Final Post

Well I can truly say Life Drawing 1 has been a personal success. To be perfectly honest if you showed me some of my better work from the end of the semester to me prior to taking the class I wouldn't have thought that it was my work. The one thing that boggles my mind and continues to do so is placing exactly where I improved. I don't know if I developed more patience, perhaps a better eye, or just got more experience. Somehow even those don't really seem to describe the progress I've made because it seems to be much more vague than that. For example the last day of class I was another day it just seemed to drag on and I couldn't put down a decent mark anywhere. The last day should be the culmination of all the prior classes and theoretically the best work yet. Mine wasn't, in fact the previous class periods with the skeletons felt much less forced and turned out much better. A friend of mine once indulged me about how drawing was one of the most cross-lobe intense activities for your brain. Drawing is part structure, proportion and perspective but just as much personal and organic. Either way I'm really happy I took this course and would highly recommend it to anyone who wants to polish their drawing skills.  The last shell turned out to be easily me best, there was more time invested and I think it really shows through in the line work as well as in the ink. My perspective on the tines wasn't as good as it could be but was a huge improvement over previous attempts. Also the tines had a real sense of girth and depth which was aided by the improved ink-work. I'm pretty satisfied with the result.



Here's the link to my flickr portfolio:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/zwettlerd/

Patience

Only one thing seemed to be blatantly obvious in all of my better work, patience. Just like the old saying that anything worth while takes time, so does art. Perhaps it was due a 3 hour studio before Life Drawing or just simply that I don't like to sit still I often found it hard to concentrate. Regardless of the standing at easel or sitting on the drawing horse there always seemed to be this constant itch breaking my focus. However on the rare occasion that I did manage to sit still and draw slowly and observe more carefully the work always paid large dividends. The worst habit I got into was giving up on a drawing before I had enough time in it to make anything out of it. Perhaps it was due to some classmates around me who had much more precise line work and didn't erase and redraw. Regardless this would often lead to half done under layers and sloppy outlines. Then on to a new sheet only to experience the same type of quick defeat at my own hands. I wouldn't categorize everyday as this struggle against finding something that immediately caught my eye, but on the off days this was usually the case. When the night before had been filled with a sound sleep and a body not charging ahead on energy drinks I found that just sitting still and looking was a drastic improvement. It's kind of like when you hear couples complaining about one hearing but not listening. I on the off days I seemed to be seeing but not looking. For whatever reason I had attributed speed with a certain loose style that I liked to recreate but found that wasn't entirely the case at all. Just like my all the grade teachers' said you need to sit still and finish your work.

Day Tripper

Prior to Thanksgiving break we sequestered to the Walker and Bell Museum in Mpls for a class trip. I was genuinely excited to be going to the Walker because despite living in the area for 3 years I had yet to make my inaugural visit. I feel like it had been talked about even in every day conversation that it was going to be mind-blowing. Unfortunately when I got there I was faced with the fact that a gallery is only as good as the exhibition in it. The majority of the space was taken up by Yves Klein a french, post WW2 artist. Much to my dismay he wasn't like his fellow artist of the same name Yves Tanguy of which I am much more smitten with. Regrettably there was a monochromatic study of blue. Not cool things in blue, not an experience that made me feel blue, but rather just mundane things in a shade of royal blue. Having only an hour so to scout premises I somehow finished my tour of the Walker with time to spare. The photography section was easily the strongest part of the gallery. Liz and I were in agreement that the single strongest piece was a photo of an old band stage. Similarly regrettable was performance art. Naked people doing nothing in a weird environment isn't even that strange to me anymore after having been to enough galleries, shows what have you.  Simply getting people interested based on shock and obscurity doesn't seem to be anything new, we've all seen naked people before so get over yourselves.  The Bell museum was exactly how I had left it since taking classes in its auditorium, old and full of dioramas. I attempted miserably to draw some beavers and their habitat. I'm pretty sure if I tried again blindfolded I would do a better job.

Skulls and Skeletons

It was unfortunately well past Halloween at this point but we did manage to get a solid day of drawing only the skeletons (due to the lack of a model). Having been continually inspired by the Life Drawing 2 students who were doing life size or larger than life size studies of the skeleton I think everyone in Life Drawing 1 was ready to try their hand at it. The skeleton although seemingly a bit more complex than a human model was actually a nice change of pace. All of the structural work we had grown accustomed to doing (ribs, pelvis, spine) was now directly highlighted, not to be overshadowed by bulky muscles and the like. The gesture drawings of the skeletons turned out great and due to their simplistic nature gave a nice stylized feel to the skeleton. This same stylized theme would continue throughout the day and give off an almost cartoon like feel to the form. For the long pose I situated my self on the rear side of the skeleton and began drawing the backside of the skull despite having not covered that yet. After a while I started to get the feel for it down and had Amy come look at it. I was pleasantly surprised when she said that I had it pretty much down and only had to make some minor adjustments. The following period we focused only on the skull. I drew the side view first. There were some problems particularly with the cheekbone and how it overlaps everything else. Then I moved on to the 3/4 frontal view with which I found I had even more problems. Trying to get the sides of the face to be relatively proportional and in perspective was tougher than I thought it would be. The 3/4 view turned out alright but it deserves a second go.

Shells sllehS

Shell 3

Shell 2

With the start of the semester we were introduced to our new would-be companions, our shells. In an attempt to become more familiar with mine, as previously posted he was a he and his name was Ned. One of the first posts had a picture taken of my relatively unsuccessful shell drawing. Ned being one of the more intricate shells was visually flattened by my lack of skill. As routinely instructed not to outline the shell I did just that and managed to pancake every edge. The tines on the side of Ned would continue to be a struggle for me due to their obnoxious angle to the viewing plane. The second shell drawing went significantly better but was at best average. I was finally able to lift it off of the page a bit and give it a sense of depth but the perspective was still obviously wrong for parts not to mention all of his tines look like sheets of paper instead of semi-round. This seemingly futile battle would rage on with the semester weighing down heavily upon me. After having a few conversations about perspective and through critiques I knew I really need to clamp down on making it look 3D. Amy suggested to take a few artistic liberties and manipulate the tines so they were not directly pointing at or away from the viewing plane. That would help the stupid foreshortening problems I was having and accurately display the shell. Finally the 3rd shell was upon us at perhaps at chance at salvation or redemption for my previous shells. I spent more time trying to lay this one out in hopes of creating some real depth but my efforts were in vain as I hastily put too much ink on the paper. The ink represented a new problem, dealing with gravity and layering. I found that despite wanting to quickly establish a background for my shell it worked better on my last one to slowly add up the pigment until it's as dark as you need it instead of rushing in head first.

Media Choices

Graphite + Charcoal Pencil

Vine Charcoal

Throughout this semester I've been really trying to pin down one choice of black dry media that works for me. I've regularly been cycling through vine charcoal both hard and soft, charcoal pencils, compressed charcoal, graphite and occasionally black pastels. After a few sketches the pastels were out of the question. While they may have the most intense and deep black they also are almost impossible to erase and that quickly became too imposing. Vine charcoal has been the standard for gesture drawing for me so after using a few sticks I had started to get reacquainted with its tendencies. It can give you a nice soft line and cover lots of space relatively quickly but what makes it stand out can also be its downfall. The soft lines were good for gesture drawing and nice for laying out the spines, rib cages and pelvises that would go underneath everything. In fact it worked perfectly for this the charcoal was forgiving and easily erased. Consequently it had an adverse effect when trying to make anything significantly more detailed or bold. It really couldn't get dark enough to stand out from previous lines and often lost its tip due to its soft nature and required to be resharpened many times. Similarly I found later on that a light graphite like HB was a good middle/light weight media to use as a base. The pencil gave a much more sketchy feel due to its smaller diameter but also allowed for more precise underlay. I decided to then try the compressed charcoal again having witnessed that that was solely what Liz was using next to me. It worked all right and presented a solution in between the pastels and vine charcoal but something was quite right. I just felt I couldn't get the right movement. Finally I decided to try the one charcoal pencil I had laying around and right away I knew that was the answer. It was similar to the compressed charcoal in every attribute but line control and variation were easier.

Smelly Feet

For some reason unbeknownst to me I found that I had a natural affinity for drawing feet. Initially I was afraid that they would be like hands, which I find impossible to draw correctly. I assumed the wrist would be equivalent to the ankle and the toes to the fingers. Feet thankfully, are quite a bit simpler due to the ankle be more limited in its mobility and the toes being stubby. The toes really do make the difference though, as fingers often tend to become sausage fingers and are infinitely too fat and flat. Also another thing that I think greatly benefited me was my distance to the model. During this class period I was fortunate enough to snag a drawing horse and had a front row seat. To be honest I wish I was able to always sit closer to the model because it just makes observation and reproduction so much easier. It eliminates a lot of the guesswork in transition areas where it's hard to tell how each surface interacts with one another. Although most of my foot drawings turned out well, one in particular really caught my eye. For some reason despite it being only a foot it is definitely one of my favorite sketches. I think because I was able to draw feet so easily it let me play with the line quality a lot more because I was so worried about being dead on accurate. I missed the class period where we went over hands so I really never got a good chance to compare the two of them. After drawing feet however I feel like drawing the hand may not pose such a daunting problem as I once thought it did. Either way I can say that I’m really happy with the way all of my feet sketches turned out.