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.