Getting the Portraits assignment...

We officially received our next assignment this week- and this one is definitely why I chose to take Life Drawing II as my last Art Studio Selective. Because my artwork deals a lot with portraiture and capturing the likeness of a person, face and body, these drawings that we are assigned will be an obvious help in improving my accuracy in describing form. While the first half of the semester we worked mostly on rendering the skull and getting the proportions correct for that, now we can actually add hair and features and the shadowing of the skin. I think I'm really going to look forward to putting the whole skeleton together after this project, looking at the whole body's bone structure and finally being able to understand the skeleton from head to toe, and say that I can accurately draw a person from head to toe.

For this project we are given 4 separate days in class to draw the face from 3 different views, with the fourth day being one where we pose as the model. The 3 different views are from 3/4^th back view, 3/4ths front view, and then a “unique” position where the face is at an awkward angle to challenge you. We talked about proportions of the neck and head and reviewed things we learned in Life Drawing I about eye spacing, nose and lips spacing, and plane of the face, to help us get back and comfortable into accurately drawing the figure. What is so different from this then when I paint the figure is that in my paintings I just focus on light and shadow and color as a way to describe the face. I really think these 4 drawings will influence my paintings I produce from now on greatly because without knowing it I think I will instinctively measure out things in my head for accuracy based on the principles I have learned in this class.

(Above are just 3 portrait pieces that I really like because of their overall composition/allure AND accuracy)

Skulls in Space

This past week we worked on really memorizing the form and shape of the skull. I thought I had been learning that all along since we had been drawing skulls, but was quickly brought to the realization that I don't know anything on Monday during class! We had a quick draw pre-test which basically meant we had to draw different views of the skull from memory. I failed miserably. Then we later corrected our drawings to help for our test that will be happening this Monday where we will do the same thing. I paid a lot more attention to the rises and falls of the skulls shape and the placement of certain parts of the skull, and I hope this will help me for the test.

Wednesday we started drawing skulls from other angles. At first I drew a skull that was titled on it's side, and it was probably the most horrible drawing I've done of a skull. The proportions were off and it was so bad I am not posting it on here. After we fended for ourselves for a little while on the angled skulls, Amy gave us some tips on how to correctly position the skull on our paper so that we could see the difference between what our drawings looked like, and how the skulls should actually feel in space. I used the box technique in the two above drawings to figure out the planes of the skull in space. I think it really helped me a lot because they now feel like they are in a distinctive place, in 3d, and my drawing and revisions of my drawing to make sure it was accurate give the drawings a sketchy quality. I really like my top drawing above with the two skulls because I think it has a good composition as well as accurate depiction of how the skulls feel in space.

More Skulls and other things

Last week Wednesday we had four drawings due. These drawings were a step up from our first three skull drawings, really focusing on mark making, making the whole skull look like one living moving drawing, and also making it look like it was alive and 3-d in space. To help us focus more on the actual shape of the skull we omitted the whole face and just looked at the cranium itself, the shapes and grooves that made it up. I found these drawings extremely challenging but also very rewarding because it forced me to look at these at first simple circular skulls, and turn them into complex shapes and planes. Instead of just looking at the lines of the skull I tried to think of the skull in planes and small shapes that sort of fit together like a puzzle piece.

I think I was successful in some areas of my drawings and not as successful in others. I’m really proud of my back view of the skull because I think I was really able to capture the 3-dimensionality but still keep movement and complexity in my marks. Also, comparing it to my last back view skull drawing, I can see a definite improvement in my understanding of the shape of the skull.

During critique I asked people mostly about my cross contour line drawing of my skull because it was the one I was least happy with, and I know I struggle with cross contour. Some drawing I and drawing II classes learned how to do cross contour drawings early on. I, however, never learned how to do them in my classes, so therefore I’m completely new to the subject. Even in Life Drawing 1 I struggled a little bit with the shell and bone cross contour assignments. Some suggestions I got about this cross contour skull drawings was to try to vary the angles of my marks (not having them all stem from the top of the head) and make sure that they all connect with each other in a way that makes sense. Also I got a comment of never having a cross contour line go fully horizontal or fully vertical, which I thought was interesting. I think cross contour will always continue to be a struggle for me and I will just have to keep working at it.