Life Drawing Summary

This semester has been really fun. I have enjoyed every part of it and feel I have improved in my drawing skills.

One thing I hate about taking art classes is that we are forced to do things by a certain deadline, and have certain

specifications to follow. However, for this class I felt it was very laid back, which helped me ENJOY drawing and

felt like I was doing it for fun rather than for school. This is really important, because it makes me not only enjoy

what I am doing, but it also helps me be better at what I am doing! So I really appreciate that.

I have been recommending to people to take this class, because it is fun, relaxing, interesting, and also challenging.

At first I hated doing the skeleton and the shell, but towards the end of the semester, I found it fun and theraputic,

and helpful. Making the contour lines on the shell has helped me with my sketches for my industrial design classes, so I really

am happy about that. My shells got better and better each time I did them, and I was happy with how they ended up turning out.

My first shell was horrible, but after getting a new shell, I enjoyed what I was looking at, therefore drawing better.

Going to the Bodies Exhibit at Mall of America made me appreciate making the muscles on the skeleton

more, because I had a better understanding of what I was doing. I was really frustrated with the skeleton at first, because

I just couldn't grasp how the muscles were supposed to look from the book. But then Amy made us start all over again, which

I was really happy about! I sat down and took my time looking at every little detail, which helped me make a better mannequin

at the end. There is a big difference when comparing my first mannequin to the final one. Pictures don't do it justice, but

when looking at it live it is really nice to look at.

Overall, I have really enjoyed this class! I tend to get stressed out from my industrial design classes (which i love to death, but

one can only handle so much in one semester!) so this class has been a nice balance. Now, I don't mean this is a 'slacker

class' at all, because even though the homework load has been light, I feel it has been very helpful. We have gone through

a lot of drawings and a lot of material, and we have learned a ton of stuff, so I feel this class has been very beneficial.

I keep on referring to it as therapy, which I strongly feel it is. I always want to just sit down and draw people, but I never have

time and I've never felt confident enough in my drawing skills to do it. So this class has given me the chance to actually do it.

The only negative thing I have to say about this class is that I wish we had spent more time on the face, arms and hands.

For industrial design, it is important to be able to draw hands, because often times they are used in sketches to demonstrate

how an object is being used. So I am a little bummed that we didn't get to spend more time on that. Other than that, I am very

pleased with the class and would recommend it to anyone who is considering taking it!

Here's the link to my flickr page:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/44071825@N04/sets/72157623010037468/

Thanksgiving break

I really enjoy learning about the facial features. I wish we could spend more time on it... Over break, I managed to get my uncle, aunt, cousins and parents to pose for me so I could draw their eyes and noses. I haven't done portraits of people since high school, so it was fun being able to do that again at an older age. I didn't have a lot of time to draw them, because they were getting impatient. After all, it was Thanksgiving. But I managed to get some drawings in my sketchbook anyway.

I find it difficult to do the nose from straight on. It is hard to show the tip of the nose without making the person look like a pig or an alien! Contour lines help, but I still don't feel confident in it. I am trying hard to make the eyes look more three dimensional, but I am having problems with that. I feel I have a good grasp on the face since I draw faces all the time, but I tend to make faces look two dimensional, so this is a nice challenge. Hopefully I will improve on this, because I have always wanted to get better!

final shell reflection

Besides this shell drawing being 3 times as big as the last one, there are a few differences between my most recent one and the previous one. I added more contrast in this drawing, because I learned from last time that my shell didn't pop out of the paper enough. I also decided to use heavier charcoal pencils to make it viewable from far away, because my last drawing was very light and difficult to see when standing 5 feet away. I also changed the angle of the shell, turning it upside down and backwards. In my previous drawing, I got mixed up with contour lines showing form versus the crease directions on the shell. So this time I decided to focus on the form instead of the crease lines.

I was struggling at first trying to figure out where and how I was going to draw on this giant piece of paper. I ended up finding a blank wall in my walk-in closet, so I pinned it up vertically and started drawing off of a picture I took of it. I had no table to put the shell on, so when I looked at the shell it would constantly be at a different angle. Therefore I figured taking a picture and looking at that angle would be more accurate. That gave me the outline shape of it in light pencil, and from there I turned some music on and started putting contours on. Since it was such a big shell, I kept on drawing different parts of it, going all over the piece of paper until it all came together.

Overall I am pretty pleased with the final outcome, but I really wish I had put more emotion to it and not made it so clean and organized. I'm always too scared to be messy, so that is an area I still need to work on. During the critique, that is mostly what we talked about. Amy also talked about making the overall form more organic and real looking, by altering the perfect lines to be more disorganized, forming a different shape, rather than a perfect curve. Even if the shell didn't look that way, I can always make things up to make the shell not as static.

It's scary when drawing on a big piece of paper like that, cuz I feel I only get one shot, so I better draw it the way I'm comfortable. So for the next shell, I plan on taking more risks.

I had a huge project due for my industrial design class on Wednesday.

So I am running on 7 hours of sleep from the last 3 days.

Sunday: 3 hours of sleep

Monday: 4 hours of sleep

Tuesday: 0 hours of sleep. I woke up at 7:30 on Monday for the field trip we had, went to bed at 6:30 PM the next day. That means I was awake for 35 hours straight- no naps! I was starting to hallucinate and say weird things, and during my presentation for the CEO of the engineering company that was going to look at our design, I almost fainted. I had to sit down during my presentation.

Was I happy we drew 2 skulls and nothing else during the whole class on Thursday? Definitely!!!

The field trip to the Bodies Exhibit at Mall of America was really fun! It was amazing to see such neat things, and even more amazing trying to imagine how it was all done! It definitely helped me see how bodies look inside (obviously) and I learned a lot. One thing I was surprised to see was how thin all the muscles were on the feet. I had made them out of clay to be about 10 times the size! So now I definitely have a better understanding of the muscles. It also helped to see the texture of muscles and how stringy they were. It gave them more dimension and texture. I thought it was really crazy how most of the dead bodies were homeless asians that they had taken from the streets. One of the dead people really freaked me out, because he was in a running position, and I stared directly into his pupils, and it looked like any second he would come alive and run right into me! It really freaked me out! After when we went to the art museum, I had fun as well. My classmate and I had fun trying to guess where all the paintings were from without looking at the label. My favorite part was looking at the products and furniture displays (since I am an industrial design major). The Czech photography was really impressive, as well. It was neat that the photography was mixed with painting. I have never thought of doing that before!

Here are 2 drawings of a skull I made on Wednesday. It was really fun drawing them. I had a little trouble on the curvature of the teeth of the first skull, but overall I think it turned out pretty well. I think it is a cool concept that Amy is going to lecture on the skull after we draw them. I think that is an interesting approach of teaching. It will be fun seeing how different the skull drawings will look after we have been lectured on them!

These are drawings from this previous week after learning about the foot.

I'm pretty pleased for the most part. The 4th drawing of the foot was very 'Picasso-esque' because I drew all of the bones on the foot as if seen from a top view, but the foot was actually at an angle, so the perspective is completely off. However, I'm kinda happy I did it that way because it helped me get a better image of what the foot looks like and got me to practice drawing the bones. I am using more reference lines and drawing the figures with angular lines, and then going in to draw the actual curves. I feel this is helping me get more confident lines since I have something to reference. Overall, I think I have gotten better at drawing even just in this past week. It's strange how it never gets old drawing the same things over and over twice a week. Every slightest angle that is different or body part we focus on drawing can make the slightest difference, and I really enjoy every class.

So the first shell we did in class I did not feel very comfortable with, therefore not succeeding at it, therefore really disliking the shell! But now with the new shells we got, I really like mine! It is sweet looking :D Before I started drawing the new shell, I looked back at my previous shell and remembered the feedback I had received from it, as well as looking at a sketch Amy had done to demonstrate a better way to go about drawing it. So when it came to drawing this new one (as shown in the picture), I came prepared and with a good attitude. I used more contrast and line weight, and I didn't use as many cross contours as in the last one. The last one looked too grid-like, so I made this shell more flowy. So in comparison to my previous shell: I like the new shell, I feel comfortable drawing it, therefore I feel I succeeded at it :)

A step of improvement?

So I feel like I am getting more comfortable with drawing bodies like I was mentioning in my last blog. I was talking about how my doodles are always floating heads because I am always too scared I'll ruin the doodles by adding a body! I was mentioning this in class, and Amy suggested that I should upload some examples of how my doodles have improved, so I have added pages from my sketchbook that show how the doodles have developed!

This first image is from my sketchbook a couple months ago. I started drawing the body, but realized I was ruining the doodle, so I started scribbling all over to cover it up....

This was from a few weeks ago, and I still didn't dare to add the body!

Here I at least added parts of the shoulders?

Here I actually started drawing one woman's dress. We hadn't gone through the thighs yet, so I stopped at the legs! :)

Yay I added legs!! Not so sure they look right, but it's a step up anyway! Now I just have to work on feet...