MIDTERM

At this point in the semester I have learned a lot about my drawing skills and knowledge of the human form. In the beginning I didn't know anything about drawing the human body, or how the muscles were shaped and attached. I always tried to avoid drawing people and faces in my earlier drawing classes because it was not one of my strong points at all. I am glad I am taking this class; I have grown a lot just in this first half of the semester. We started with bones and muscles of the spine and back and then we moved on to the rib cage. After learning the main shape of the rib cage we moved on to the pelvis and then to the thigh. I learned a lot about how muscles work and what they are supposed to look like while building the manikins. I have learned about contraction, attachments, joints, and ligaments. Also we learned all the different views of the manikins; such as anterior, posterior, ventral, and dorsal, just to name a few. I have such a better understanding of how to even approach and start a drawing of a person now that I am in this class. With the tools that I have learned thus far, it is so much easier to begin a drawing. I feel like every day I grow and learn something new.

Some of my weaknesses would be understanding foreshortening. I seem to struggle with understanding the angles and the shortening part of the object I am drawing. Another weakness would be the contour drawings. The first shell drawing was hard for me to do. It was hard to draw and convey on paper what I was seeing while looking at the shell. I also struggle with the muscle building part. It is hard to understand sometimes how big the muscles should be and what they should look like when they are all put together. Some strengths I have are my gesture drawings and the longer drawings we do. Drawing has never been a strength for me but when we get to do gesture drawings and the longer 30-60 minute drawings it is nice to see that I don't struggle through them as much as I thought I would. I like the feeling of accomplishment at the end of a long drawing.

I would like to get better at contour drawings. When done well, they look really interesting and I would love to improve my skills when it comes to contour drawings. Also it would be fun to learn about drawing faces. I'm not sure if we get to that in this class but I know I have no idea how to even begin to make a face look realistic, so that would be great to learn about too!

Here is the link to my Photobucket page:

http://s604.photobucket.com/albums/tt122/welnae/

Life Drawing-Legs

This week in Life Drawing we really got a chance to do a lot of drawing. Tuesday was Advisement Day so there was no class that day. On Thursday though, the girl model was there and we got to do gesture drawings and some longer ones too. I received a lot of helpful pointers from Amy and Josh. I like that they walk around and help you to understand what you are trying to draw. I struggled a lot with for shortening this week, it was hard for me to understand how to draw something that is coming right towards you. But after a few pointers I started to get the feel for it. Now that we know how to draw the spine, rib cage and the pelvis it is easier to start the gesture drawings with those main features and work from there. We were assigned the leg muscles to be due this week so we also had a short lesson on the curves of the legs while drawing them. The legs have a ton of different curves, kind of like a zig zag. It was fun to add another part of the body this week and start to understand the bones and muscles and different angles of the legs. Here are some drawings that I did in class, a one hour drawing and two quick gesture drawings. With the one hour drawing, I fist had issues with the whole gravity part that was taking effect to her body, but once the center line was drawn and the core was finished it was easier to add the legs and arms. I'm glad we had so much time for this drawing, a lot of times I had to go back and erase and re-draw areas once I understood them.

Rib Cage and Pelvis

This week we had a lot of time to draw and get a feel for the rib cage and pelvis. On Tuesday we took notes and watched a video and on Thursday we drew the whole time. It was nice to do gesture drawings and start with the spine, rib cage, and pelvis. Starting with the core like that is really helping me understand the body and how to draw it. The drawings I have provided below are a contour drawing of the knee and hip area, and a longer pose drawing of the back of the model. With the contour drawing I struggled a little, it was hard for me to pick a spot to draw. With the other drawing of the back of the model, it took me a while to understand how the pelvic bones were supposed to be drawn. Starting with the spine and the rib cage helps a lot though. It will be nice to learn about more muscles and be able to add them into our drawings.

Rib Cage & Abs

This week in Life Drawing 1 we took notes on the rib cage and the abdomen muscles. We learned about the Lateral, Anterior and Posterior views of the rib cage. It helped a lot to learn about the angle of the rib cage and the different landmarks of the rib cage. I liked that we got to do some gesture drawings at the beginning of Thursdays class. That helped me a lot in figuring out how the rib cage should look from different angles. It also has helped me to proportion the body right. At the beginning though it was a little rough, it had been a long time since we had done any gesture drawings so I struggled at first but after the first few poses I started to warm up again. It took me a while to get the rib cage to look right, and to get it to start and end in the right place but I think I improved over the class time. Here are some of my gesture drawings, some 30 seconds, some 30 minutes.