Le Portefeuille Final

One Last Reflection...

What a semester it has been. No joke. It has felt so short, but when I look back at the work we've done, I realize how much time we've spent in this class and how much we've accomplished! I'd be lying if I said I enjoyed every minute of every assignment and never had frustrating times when I wanted to give up... but when I reflect on the struggles I had in this class I am grateful for them, because (I'm pretty sure) they helped me improve in my skills for drawing LIFE! I definitely learned more than I expected to, and some things I learned without realizing I was really learning them. Strange.

It's hard to sum up all of the things that I learned, but I guess I will mention what things were struggles for me, because I believe I improved the most in those areas. First off, gestures. The first day of class when we did quick gestures of the form I had no idea what I was doing. I was trying to remember how we did these my freshman year in drawing one, but they looked pretty awful. Throughout the class period, Amy would demonstrate her gestures and I would catch on a little more. But my gestures in the beginning were very outline-y, and I didn't realize this until I learned a better way to capture form, and could compare the drawings. Week by week, when we learned about the spine, the rib cage, the hips, etc. I could see how my understanding of the human body and how to capture it became deeper. In my free time, when I doodle, I really like drawing the female body in different fashions (I love drawing clothes, a random hobby). Just this semester I have seen a vast difference in the way I doodle these people. My roommate even noticed the improvement and was impressed. That's when I figured I must really be learning something! I have always loved drawing people, but I was hindered with incorrect anatomy and not really knowing proportions. I hope I can continue learning and take what I have learned with gestures to my other art classes and work I do on my own. If I could go back and give myself advice at the beginning of the course, I would say to really pay close attention to anatomy lectures and even spend extra time drawing the skeletal structure; it'll pay off enormously!

I also learned a lot through the clay mannequins. Although it's hard to feel like I really learned, because I got so tired of the muscles by the end, I know I did. Building those muscles was never something I ever felt like doing or had a passion for. The first assignment with the clay was the hardest. I was confused and frustrated and I struggled with understanding our books. But with every section, I got a little more confident and I was able to take away more from what I was doing. It is actually pretty interesting to see what muscles really lie beneath our skin. At home, my roommates were surprised to see how may muscles there are in the arms and down to the hands. I also realized that drawing the human form isn't about outlining the edges that you see (like I previously did), but really understanding how everything (the bones, muscles, skin) work to give the human figure life and movement. I guess that's why it is called life drawing!

Even though I still do not feel one hundred percent confident with contour line drawing, I have come to really appreciate it and enjoy looking at something and recognizing it's planes (in the shells!). I also know that I will never reach perfection... there is always something to learn, which is the whole point of art! If you are never challenged, if you are always satisfied with the level you are currently at, you will never strive to become better or learn new things. This class has given me a glimpse of what I can learn more and more of in the future, and although I know it's going to be hard, I'm really looking forward to whatever challenges come next! Seeing the artwork that is produced after a struggle is what makes it all worthwhile.

FINAL PORTFOLIO: http://www.flickr.com/photos/laurenbot/

Last long pose and gestures.

This last week we had a model come in and we did some (clothed, due to the freezing weather) gestures and one long pose. It was fun to do this, because it felt like it had been awhile since we only concentrated on the full figure, and weren't learning about a specific area. The one minute (or was it thirty second?) gestures were a little rough at first, but as we continued I found myself remembering how to quickly capture the form. I was a little tired this day, so these drawings kind of wore me out, but I found them relaxing nonetheless. I especially enjoyed the longer gestures, where I had time to really look at her position and capture it on my paper. It also was a different experience to draw the model with clothes on, but I think my gestures turned out looking about the same as they usually do. It was pretty automatic to just assume where the body parts were under her clothes, and you could still see how they were moving if you paid attention.

For the long pose, I sat almost straight on in front of the model, at her level. She was leaning up against the wall with her legs crossed along with her arms crossed. I spent some time mapping out her form with vine charcoal, which rubbed away easily when I made mistakes or had to change something. For this drawing, I looked not for contour lines but just for the folds in her shirt and actual things that I saw. I was pleased with the way the drawing turned out, although I would've like a little more time to fix some things. But overall I just had fun with this last drawing and I really didn't think about what I was doing consciously, I just started and waited to see what would happen... whatever worked I kept and whatever looked wrong I brushed away. It was a fun drawing to finish on, and I'm not sure whether I was relieved the long, energy-draining poses were over or sad that these meditative studies of the human form should be no more.

(cRaNiUm).

This last week we did a day of lecture and drawing of the SKULL! This was a fun day, I thought. Amy described the parts of the skull to us and then we set off to drawing! What mostly caught my attention during the lecture was the mastoid (I think??) or the small knob that you can feel behind your ear. This attaches to the two main tendons in the neck, which come down and attach in front where the top of the breastbone is. Amy mentioned that these two tendons support the head and are what keep it attached to the rest of the body (so we should always find these when we are drawing!). I had fun feeling this anatomy on my own neck.

We were assigned to draw the skull from a three quarters view and from a side view. I began with the side view, with some loose drawing and observation of the skull. I was doing pretty well and having a good time with it, but Amy helped me fix the eye socket which I was having difficulty with. It's hard on new structures to be able to tell what the planes are and what's really protruding or receding. A few times I walked up to the skull and felt it to see what it was really doing, because from the side it was misleading. I have never really drawn a full skull before or learned about the entire anatomy, so this was a new exploration. After Amy helped me with the planes around the eye socket, I was in the zone and had to finally tear myself away when it was time to switch angles.

The three quarter view was about the same... mostly I just did careful observation of the form and adjusted things a few times when they were off. I had to try a couple times to get the placing of the eye sockets correct, and Amy checked my drawing and just fixed where I had ended the cheekbone too soon. I think the second time around I had less time, but I was getting more comfortable with the proportions and planes of the skull. Near the end I added some contour lines to show the different plane changes. In the first skull drawing I only drew lines that I actually saw. I think the contour lines gave the drawing a little more dimension. Even though we had to skip the self portrait drawing for the final assignment, I want to someday draw one and study the planes and structure of my own face. I think it would be quite intriguing!

H A N D S

Two weeks ago in class we talked about HANDS! How to describe my experience with drawing hands... Well, in the past, when I have paper and a pencil and not much to draw, I would often look at my left hand and do a little detailed drawing of it. I thought I was pretty familiar with hands. My freshman year at Stout, in Drawing One, we did a hand study that I remember enjoying. But it was also very outlined, more focused on the image and expression than anatomy. However, when we got a lesson on hands in class, I was baffled at the way the bones in the hand truly look and function. It is a lot harder to try and look at the hand and think about the way the bones are working underneath the skin and muscle. When we started sketching our classmates' hands, I still was a little lost, and simply drawing what I saw, like I used to. But when I did this I found myself frustrated, because it was hard to make the hand look correct and proportionate by only trial and error. Amy came around to look at the drawings, and she showed me how to draw the planes of the fingers (so they don't look like carrots, like mine did HA) and of the hands. On this day I realized I have a lot to process and study, so that my understanding of hands becomes better and comes naturally in drawing from life.

(Amy's corrections)

neck, collarbone, shoulders.

A few weeks ago I had to miss class, and I missed a long model pose (sad). We had been learning about the shoulder blades and the collarbone area. This week somewhat blew me away, I never realized how wild shoulder blades really are. It sounds silly but it's true: they really are crazy. My understanding of shoulder blades beforehand was pretty basic and somewhat incorrect... I never realized how they truly work. It really intrigued me how the bone comes up, thinning out, and reaches around the arm, almost connecting to the long, thin collar bone in front. The shoulder blade fits right into the humerus (upper arm bone), so that any time the arm moves the shoulder blade moves. It is pretty weird how the shoulder blades seem to kind of shift and float around on top of all the back muscles. This was interesting to me because I often try to get knots out of my roommates' backs, and the knots are usually right up to or underneath the shoulder blades. I can see how all the movement is in this area, which causes all the stress to be there.

So after I missed class I came into the open drawing session on a Tuesday night. It had been at least a couple weeks since I did any gestures or model poses, so it felt a little rusty. First I filled a page with some one minute gestures, and later I did a fifteen to twenty minute pose of the shoulder and neck area. This area already is very interesting to me and fun to draw, so I enjoyed capturing this pose. It was a little difficult to get the angles right, because the model was slumped up against the wall in what looked like an uncomfortable position. I was working slowly, because I hadn't heard how long the pose was going to be. Although I was cut off, I think the information I got down on the page was enough, and showed some emphasis on what we had been discussing that week. I hope to still learn more the shoulder blades and how to capture them in gestures correctly.

Long Model Pose...

The second half of the semester has flown by, and although it seems like we have had less class time spent drawing gestures and models, our understanding of anatomy and our skill with the figure has improved, at least in my opinion. A couple weeks after our midterm we got to do a long pose one of the female models. She sat above us, on a chair with her feet propped up so that we could get a good view of her legs (we had been learning and focusing on the legs and feet).

For some reason I really loved this pose. It was an interesting angle, one that we hadn't seen before. However, the proportions were really difficult to draw correctly. Again, it took a lot of erasing and careful measuring to get all of the angles and sizing right. My drawing would have definitely looked a lot different, and worse if we didn't have an instructor to point out the faults (thank you, Amy!). It was a little frustrating to have to do all of this re-drawing and constant checking, when I just wanted to get to the form and complete the overall drawing. But when I finished this drawing (or rather, ran out of time) I realized that it was a stronger piece because of all the early mistakes. My vine charcoal left a nice blurred feeling around the figure, grounding it and adding more interest than a clean, orderly contour drawing.

I think it shows in this drawing that I am able to start loosening up. Here I spent more time really looking at the human body and showing an overall sense of the figure. Although there is room for improvement, like always, I was happy with what I achieved during this week and the drawings I had to show my progress.

Feet! Legs!

I've always thought feet were strange (especially mine)... and our lesson on the foot structure confirmed this thought! Feet are very strange. And they have a lot of bones. But anyway, one week in class we focused on the legs and the feet, doing some long poses that I enjoyed very much. It took a lot of measuring, erasing, and help from Amy to finally get my drawing to look correct. I am still working on going slow and taking the time to measure and map. I am realizing that I am very impatient when I draw, and I want to get the form down so I can spend a lot of time fully looking over the detail of the entire figure. However, when I rush through the outline and the main form of the figure it is most often incorrect and after Amy's corrections it is so clear how much better the figure looks. Although I am gaining more confidence in gestures and finding correct proportion in the model, it is a challenge for me to incorporate that skill into the long drawings. I am used to drawing the way that I've always drawn, and I know that old habits die hard. Which is exactly why I need to work on starting out loose, and really looking at the entire figure and mapping out the body before I begin to draw detail.

I had a good time drawing the long pose of the foot, because I had a lot of time for one specific area, and I could look at the detail. The only problem was that it was hard to even pinpoint what the contours of the foot were doing and where to place the lines on my paper. I somewhat followed shadows and visual lines that I could clearly see, but again, I felt like I was playing a guessing. Drawing the foot and trying to think about the inner structure was a challenge. I hope that practice will eventually make... closer to perfect.

Shell & Ink

For our third homework assignment with the shells, we graduated to using ink! This new endeavor was an exciting one for me, as I was most definitely ready to move on from the previous contour line drawings. Although I do enjoy long, detailed drawing, the shell I received is very even and somewhat square in its structure. After a couple times drawing the shell and carefully observing the lines and spirals, I got tired of the repetition. Adding ink was something new and different, and I had a lot of fun experimenting with the new medium.

When I started out with this drawing I might have been a little impatient to get to the ink wash... I went faster than usual and included less detail than my last two drawings. I think this actually worked out better, and let me focus more on the line weight on parts of the entire shell, instead of narrowing in on one tiny section at a time. I bought two colors of ink: sepia, and black. I started off with a very weak wash, going around the shell and creating some space. It was hard to know where to start and how dark to push the wash. I was surprised at how the sepia wash turned out on my white paper; it was a very light pink when watered down and had warm red tones when I used it heavier. Also, when I added the black ink, wherever the colors blended a pretty purple-ish tone was left. That was another surprise that made the ink wash a little more interesting. Slowly but surely I added layers of ink, one on top of another, and when I was satisfied with the color and contrast I finished. The most challenging part for me was probably figuring out how and where to leave areas white to show the highlights. I think it turned out fine but I felt like I was playing a guessing game! Maybe that's just what art is all about... :)

Field Trip! Reflection.

This week our class took a trip to Minneapolis, Minnesota to see the Walker Art Center and the Bell Museum of Natural History (at the University of Minnesota). This day was a lot of fun. First we walked around the Walker, which I have been to previously but I got to see a lot of new artwork this time. My favorite pieces were probably Naked, by Eiko and Koma and the Yves Klein exhibit, specifically his Untitled Fire Painting. The first one was very interesting. At first I thought the piece was the large wall of feathers and I didn't see that there was something inside, until someone walked out and I realized you were supposed to enter! I also saw the pictures of the people in the pamphlet and thought they were sculptures of some sort. Then upon entering the piece I finally realized that they were breathing, moving, real people. I watched for about ten or fifteen minutes, seeing them shift and sleep. It was very calming but at the same time curious. I got a sense of the importance of time, and survival, and birth or death. The Yves Klein exhibit was fascinating, and more so because we talked about his work in my sculpture class. The room of his pure blue works was overwhelming! I loved his pieces using women's bodies to make imprints in paint on canvas. He also had some works, like my favorite "fire painting" that used the form of the bodies but with warmer, fiery colors. There was something about them that fascinated me. The quality was very unique and the canvas was manipulated in an interesting way.

The second half of the trip we went over to the Bell Museum, which was a smaller museum containing stuffed animals from the midwest. I saw birds, moose, wolves, etc. but I wasn't quite sure what to draw so I went to the room with all the bones and live animals. I ended up drawing an antler that had an intricate piece of bone attached. This I enjoyed doing a lot, and I even got to learn about some of the bones later and see an elephant skull, which was cool.

Week Six Reflection-Shell #2

This last week we did some more drawing in class, some gestures and also a long pose. This was challenging and draining, but going slow and measuring out angles and proportion paid off; the drawings turned out well. Gestures are becoming a lot more natural, and it's getting easier to see how the body is moving and bending when we sketch it. For our homework we did a second drawing of our shell. I was a little more rushed on this one, so I didn't fully explore the positioning and I was still confused on how to correctly show the shell. I tried to get an angle but my drawing turned out too horizontal again. Other than that, it went alright, and I pushed lights, darks, and expression a little further. Still, when I finished, I noticed that the proportion could have been more accurate, which I could've pushed by spending more time drawing. Overall the week went well, and the muscles are getting easier to build although they still are quite time consuming. I hope for my next shell drawing to spend a lot more time and attention to how I lay it out on the paper.

Midterm Portfolio-Reflection

These last few weeks of life drawing class have flown by in a blur, yet I can see clearly looking through my work the progress that has been made and the result of all the hours in class. There have been many challenges to this course and many things that I have enjoyed about it. First of all, throughout the first half of this semester, we have been pushed outside our comfort zone. I have gone away from the neat, careful, calculated still-life style of drawing and been pushed to let go a little and really focus on capturing the natural movement and feel of the figure. It was very hard at first not to only draw heavy outlines of the subject. I am used to drawing what I see, in the easiest way, and the first few days of gestures were pretty tough. Through watching Amy draw and learning what areas to focus on, along with how to highlight the most important parts of the body, my gestures became a little more natural. A lot of practice in class made a huge difference. Throughout the next few weeks of class, we continued to learn about different inner structures of the body, like the spinal column, the rib cage, the hips. Learning about these things and seeing the way the skeletal system is structured helped my drawing immensely. Once you have an understanding of where everything in the body is, it is much easier to draw gestures and pick out points on the body where you can see certain points to reference the structure beneath. I know that building the muscles is also helping us to see the body and draw it with more understanding. I hope that when we finish building the muscles we will have solid and complete knowledge of human body structure, and be able to incorporate this knowledge into our artwork. I have enjoyed drawing from life very much. There is so much satisfaction for me in drawing natural form and energy and movement. What hasn't been so fun (at least in the beginning) is building the muscles out of clay. It has been hard to translate the images from the book into a three-dimensional clay form, and especially to make them look nice and fit together. This has been a little frustrating but my hope is that it becomes easier and easier with every set of muscles we make. I am looking forward to the rest of the semester and how much more our work will improve by then!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/laurenbot/sets/72157625298841710/

Week Three Reflection

This week I think we all made some progress and learned a lot. The week flew by, but we first critiqued our muscle models, which many (mine included) probably needed some revising. It seemed that most people got the anatomy a little off, or needed to refine their craftsmanship. I went home later and fixed my muscles, taking a second closer look at the guidebook. Most of my muscles were made too large and put on incorrectly. It is difficult to work in 3D but I think I enjoy it for the most part.

We got some more gesture drawing in this week. On Tuesday we drew gestures for some time, and then we were asked to gesture draw with our left hand. We were concentrating on the spine and its movement, and with my left hand it was easier to actually focus and look carefully at what I was doing. My right handed gestures had been getting too confident with heavy marks. So that was a fun exercise that showed me how to look better and pay better attention to my marks.

We learned this week about the ribcage. It was actually really cool to learn how the ribs come together and form the chest, the chest we see on the outside. Once we learned all of the parts and how the were shaped (in whole like an egg!) we were able to do more gestures, focusing on getting the form of the ribcage first and how everything worked with it. These were very good exercises and helped me to figure out how to see proportions, angles and balance. It was tricky to draw the form of the ribcage when the model was bending at extreme angles. But overall I am getting much more comfortable with gestures and how to show the entire feel of the model's positioning without using all outline or too much detail. I still mess up the balance sometimes, like when the model is leaning slighty or bending slightly and I draw her too straight up. It's been challenging to really see and draw how the model is shifting her weight ever so slightly. Hopefully soon I will get in the habit of looking for those small things every time.

About this week in general, I am very excited to continue learning anatomy and how the body works so we can draw it better. I love drawing from life. It is very relaxing and although that much focusing can wipe me out, it's neat to see how each member of our class interprets the same model in different ways, each interesting and unique. Drawing natural forms is very nice and refreshing for me, like breathing, and it hits me sometimes how truly beautiful and awe-inspiring the human form is. I think about the creator I believe in and how amazing God must be to have formed such a thing as a human being. I will be pondering this for awhile...

Week Two Reflection

The second week of class we were introduced to some rules about muscles. We learned some terminology about observing the body and we started building the spinal erectors with our clay and skeleton models. This was very challenging.... working in three dimensions with a two dimensional guide was tough.

We continued drawing gesture drawings of a model this week, starting with 30 second gestures, then one minute, three minutes, etc. These were still challenging for me, because I was trying to get away from drawing only the outlines of the figure. We were taught how to follow the top center planes of the limbs so we only need one mark per limb. This was hard to get the hang of, it was also hard for me to stop focusing on one detail at a time and make an overall gesture of the entire body and position. I also still struggled with getting the entire body in during the faster gestures, and fitting the whole length of the legs and arms (when extended) inside the section of my paper. But practice, practice, practice makes perfect and little by little I'm starting to get the feel of these gestures. With the longer poses, I still feel unsure about my lines and marks, but I try to follow the contours of the body best I can. I do also love drawing the model for the half hour time period, so I can look closely and capture detail.

Contour Drawing of Model

Gesture Drawing of Model

Shell contour

Week One Reflection

This week our class got started, and we got introduced to what Life Drawing is and what we'll be learning. In the first day of actual drawing, we received a shell which we will be observing and drawing throughout the semester. We began doing blind contour line drawings of our shell. It had been quite some time since I last had done these drawings (possibly since my freshman year), but it was really refreshing and brought my attention back to focusing on the object and not my drawing of it. I really got a feel for the shape and movement of my shell. These shells are helping us to draw natural form and contour line, so we can practice and get a better understanding of the human form. We did a contour line drawing, which was my favorite, because I am a very detail-oriented drawer, and here I could carefully observe every part of my shell.

This previous class period we started drawing with a female model. We began with doing many quick 30 second poses, doing small gesture drawings. These were difficult for me at first, because I could not get the whole body in fast enough, and I didn't remember how to really use my drawing tool to make quick gestures. After Amy showed us some methods for drawing the entire body and a reminder on how to use our tools, I started to get the feel for capturing the model's whole form. It was a little exhausting by the end of three hours, from so much direct and careful observation and processing of information. However, it was a great exercise for me, to refresh my observation skills and start understanding how the body looks and balances. I understood more about the spinal column and how that positions the whole form of the body.

We ended the class with a half an hour contour line drawing of a concentrated area on the model's body. I started on her face and hair (she was resting, face up). I attempted to capture the lines of her strands of hair, strewn around her head and onto her chest. This pose was very enjoyable for me because it was slower, and I could pick out more detail and really observe the forms for a longer period of time.