poses this week with the pelvis added in because we're able to add in the different muscles of the abdomen, so it just makes the figure more interesting and fun to draw. I've been trying to remember to exaggerate the curves and lines of the body so that my drawings can be more dynamic, but I've been having trouble with drawing the rib cage tilted in one direction and the pelvis tilted in another. Like Amy said, it has to be kind of like a zig zag, which is what I'm going to keep in mind throughout this next week of drawing. I'm not really sure what we'll be focusing on for this upcoming week, but I'm sure it will be great! I love this class so far!

The Egg

We focused mainly on the rib cage this week, and it was really awesome to be able to just study one part of the body for an entire week. The egg technique was really great for drawing the rib cage, but I felt like I kept having to remind myself what the shape of an egg was because mine kept getting too long or too skinny. I'm hoping after much more repetition of drawing the egg shape, my hand will just be trained to do it correctly every time.

We did a little bit of cross contouring this week, and it's slowly becoming easier to recognize the different planes on the body and to draw the contour lines so that it looks like the figure has volume. I still struggle with cross contour lines along the shoulder blades and other areas where there's many different little planes.
I don't feel like I can recognize some of the muscles on the back as quickly as some other people can, but I'll keep studying my mannequin so that I can find them more easily on the model. I'm hoping to do more long poses this upcoming week, which are so great because it makes for some great observations and allows me to constantly modify and improve my drawing.

The muscle building has gotten easier a lot easier this week, probably because I'm more used to how the clay functions and how our mannequins relate to the ones in the books. It's fun to have some knowledge of the different muscles in our body, especially when you have a personal trainer for a mother. As soon as I started working on the muscles for this weekend, she pulled out a bunch of her own books on muscles for me to reference.

I'm excited to begin learning about the pelvis and incorporating it into our drawings. I think my rib cages still need some work, so I'm hoping I can get those up to par by the end of this week.

Reflection

I've always enjoyed the first few weeks of a studio class because it's all about learning the processes and techniques, while the rest of the semester is devoted to executing what you've learned. We focused on the spine and all of its parts, as well as how it relates to the rest of the human body. Lecture is something that you don't normally expect to receive in a drawing class, but I can't even express how helpful it is already to have Amy take the time to teach us about the body. It's really impressive how much she knows and it makes me think about my mom, who's a personal trainer, and how much even she could benefit from a class like this.

I thought it was really good for Amy to have us draw nothing but the middle line of the body when doing gesture drawings this week. Although it was a bit more difficult to take a whole ten minutes to draw one line, it really got me to take a closer look and have more thoughtful observations. Before learning about the four curves of the spine, I wouldn't have known that the second curve is always a convex curve, no matter what position the body is in. This bit of information helped a lot with the gesture drawings for this week.

I really enjoyed doing the cross contour drawings this week as well. I remember my drawing one professor having us do one or two cross contour exercises, but it was never explained as in depth as how Amy teaches it. So I'm pretty new to drawing cross contours and it's a little bit challenging for me. You really have to see the surface of the body as different planes, but Amy has some really great techniques for making it easier to recognize the different planes.

We got our clay mannequins this week too, which is exciting! After I finish my post I'm going to begin building the muscles assigned for Monday. I'm anxious to see how easy or difficult the muscle building will be. I got multi-colored clay with my mannequin, so he'll have a sort of tie-dye aesthetic. I heard some people in class talk about naming their mannequins, so I think I'll call mine Francois from now on. He's right brain dominant, so that explains why he hangs out in a drawing class.

I'd like to introduce myself...

My current role in life is that of a student. I am a senior Graphic Design major with an itch to exchange my title of "student" for the title of "designer".

I'm from a small town in Minnesota where I took advantage of art classes in high school, thus leading me to a discovery of my interest in design. I come from an artistic family and have been supported and encouraged to pursue a career in art my entire life. I'll be the first person in my immediate family to get a Bachelor's degree, but the third person in my extended family to get a Fine Arts degree. Upon graduation in May, I might be given the opportunity to pursue a design internship in India, which I'm really excited about. If I'm unable to get an international design internship, I plan on moving back to Minneapolis where I hope to get a job as a full time designer for a successful design firm.

Although I've learned a great deal about the design industry and what makes a good design and what makes a bad design, I'm still in the process of discovering my own design aesthetic. I love typography and patterns, and am greatly inspired by fashion. I dream of one day combining my love of writing and fashion with that of design, with a job working for a magazine like Elle, Marie Claire, or Vogue.

I chose to take Life Drawing because I thought it would be a great supplement to my knowledge of design thus far. I believe the experience in studying and drawing the human body will be highly beneficial to my work with packaging design and any sort of design I might do involving fashion. I've heard nothing but great things about Life Drawing, so I'm looking forward to what this semester will bring.

Here is some of my recent work as a design student at UW-Stout:


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