Final Post

http://www.flickr.com/photos/63091848@N08/sets/

This semester has been quite the adventure. There was so much information in such a small amount of time I feel like I could take the class again and not get everything down. 

            I think it really took me a while to get the hang of everything I needed to think about when drawing the line weight, contour lines, plane changes.  Though there is definitely room for improvement.  The biggest thing I think is just kind of memorizing muscles and their interactions with each other and how they create different forms.  It makes observation much easier when you know what everything looks like in general and you can compare specific body types to that instead of trying to obverse everything from scratch.  This can be seen easily in some of my long drawings, I was better able to add more detail in the later drawings than the earlier ones.  I definitely got the hang of drawing parts around joints like the knees and elbows.  I think this is where the changes in form are most apparent and are easiest to convey.

            My gesture drawings had a bit of a change later in the semester from the basic line structure of each body part to a more chaotic non-stop line motion.  I like the style and energy much more but I think I can get carried away pretty easily, so I need to try keeping my lines efficient while still holding on to that energy.

Building muscles definitely helped a lot.  I think being able to place each muscle spatially within the skeletal structure and beside other muscles made learning them much easier, being able to learn these things physically rather than trying to sort them out purely watching and thinking works much better.

            I hope to practice more life drawing over the summer focusing on separate body parts to really understand muscles groups and eventually be able to put everything together and use all the skills I’ve learned in my paintings.

Long Time No See

So This week we did a full rundown of the facial structure.  So from what I understood there are relatively few muscles in the face and head so the most important things to keep in mind is the structure of the cranium and facial bones.

On Tuesday we began with the structure of the cranium.  It takes up 2/3 of the entire head while the face only 1/3.  This apparently is something that gets screwed up often with artists that don't fully understand the structure.  Though it's understandable knowing the importance we put on the face when drawing.   Often people will draw the face and then forget the back of the head making everything look quite strange.

The cranium can be sectioned into 4 major parts which consist of: The parietal bones which are located on top in the middle, the frontal bone which is of course in the front,  the temporal bones located on the bottom sides, and the occipital bone which is in the very back.

Beyond the 4 major parts there are several smaller important parts the the cranium as well: the External occipital protuberance which is a tiny little bone structure jutting down from the occipital bone,  The parietal eminences which are basically bumps near the back of each parietal bone and are important because they mark the widest point on the head, and lastly the frontal eminence which is a small bump when transitioning from the frontal bone down to the face.

I was very intrigued when listening to the lecture about the face.  There were so many details to the head that i had never thought could exist which opened up so many new opportunities and really got me motivated to start drawing.

My First drawing of the human skull - profile view

I feel like i have a pretty good grasp of all the parts but really need to work on creating efficient lines when drawing.  I had a difficult time figuring out how to best represent all the subtle curves in the skull.


Thursday we continued learning about the face and the more intricate structures within.

I find it kinda funny how familiar we are with faces, we see them literally everyday, interpret their movements, communicate with them, yet there are so many facets to a face that aren't consciously known.

From the lecture I mostly just wrote down names of parts that were important. Maxilla=upper jaw, Mandible= lower jaw,  zygomatic bone=cheek bone, zygomatic arch = side cheek bone, top plance of brow and the glabella.  I definitely need to keep practicing the face.

Curiously Curious

           Well this week we began our venture onto the upper body.  Up till now I have pretty much left the arms out of the picture not bothering to even try.  But now we finally got some info on it and my curiosity has been peaked.  Especially the movement of the Scapula, which is basically the shoulder blade.  I find it really interesting how it twists and moves with the arm, and frankly fun to try and identify where the medial border and spine of the Scapula is located.  This peak in curiosity has really brought a new light to life drawing class and I have started to pay much closer attention to my drawings. 

Although I feel confident with the shoulder blades in the back I don’t feel nearly as confident with the collarbone and how the back and front connect at the Acromion Process.

Through the week I actually found an interesting website that includes many drawings of the human body from historical figures.  It’s interesting to see how they drew and what they saw.

Freegan Lifestyle

My Midterm Pictures

So far this semester this class has been really fun and incredibly interesting.  I was quite intimidated before coming to class about drawing people, but after jumping in and taking it step by step everything is starting to come together.

I think that this approach of drawing the figure from the inside out has really helped with understanding the whole system.  It's nice to know the proportions of each piece and be able to compare them to each other.  And easing in to each piece has made the class much more easily understood.

Right now i understand the basic concepts that will get me by but I hope that in the next half of the semester i can really start honing in to the details.  I would like to be more mindful while creating my muscles so that i can use that information while drawing as well.  Right now i don't have the best understanding of muscles when looking at the model and have only just begun looking at them in this way with the very last long pose drawing i did below.

Really started to see the quad muscles as well as the knee

Overall i really just need to be more mindful when drawing and spend more time looking at the details of the model.  Like really watch the subtle curves of the muscle, the shape of the spine and especially the proportions between the ribcage and the pelvis.

When Rainbow Spaghetti Noodles Attack!

Previously on Life drawing one ... Andrew our oddball artist only trying to find his place in this Artsy Fartsy world finds himself pleasantly surprised as he wanders into class late Thursday afternoon to discover that Tuesdays class had been canceled and a short class planned for the day.  But with only an hour of learning to be had our artist hero finds himself lost and confused as the pelvic bone is dropped upon his head.  Will our hero ever figure out this puzzling and mysterious bone? Will the now ever go away? does anyone really know who shot JFK? Tune in next week to watch the conclusion of this gripping adventure!!!

So last week everyone was talking about how difficult the pelvis was and how confusing it was considering how little time we got to figure it out.  I was very happy that this week Amy took some time to go over the basics again.  I tried much harder this time around to pay attention more closely.  like where the pelvic points are on the front of the body, what the shape of the bone looks like in different positions (kinda like butterfly wings) andthe proportions of the pelvis in realtion to the rib cage.  Amy had shown me that basically the rib cage and the pelvis can both be contained in equally sized squares.

Some of my drawings from the week.

I'm kinda gettin the hang of things but i know that i don't have it down quite yet.  I still find my self working on the rib cage as the timer goes off.

One other new things we got to do this week was try and hour long drawing.  This kinda scared me a bit thinking about drawing that long.  I felt like there wasn't that much to draw and i did get stuck a few times.  I don't think I have an in depth enough knowledge of all the muscles to be able to see them all on the model but this was my best try. As you can see I got bored and drew a foot and another knee.

I think some goals of mine for next week and hopefully the rest of the semester is to pay more attention to my clay muscles as i build them so that I can use that information more while I am drawing.

Greek Peppers

Well this week was really short we didn't have class on Tuesday and Thursday only lasted about an hour or so.  I guess i had mixed feelings about it I definitely liked having extra time to work on other projects (and i did actually use the time wisely) but I really don't feeling comfortable with the class yet and feel like i could use all the practice i can get at this point.  I have been giving more of my time these days to my Industrial Design Class and really need to step it up.

In the small amount of time we did have class Amy Introduced to us the pelvis and how it fits in with the spine and ribcage that we have already learned and have been drawing.  I'm not sure i quite sure I have the pelvis down yet.

We were assigned muscles as well to work on over the weekend.  Quadriceps - Vastus Intermedius, Vastus Medialis, Vastus Lateralis, Rectus Moris.  These are bigger than the muscles that we have done so far so well see how they go.

Sharpie

So this week we got to learn some more muscle adding to the previous ones.  So far we have gone over the Spinal erectors (Spinalis cervicis, Spinalis capitas, Spinalis thoracis,Longissimus capitas, longissimus carvicis, longissimus thoracis) the abdominals (qudratus lumborum, External obliques, rectus abs) and the glutes + Hips (Gluteus medius, tensor fasciar, gluteus maximux).  WHEW!!! I’m sure that was as much for you as it was for me.  I’ve always kind of understood how muscles worked and why they were placed where they were but I never knew how intricate they could be.  There are so many, and each with such a specific purpose.  I only wish I could remember all these names so I could whip em out and impress everyone.  

         Actually building the muscles has been a real challenge as well.  The book we got is pretty interesting but so hard to read sometimes.  They only show one muscle at a time and so it’s rather difficult to guess how different muscles interact and which ones will be on top or bottom, but Amy has thankfully been able to clear up some of those issues.

The muscles I have completed so far.

           Aside from our muscles we have started to draw the midline of our models as well as find and draw where the rib cage is during our gesture drawing portion of class.  Becoming familiar with where these two things are and getting in the habit of doing these two things first help us become better and faster drawers.  The reason these two lines are so important is that they are main references that we can start to build other parts of the body off of.  We were taught that the rib cage has an egg shape (mine always seem to turn out too long) but they are getting better!