Back at it

We began our skeleton drawings in earnest this week. The size of the drawing and amount of detail are really intimidating to me. I have had to slow my drawing process down a lot from the quick gestural mark making that I am so use to and really think, look, and intelligently place marks on the paper. Starting out my drawing I tried to draw the skeleton without measure but found that I wanted to blow up parts of the body and the resulting drawing would be much bigger then the paper size that I currently have. In the end I erased everything, took the end of my pencil, and layed out my skeleton in eight blocks to be able to easily measure where I should put the body parts. The distance to the skeleton is definitely challenging cause there is so much tiny detail that should be drawn but you have to walk up to it to see what you should be drawing. In many ways it is teeth grindingly frustrating for me, the amount of detail that is required in a drawing like this to be minimally competent. My measuring skills are becoming better though and slowly but surely I am able to see angles without having to measure them. Still though I am persistent at trying to measure everything as at times size and angles are deceiving. Right now I am on the rib portion of the skeleton. I like how they morph in and out of the body, at times very thick and and in other places thin. Connecting them to the spinal column is tricky as I still have to define this within the space of my paper better. Right now i am just defining the spinal column as a general block in space with somewhat of a T 3d shape. The view I am drawing the skeleton from has an interesting hip slant and very noticeable shoulder attitude.

Giving thanks for a break

We where given a break for thanksgiving so unfortunately we did not have class on Thursday.  I went west to some family in Spring Valley.  We played the traditional "Turkey Bowl" touch football game in the snow and weather sporting the very cold teens.  Starting off with four on one team and five on another everyone began to warm up as runs where made in an attempt at a goal.  Soon though a cousin showed up with seven Chinese exchange students and the teams had more flesh and bone to better even out the work.  My face was steadily freezing from the moisture my breath created and a scarf saved the day.  Our team had some intense runs and where able to pull out in the lead to win the game by one touch down.  After the game everyone chowed down on an amazing Thanksgiving meal.  Some relatives I hadn’t seen in years so it was a bit strange to be all-together again.  One of my cousins had a two year old daughter that was adorable and met for the first time.  As the evening progressed I became the usual post thanksgiving tired overfed zombie and was thankful to get out of the house into a snowy evening for a brisk walk to wake up.

We did have class on Tuesday though and where able to cut down 10 ft sheets of dry wall to a more manageable 6ft to place our large sheets of paper on for a skeleton project.  This project will take up the last weeks of the semester till we are finished with classes.  A whole skeleton is to be drawn in a simulated three-dimensional way on the whole sheet of paper.  By the time we are done it must detail all of the bone in our body that our view of the skeleton provides as the class surrounds one available skeleton on all sides.  It gets a bit claustrophobic with everyone's 6 ft drawing board creating a simulated cubicle space in which they observe the skeleton and work on puzzling it out on paper.

Sighs of relief

This Tuesday we finished up our three week project of portraiture work. 

Everyone hung up their portraits on the wall and was struck right away with the quality of work that everyone produced.  Going left to right around the room we started with Paul's drawings of Megan, Evan, and Evan.  His style really reminded me of Greek or Roman busts.  They where somewhat stiff, formal, and oozing a sort of benevolent confidence.  My favorite drawing of his was of Evan (other Evan) which he seemed to dislike a lot.  We went on to Josh next with his very detailed clean drawings.  I like how alive his drawings seemed to be and his amazing line weight variations which helped them to pop out at you.  Out of all the drawings Jordan's where by far my favorite because of their insane size (he chose a paper size that was a least twice what everyone else decided to draw on) and the style he drew with.  They where worlds different from when I last saw them in class.  He added detailed hair and shading to all of them.  In many ways I was disappointed he did this as the one with Josh was insane just the way it was without hair detail or shading.  The careful lines and correct anatomy shouted perfection by themselves.

I was really happy with the way that my drawings turned out.  Going to the open drawing session on Tuesday nights really helped me in this project to keep my eye trained and muscle memory lean and mean.  The first drawing I did of Megan was obviously the first one done in the series as it is so different from the style I settled into on the second and third of Paul and Evan.  The drawing of Paul was surprisingly easy and fun to do.  I liked how the neck and eyes turned out on this drawing.  Evan was very hard to draw looking down at him but I think it turned out looking like him.

The meat of things

On Thursday we went back over our drawings to prepare for next Tuesday's critique.  I needed to improve my portrait of Megan and thankfully she was able to pose for 20 minutes.  I cranked out different hair and more accurate face.  The first time she posed in class for us she was wearing a pony tail which arched up in back of her head but this time it was down framing her head.  Unfortunately I decided to take down the pony tail and work with the current hair style in my drawing.  I should have left it, as the new hair didn't work in my drawing and ended up being too voluminous.  I was able to improve her mouth which was too dark and highlighted around the edges.  Working with her eyes I saw that they where not lined up right and tried to conceal them with hair so I wouldn't have to go into the hassle of doing more detailed work.  Realizing that the hair really wasn't working I took my eraser and tried to sculpt it to create more space around her head and to create some highlights.  The neck was too elongated so I shortened it and pushed her hair around it to create a more relaxed look.

Paul, Evan, and Megan needed to work from me so I posed for the next forty minutes.

We drew the difficult angle portrait of Evan sitting on the floor working on his laptop (lucky him) on Tuesday.  I started out with a quick warm up sketch on my newsprint pad to get an idea how the angles looked.  More often then not the angles are a lot more severe then I originally put down on paper so I tried to measure this time to get a more accurate framework.  I was happy with the quick sketch so began on the final version with arches paper.  Working with 2b graphite I quickly layed out the angles and important areas of the face again though I struggled with where I should build the foundation to which other structural parts of the face would follow.  The eye brow for some reason took precedence over everything else because it was the closest thing to me.  After this I built on the bridge, eyes and nose.  His head was extremely difficult to get the correct idea of its roundness from looking at it on top.

Open Drawing musings

 The images...

Puzzling out Portraiture

Beginning my street portrait artist career on Monday, my group drew Megan.  I started out in wide general fast sweeps of my arm to position her head on the page.  Hair is the most interesting part of a portrait for me but I had to fight of the urge to darken and enhance it right away as I still needed to get the sizing correct first.  Saul Leiter's description of Joanna's hair is phenomenal.

 SAUL LEITER | Joanna | 1947

I underestimated the angle her head was resting so I had to go back in and realign her nose and mouth.  Her eyes where not working at all the way I tried to describe them.  The first problem was that I was trying to outline them!  I don't know what was in my mind to draw them like this but this is what I attempted to do over and over to get the outline shape right.  This exasperated the already flat problem I was having in this area of the face.  Amy came over and helped me to more accurately describe the nose and showed me what I was doing wrong with the mouth.  At the end of class I was somewhat satisfied with what I accomplished in my first portrait session but new I had a long way to go.

Wednesday we drew Paul.  For some reason this drawing came naturally for me as I didn't have to deal with the mouth and very minimally with the nose.  Unfortunately this drawing filled up a lot more paper then my first one of Megan but I liked this about it.  I just squeezed in the top of his head from the edge of the paper.  With Paul, Amy pointed out how ridiculously small I drew his ear.  Strangely I didn't see this until she pointed it out.  Usually I have a really hard time with the eye but with this new view of  looking at the back of his head I could see the structure of the eye a lot more clearly and it seemed to come out naturally in my drawing.

Open drawing

I went to an open drawing session tonight and as I need as much scheduled drawing time as I can get.

 

Angles

Our focus on Wednesday was to be able to draw the skull from any angle.  The idea was that if you start with the skull as a basic form of a box and build off of this box in the required perspective, it is a lot easier to draw at any angle, below you see an attempt of mine at this.  The last drawing in the series I did turned out really well and surprised myself with how I was able to describe the randomly placed skulls.  Sometimes after a three hour drawing session my drawings regress but this was clearly not the case.  

Memory

This week we drew the skull from memory to practice drawing without a physical object in front of us but rather having to draw on memory of the last weeks of drawing the skull.  I couldn't believe how much I did not remember from all the time I spent observing the skull.  We around at other peoples drawings and  could see a huge difference around the room.  Aimee mentioned that this really was a function of where your mind was when you where drawing.  I suppose that I was in the room observing and drawing physically but mentally thinking about anything but drawing.  So perhaps for me the most important aspect of drawing right now will be to work on my mental discipline to focus my mental energy on the drawing process instead of what I have to do later.

  

 

Well worn path

We finished our detailed cranium drawings on Wednesday.  I was inspired by what everyone else was able to pull out of the limited structure in the cranium and realistically depict it in their drawings.  Improvement was minimal in this assignment, if anything I digressed because I thought it was going to be easy and obviously didn't put in the time I needed too, my drawings explain this.  To me after seeing how everyone else described the cranium the key was really minimalism of line.  One student in particular demonstrated how well she knew the cranium with really beautiful line variations and was able to describe the cranium very efficiently.

Keepin on

We have a new assignment this week to focus on the cranium, leaving out the details of the main face (eyes, nose, mouth, etc.)  I am excited to push my understanding of contour line drawings with this and will try my best to not rely on shading for two of these studies.  The first class of this week I was out at a speaking session for artists of various disciplines who showed there work and spoke within their area of expertise.  The change in mindset from discipline to discipline was interesting to see, along with its inherent required skill set.  Industrial design gave instruction on putting enough time into the final product of your work in order to make it really shine and stand out, along with keeping in mind when you don't need things top notch in order to save time and invest it in the places where it needs to be, and playing with illusions to your advantage.  During the graphic design part of the program we where assaulted with image after image of design examples that this company did.  It was inspiring, humbling, maddening, and in the end a visual overload of impressive concepts and design.  For Thursday everyone buckled down and cranked out some drawings for the assignment or messaged areas that needed improvement.  I received a critique of my previous drawings from Amy which helped me see the direction I need to take my drawings.

Second week success

Patience came easier this week as I got into the swing of closely studying what I was drawing.  We had a critique of our three skull drawings on Wednesday which was really helpful.  Whenever your work gets put up you see it fresh and with new eyes.  This summer when editing photos I would spend a long time on them, put them away, and come back to them a different day and change them cause I realize that the edit didn't really fit.  Sometimes I would even come back to them a third or fourth time with fresh eyes to  make sure they where ok.  With the skull drawings I tried to do this by finishing them a day or two early so I could look at them after finishing and change whatever needed to be changed.  The critique group I was in really helped me to see what I needed to change and improve on as well as the strengths of those first drawings.  At times I relied to much on shading to describe the form of the skull instead of contour line. After all the critiques our professor spoke about breathing life and energy into the drawings.  How some artists are able to make any mundane everyday object come to life and capture you.  She spoke of the masters and how they where able to capture this energy through their drawings.

First Week Frustrations

So this week in drawing on Tuesday 9/13 I was confronted right away with the fact that I have not drawn for a while and the results where not pretty.  My right arm muscles where soar from the three hour class period, holding it up to the drawing easel.  I love using my whole arm in the drawing process.  I didn't have the patients needed to really see throughout the 30 minute drawings.  Drawing fast always appealed to me with large hand gestures waving around trying to find the form.  At times I get too detailed too fast with a drawing so perhaps the time constraint frees me to leave the drawing lines open and uncluttered with only the most vital information. Proportionally my drawings also needed help.  

 

 

Wednesday 9/15 for some reason marked a large improvement and was able to settle down into a rhythm to almost hammer out one of the three skull perspectives due next week.  Focusing on the skull for most of the class period, my eyes began to see nuances that where before hidden as I tried to describe it on the paper.  The jaw really gave me problems as it receded in the middle and came out again at an angle toward me with multiple complex plains.  When I stepped away, took a break, and came back I was able to draw the larger plains and it seemed to come into perspective a lot better.  I still remember that moment in my memory like a picture when I saw that part of the jaw that was missing.  Surprisingly I didn’t measure and was able to proportion the skull accurately just from the long observation and redrawing of the lines.  I especially had a lot of attempted lines around the circumference of the skull that I tried to blur out with my hand by smudging the lines.  We did this with Loom in Drawing 1.  I think he made us create multiple histories under the drawing where we could draw for a period and then we where required to brush over the whole drawing with a papertowl and start drawing again.  By the end I love the tone that was created around the drawing from brushing out lines and the interesting dynamic lines shooting out and around, evidence of the struggle for accuracy.

First things first

Introductions...

Q: How long have you been at Stout? 
A: Embarrassed cough...  lets just say I'm a super senior.

Q:What is your concentration? 
A: I am a multimedia design major but seem to be distracted by glimmering specks of gold in other subjects the further I progress in my major.  I only have 2 semesters left so am finishing up to get my bachelors after which I will experience some life outside of the US.

Q:Why are you taking Life Drawing II?
A: Drawing unfortunately is put to the side in most of my creative pursuits and am trying to change that.  My figure drawing is especially in need of attention.

Q:What do you hope to learn? 
 A: I want to finish this semester with an improved understanding of translating the objects I see onto the paper with appropriate line and proportion.  To change my turbid relationship with drawing to one of respect and trust. 

Q:What are some projects/artworks you've completed recently? 
A: Almost finished touching up 10 roles of film I shot in California visiting with family and ODing on the Yosemite back country for a couple days.  For some reason I feel much more comfortable shooting film with my 1980's Pentax then I ever have with a digital body.  My nomadic parents ended up there a couple years ago and a time opened up during the summer to bring down the 365 days since I had seen them to a more manageable 0.  I am very excited with how the project is finishing up.

Q:What travel or internships have you done?
A: I did an exchange to Germany for a year during which I was able to travel extensively.  It altered me so completely that at times I feel like an exchange student here. 

Q:What do you enjoy doing in your free time?
A: Hmm, well in the free time I had during the summer I read a lot about different health topics (interested in fermented foods and eastern medicine), played disc golf, tried to run/bike, a little photography, watched a lot of movies (favorites being Sin Nombre, Revanche, The Burning Plain, En la Cama, The Insider), brewed my first batch of beer, and simply relaxing in the sun.