Shell & Manikin

This week in Life Drawing 1 we had to do contour drawings of shells. The week started off with critiques of those drawings. It was nice to get into small groups and discuss them. Having individual attention was nice because I was a little lost when it came to which way the lines were supposed to go. It helped to see other students drawings of their shells also and see how they attempted it. I hope as the weeks go by we will be able to work on the shell drawings a little more. Mine didn't come out exactly how I would have liked it to so to be able to work with them more and see improvement would be nice! We also learned about the spine and the muscles this week. Taking notes on the different angles and the pulling and shortening and attaching of the muscles really helped me to understand more about the human form. I have not taken any human biology classes here at stout, the closest class I have taken would have to be Human Genetics which doesn't help much so it was nice to learn a lot and take a lot of notes about the muscles. When it came to working with the manikins it was a little hard at first. I worked on it with my roommate Sam, so that helped a lot! Using the books was easier than I thought it would be. It is nice to have something to look at while you're doing your own. I have provided a few pictures of my manikin thus far. I know there are things wrong with it, I had trouble figuring out how much clay to use and how big to make the muscles.

I'm excited to see what the next week of Life Drawing has to bring. I feel like I am getting back in the swing of things now and my drawings have been improving a little since day one. I am excited to see how much I learn and improve over the whole semester.

First Week of Life Drawing

This first week of Life Drawing 1 I think went really well. I was a little rusty this week though, I have not done any drawing since freshman year in Drawing 2. I like that we do gesture drawings for the first half hour. It really warms me up and helps me to understand the different angles of the body and poses. I have included a few of my 30 second and 1 minute gesture drawings. On Tuesday the model had really good poses, she changed it up a lot and gave us all very different angles to work with. With the contour drawings on thursday I struggled a bit. It has been so long since I have done one of those that it took me a while to figure out which way the lines were supposed to go. I learned a lot on thursday though, a lot of students had some really good contour drawing examples. Seeing the other students drawings and discussing a the end of class what a contour drawing was helped me understand how I was supposed to attempt the homework.

Photos of Some of My Work

All from Drawing I, Freshman year

Introduction

Hi! I'm Emily Welna. I am a Junior here at Stout and I am an Interior Design major. I am taking Life Drawing to improve my drawing skills. At my Mid Program Review, one of the teachers thought that taking life drawing would help my drawings look more 3 dimensional, so that's why I'm here! I didn't take very many art classes in highschool, not many were offered, so I didn't have much experience coming here to Stout. I've taken drawing 1 & 2. I struggled through drawing 1 but in the end I had improved much more then I thought I would. I hope to grow even more over this semester and improve my drawing skills! I think it will be fun to learn how to draw the human body, I have been dancing for about 15 years and as a dancer, your body, the way it moves, and your muscles are always on your mind. It will be great to learn how to draw the muscles and how bodies move. I'm excited to get started and improve my drawing skills!