The Skull

This week in life drawing was a good one. We focused on the skull, and after an hour lecture, we actually got to drawing. I was pretty happy with how my drawings turned out. It was cool to break the skull down. I love all of the planes and it really makes sense why this was saved until the end. In order to really render it well, you need to employ many (if not all) of the techniques we have learned. This includes planes, contours, and varying line weight. It has really helped me with creating (relatively) realistic dimensionality. We were given the assignment to do three long (around 2 hours) drawings of the skull. We have to draw a ¾ view from the front, ¾ view from the back, and a profile view. I am really looking forward to doing my last one.

The manikin is done! Well, almost. All we have left are a few muscles on the neck and then clean up. But, we don’t have any more big assignments. This will be a huge help, because my other final projects are going to be big. All in all, I am pleased with how my manikin turned out. It will certainly benefit from some cleaning and smoothing, but for the most part, I think it came out nicely.

Skull 1

Skull 2

The first view I decided to draw was the ¾ view from the front. Because we had not covered the face at all, it is not quite as polished as I would like it to be. I really need to go back in and add some depth via planar information. I am, however, very happy with the second skull. Amy was able to help me really push and exaggerate the planes of the skull. I think that really helped it become more tangible.

Hands!

Well, the hands weren’t quite as bad as I thought. Were had to draw two hour-long drawings, one of a skeleton hand and the other a person’s hand. My skeleton hand turned out awful. I chose a really, really bad angle and all of the fingers were overlapping. On top of that, I generally have a really difficult time creating straight, clean lines (this is very clear in the drawings I posted last week). So it turned out to be an unrecognizable mess of charcoal lines. The other drawing was a bit more successful. It still has its problems. I think it is a bit elongated and the perspective is a bit off. Overall though, I think it was a great learning experience.

My manikin sits in my locker, untouched since last week. I am hoping to finish the muscle assignment tonight, but we will see. I have been hearing horror stories of this last muscle group. I fear that they will take me way longer than I would like them too. Ah well, what can you do. I do think the tendons look pretty cool once they are put on. And the arm as a whole really interests me. I am looking forward to polishing everything up this next weekend. As it stands my clay is very lumpy and unsightly.

I chose to include two of my drawings from last week. The first is an hour-long drawing of the whole body. It turned out pretty well, except that her knees changed position after the first half. So the knees look a little weird I think. I also decided to include my second hand drawing. I was having a hard time with the thumb. It kind stuck in, then the tip came back out at me and the whole thing twisted.

The Arm!

This past week was another short one. With advisement day on Tuesday, we were left with a single class for the week. It was a productive class though. We began with some gestures, which went alright. I was able to draw the entire body within 30 seconds (which is very, very new to me). However, I need to begin adding definition and volume to the limbs. Currently, I show an arm and a leg as a brief (and often ill-conceived) line going in an approximated direction. I hope to improve my gestures over the next month. Which reminds me, we only have a month left of the semester. This blows my mind! It seems to have flown by. Thankfully, I feel like I have accomplished much over the semester. I am relieved to feel this way, too often I feel like I haven’t improved nearly as much as I should have.

As the semester begins to come to a finish, so does my manikin. With only a few assignments left, the flaws in my muscles seem to have compounded. I have so much to fix and so much to do. I think my clay gun (thing) will help in the creation of the tendons that run from the forearm to the hand.

Ah yes, the hand. Oh God, the hand. I mentioned this in my last post, but I tend to skim over the hand (by skim I mean I don’t draw anything really). I am really, really dreading the day we cover the hands. From what I gather, most people find the hands to be challenging. While this is reassuring that I am not along, it also reinforces my apprehension.  They can be beautifully drawn though. I am particularly interested in the range of motion we can do with our forearm. So, I decided to show a few studies done by an artist named Colleen Barry. She shows a wide range of motion and each drawing is rendered immaculately.

http://grandcentralacademy.blogspot.com/2010/04/uninstructed-anatomy-drawing-group.html
http://www.colleenbarryart.com/colleenbarryart.com/WELCOME.html

Shoulders and Arms

This last week was kind of tough for me. I am not entirely sure why, but I just wasn’t drawing very well. We continued to work on the shoulders and collar bone then moved on to the arms. On Thursday we ended up doing an hour and half drawing. So it was a pretty drawing intensive week (which is great). I can’t believe how helpful the collar bone is when trying to define the shoulders. And, as I mentioned in the previous post, I was able to draw a back view. The left shoulder blade wasn’t very visible, but the right one was really obvious. I was having some trouble really showing how much farther it stuck out than the rest of the back. But as I mentioned in the first sentence, during the longer pose on Thursday, I just could not get anything right! And while it is usually true that the first half of a drawing is usually pretty bad, it didn’t seem to get any better. Hopefully next week proves to be a bit better.

Amy also was able to point out some of the muscles we recently completed on out manikins. It was pretty cool to see how visible the shoulder muscles are. Sadly, I had a lot wrong with the last assignment. A lot of my muscles were either too big or too small. Thankfully, our latest assignment doesn’t seem to be that involved.

Since I haven’t posted any of my own work in a while, I decided to take some pictures of my more recent drawings. Both were hour long poses and all in all I am happy with how they turned out. On the first I think the foot is a little too small and on the second I made her hand a little too pointy (and a bit too generalized).