This semester has been very interesting so far.

I have always loved drawing people, but usually tend to stop at the neck, because I am always too scared to draw the body. However, now I feel I am way better at drawing the body, so this class has made doodling more fun for me! When looking at my gesture drawings from day 1 up until this point, I see a dramatic difference. I drew gesture drawings in a completely different way, and now I have more of a sophisticated look to it. I feel I have improved on line quality, and the way I draw. By simply changing the position of my hand in relationship to the pencil, I feel it has changed my drawing style. Also, I feel I have become a better sketcher for my industrial design classes, because I have started using contour lines when I sketch now, and it has made my sketches look way more 3 dimensional and professional! Amy has taught us some really good tips that have helped me. For instance, when drawing a still life, look at the surroundings in the background to compare where things should be placed. That really helps with perspective! I also feel I have improved in not being as much of a perfectionist. I have been taking more risks and doing things I normally wouldn't do, and it is slowly making me become less of a perfectionist. Sometime perfectionism can be good, but sometimes it can make art look very boring and static.

Some things I still need to work on, however, are almost all the things I have improved on! Even though I feel I have made some great improvements, it's still not perfect, and I still have room for improvement. I have a tendency to make things look flat, so I need to work on making things have more dimension.

I would like to get better at gesture drawing by putting more emotion to them. I feel I understand how to draw them, I just need to stop thinking so much while I'm doing them, and just let my hand take me where it wants to go. I would also like to learn more about the skull. I really hope we get to that this semester! Since I love drawing faces, I feel it could help me improve my skills if I learn more about the skull. Hands are another thing I would love to practice drawing more! As an industrial designer, I need to know how to draw hands. When I demonstrate how a product is used, I need to draw hands to show how they interact with the product.

Overall, I feel this class has been very helpful and fun, and I am thinking about taking drawing 2 sometime. :)

Here's a link to my photos so far: http://www.flickr.com/photos/44071825@N04/

So this week has been very chill and relaxing. I was able to go home this weekend for the first time since school started, so that was nice! Now that my big projects for my other classes are done, I am able to start fresh and relax. It was interesting learning about the pelvis this week, however I wish Amy would've lectured instead of watching the video. I thought the professor in the video was very knowledgeable and interesting to listen to, but the fact that the movie was so old and it was extremely hard to see what he was drawing since the line weight was very light, it was hard to follow along. I noticed that my notes consisted of my own drawings and doodles of the human body instead of focusing on the pelvis :P So after watching the video, I don't feel very confident about the way the pelvis looks! This weekend I am going to sit down and build the muscles on the skeleton and hopefully I will have a better understanding of the pelvis.

For some reason I was very intrigued with the video and how old it was. I thought it was very cool to be part of a lecture that happened several years ago. The professor is probably not even alive anymore, so it was very cool to be 'part of the future' going back to the past and being essentially one of the students in the class. :)

This week has been extremely stressful, having 2 final projects due on Monday and Tuesday for my other classes, so not having class last week was extremely helpful for me! I basically pulled 3 all nighters in a row Sunday-Tuesday, fitting in about 3-4 hours of sleep a day with inbetween naps, so I'm very exhausted and feel very out of it. I feel like everything I do while I am 'awake' is part of a dream... I'm really really enjoying this class, however. It is nice learning about the muscles and bones of the body. I feel I am learning a lot in this class. Building the skeletons with clay was very confusing at first while referencing the book. All the different angles get confusing, and when moving onto the next muscle to build, it is hard to see where it is supposed to lay in comparison to the previous muscle. I am getting used to it more, though, so it's starting to get fun and even relaxing. My gesture drawing style is changing and it is fun to see the progress. Once we start drawing the model for 25 minutes though, it starts getting confusing, and I end up outlining the figure too much. That is the challenge I am trying to get over at this point, and making my strokes have more feeling than straight up 'cartoon-like'. Hopefully I will catch up on sleep this weekend and get back on track for the next week to come!