end of the year

 http://www.flickr.com/photos/63105530@N04/?saved=1

The final week of class was most enjoyable because we finally had a chance to put every part of the body into my composition with anatomical accuracy. Gesture drawing are something that i have struggled with the entire semester. My drawing style usually involves a slower line stroke with focus on economy and line direction. Being able to use every party of the body helped my difficulty with speed because of there being more reference points to go off of. Line weight is something else I progressively got better at this semester also. I think that my choice of drawing material helped the most. i began the semester using dark chunky charcoal and decided to switch to pencil. It was easy for me to tell the difference in line weight. This class has given me the ability to draw with speed and give an accurate representation of human form. I'm excited to use this knowledge in future drawing classes.

4/17

This week we focused mainly on the structure of the hands. The most helpful thing that I learned was how to break the hand into geometric figures. I started my drawings by first drawing the hand in the most general shape possible. from there i find the different planes of the fingers and palm. If i were to draw the hand in skeletal form I wouldn't create the figure with shapes, i would use lines only. With the lines it is easy to build the bones around that base. the most difficult problems I ran into was figuring how big the bones are in the finger. The hand is the most intimidating form of the human body but still most interesting to me. I hope to further my skills by being able to draw the hand at a gesture speed.

3/21

This week in class we started to work our way up through the body into the back and chest muscles. Working with the male model it was really easy to notice many of the back muscles which stretch in a v shape from the middle of the back out to the inside of the arm. The muscles in the back are some of the bigger muscles that make up the body and I found that because of the distinct shape it was easy to locate and draw the muscles. We also started to work with the chest to go along with the clavicle bones and the form of the shoulders. I haven't had a chance to draw the chest area as a whole but still need to get a better grasps on the form of the clavicle in relation to the spin and ribs. My goal is to be able to incorporate all of the body parts that we have learned in the gesture drawings.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/60362265@N07/

In life drawing one I have noticed an opportunity to further my skills in drawing along with gaining a better basic knowledge of the human anatomy. In the beginning we had focused a lot on the the line of the neck, spine, and tailbone. I found that the easiest way for me to have an accurate representation of the spine was to use a "measuring tool" such as a pencil or even a thumb. With this tool I was able to find the center of the back and the points of the neck and tail bone. Most of difficulty I have encountered in class came with the angle of the neck compared to the back. the more dramatic of an angle the harder it was; this was an easy thing to get better at with continuous use of my measuring tool. Next we learned the rib cage and the egg drawing technique. This technique has made it easy to understand and compare the proportion compared to the spine. it also led to a better understanding of the proportion of the hip. The basic "u" and "v" shapes that the back and front of the hips create was probably the easiest technique to understand, but i still have a really difficult time making sense of the side and how the front and back are connected. This usually leads me to omit that area all together and then just drawing what I see on the models body. Most recently we have looked further down the body into our thighs, quadriceps and legs. these muscles are easy to see on the models body so finding the angles is not to difficult but it is hard to find the proportions of the leg. Sometimes I find my knees out of line which throws off the angles of the body. I think what makes this more difficult is my lack of understanding of how big the leg is compared to the whole body. my goal is to be able to efficiently create the connection of the hips knee and ankle within the next few weeks. This class has really gave me a confidence in my drawing skills, especially when thinking about having to draw human figures in the future. The many basic shapes that we have learned has also giving my a better understanding of the correlation between the human body and geometry. It forces me to think how perfect the human body is.

2/27

This was the week we incorporated more of the human body into our drawings. along with the hips and ribs we continued down to the the thigh area to the knee. we worked on many different muscles in the upper portion of the knee including the hamstring and quadriceps. with the new use of line it has given me a better understanding of where the leg exists in space. I still struggle with the rib to hip ratio but i do notice it is easy to correct in a longer timed drawing when I can draw what I see (as far as the silhouette of the human figure along with the belly button and obliques.) along with in class drawing most of our homework has been the clay modeling of leg muscles. The beginning and the end of the muscles/tendons is very important to understand when incorporated into the in class drawings. I still struggle with the shape of the muscles but notice that it is not as important as how the muscles looked compared to each other (how the exist in the space of the leg.) Looking forward to see more of the human figure appear in this weeks drawing and hoping to perfect the hips and ribs.