Three Finished Skulls

I really enjoyed this project a lot because it allowed me to get back to the basics of observation and drawing. Trusting the shape of the skull and my knowledge of the skull, and not necessarily what my brain was telling me what I saw, was definitely a challenging but worthwhile study. These three skulls here are a culmination of three different drawing sessions of about 3 hours a piece, where I set up a skull in front of me and drew from it. I tried not to focus too much on shading, but let my cross contour lines intersect in many places, especially ones in shadow, to give the illusion of depth. I think these three drawings are pretty successful, but of course there is always tons of room for improvement. I wish I didn’t darken certain areas as much, but with using conté crayon, once you darken you really can’t erase. I also wish I would have left more of my mistakes and process in this drawing to give my skulls more movement, because in critiques I noticed the stronger drawings left their mistakes in the drawings, where in mine, I have erased most of them out (or they are too light to notice clearly.)

My favorite out of the three drawings would have to be my side view. I think the proportions are really accurate and I threw a few cross contour lines in the drawing to emphasize the 3-d part of the skull, and I think I did this successfully! Cross contour has always been a difficult concept for me to grasp, so I was happy that I was able to some lines without flattening out my drawing. I also am happy with my back view because even though I struggled a little bit with it, in the end I didn’t give up and I think it does look pretty proportional.

Second Week

Well this week was quite the eventful one. It started out with me becoming very sick on Monday, and by Wednesday I went in to the doctor and found out that I had strep throat and had to miss school and be put on antibiotics. That was really fun. Unfortunately it caused me to miss out on a life drawing class, so I missed a day of drawing skulls that could have helped me prepare for our upcoming project that is due. However, Monday did prepare me enough for working on my skulls on nice paper this weekend. I have been really enjoying this review stage of this class, since it has been a year since I took Life Drawing 1, and I think my above drawings are successful revisits of sketching the skull within the allotted time amounts.

It’s really nice to get back into the pace of observational drawing again, and I missed it a lot. I really think revisiting observational drawing, whether it is the skull like we are doing now, or whole portions of the body, will really help my paintings and other artwork in the future. During the gesture drawing exercises of the skull when we were only given 2, 5, or 10 minutes to accurately describe the form in front of us, I found it really challenging to do what I was able to do so quickly in Life Drawing I. I’m am excited to get back into the swing of things of making accurate marks and forms from observation, and look forward to the rest of the work I will be completing this semester. I find these skull drawings really helpful in my understanding of the bone structure of the face, and I’m curious as to how this will play out and improve my figure based work in my Painting III class.

the beginning

"You made an introductory post in Life Drawing I, but I'm sure much has happened since then. Update us: what is your concentration? why are you taking Life Drawing II? what do you hope to learn? what are some other projects/artworks you've completed recently? what travel or internships have you done?"

I'm in my senior year now here at Stout and I'll be graduating in the spring as a studio art major with a minor in business administration. My concentration is painting. I'm taking Life Drawing II because I enjoyed Life Drawing I so much and I really feel I improved a lot in my drawing over the coarse of that semester. Now a year since I took Life Drawing I, I really want to revisit the fundamentals of observational drawing so that my paintings for my senior show ( I work with the figure) can be the best they can be. I hope to learn more about cross contour so that my people in my paintings seem more life like, and again I just want to improve over all on developing the figure. Humorously- I've noticed that in my paintings the heads on my figures are always slightly too large for their bodies, even though I always think I have the proportions right! So bodily proportions and scale is definitely something I want to work on for sure.

This summer I did a lot of traveling and took a number of credits to make sure I graduate on time in the spring. I took a solo trip to Europe early this summer in May and met up with a friend in Trier, Germany for quite the adventure. I took a lot of pictures and incorporated my experience abroad into artwork I did over the summer in my Drawing III class. Combining the sights and atmosphere I saw and felt while exploring Germany, Luxembourg, and Spain, with my experience abroad the previous year studying in London and Scotland- I created art reflecting my own personal journey physically and emotionally. I think the drawings turned out pretty good! I actually enjoyed the Drawing III class so much that it changed how I am considering what to create for my senior show. Previously solely working with portraiture and the figure in previous painting classes, I think I want to combine painting, drawing, and other mediums to not just work with the figure, but other things as well.


(Examples of my art over the summer are above)