Final Post and Portfolio

So this is it, the final post of my life drawing one career. We'll start off with a link to my flickr portfolio so here that is:  Trent's Flickr Portfolio. 

Here he is, Alaster at his best, all finished and beautiful.  I would have to say that I am pretty satisfied with how he turned out. I think I did really well with the back and lower leg areas. The one area that I think is the weakest is the upper leg, it doesn't have as much mass as it should.  The things I fixed after Amy went over the manikins in class on Tuesday were the latissimus dorsi, the glutes, the long head on the triceps and the deltoids.  My lats weren't coming out far enough so I bulked it up a bit and I also noticed that it should go farther up into the armpit so I fixed that as well. The long head was a little to small, she did actually notice it the first time she looked at it so I added a little more clay to it to separate it from the lateral head a little better. she didn't actually say anything about my delts but I noticed that one of the heads had a bit of a weird shape so I rounded it out a little better.  Lastly I had to completely redo my glutes because they disappeared at some point. It didn't take very long to redo them and i think they may have turned out better the second time around anyway.

 Ah, the final shell drawing.  I think that this is my best of the four, both drawn and inked. The funny thing is that I didn't look at my shell much, maybe not even at all, until I started applying ink. Instead of looking at the shell while drawing it I looked at a sketch of the shell that I had drawn a bit earlier. I think this helped simplify the shell in my head and it also helped that the angle of the shell wasn't constantly changing. For this last shell I bought a piece of actual watercolor paper which helped the inking process flow far more smoothly.  For the ink, i decided to use two colors instead of just one which I think was a good choice.  I decided to do this after looking at shells on peoples blogs and I decided that the more successful ones used two colors so I decided to do likewise.

Well, that's it for Life Drawing 1. It's been fun and I would really like to continue studying it on my own time next summer but I always keep myself so busy, I don't know if I will be able be serious about it. We will see. Well, I will anyway. I doubt I'll keep up the blogging after this. So long and goodbye!

Here is the skull that I drew last week Thursday.  The proportions are off and it looks a little skewed to me, like it smashed face first into something hard. Aside from funny face's funny lookin' face, I was pretty satisfied with the line work that I put into it, especially on the jaw area. I think it's some of the best line work that I have done all semester. Ick, the more I look at it the less I like it. The eye on the right side appears to be too large. It looks a bit apish too. That's what Beau said anyway. I'm not sure I like the rubber band around it's head, I thought it would be a good opportunity to add some contour to the cranium but I was having some trouble getting it to look right because of proportion issues in the face.

Other things we from last week were the hand drawings along with the last bit of muscle building.  The hands didn't go so well as I found myself distracted throughout most of the class period. Most of my work from Tuesday consists of doodles around the one hand that I worked on.

The last bit of muscle building went well, at least until I noticed that the butt muscles were missing. Darn it. I should have taken a picture of the completed (-butt) manikin. Maybe I will later.  As a whole I think it looks pretty good, I especially like the upper arm and lower leg portions.

What Week Are We On Now?

I don't have a lot to show for class last week.  When we had time to work on our manikins I couldn't do a whole lot of work in class because my Alaster's arm was at home, so I grabbed a hunk of clay and headed thither.  At home I ended up working on my shell instead and now it is all drawn and inked.  I think that the drawing itself was the best of the three so far, at the biggest.  I had a photo of the pre-inked shell but that, sadly, is nowhere to be found.  Well anyway, there it is, the third shell drawing all inked up.  I haven't decided whether the ink wash adds or takes away from the drawing.  I like the colors but I didn't apply them all that well.  I don't really understand how to work with the medium for starters, application methods, blending and other such things so I just kinda plopped it on and hoped for the best. I think the best inked part on this shell (aside from the color) is the ridge on the top where the planes change and there is a white line separating them. I think it really helps show depth and dimension.  The application on the back of the shell seems to have made it flatten out a little.  The highlights on the front seem pretty off to me too.  As for the actual drawing part of the shell, I think did pretty well.  I have a better diagonal that I have had in the past and the atmospheric perspective was more convincing as I was able to control the dark to light transition from front to back.  It also makes better use of the page than my previous drawings.  The thing I didn't do well in the drawing part was the area where you should be able to see inside the shell, you can't see it with the ink on it but I wasn't able to draw convincing contours to describe the shape inside the shell.

3 in One

Ok, so I missed a post a while  back and somehow I forgot to do one from last week for last week (I did one last week for the previous week) and I need to do one for this week so I am going to try to knock them all out in one post. And then I'll finally be caught up! Lets start with the new...

                                                                                             IT'S A MOOSE!

No, it's actually a caribou.  Anyway, this is my drawing from the Bell Museum of Natural History.  I wish I would have gone upstairs BEFORE I started drawing, there was so many more interesting dead things up there. O' well, I got to sit on the peat bog the whole time. And there were less people around. For this drawing I tried to capture the shape of the animal by drawing cross contours to try to define the planes.  I started off with an outline and modified that until the proportions looked pretty decent and then I went back in and put some contour lines in to try to give it a little shape.  Overall I think I managed to produce something decent.  When I looked around it seemed like there were only a few people who cropped in closer to there subject like I did, so I'm kinda glad that I did it.  Another thing I noticed about other drawings was that a lot of them were way more complete looking than mine, making me think that mine was underdrawn.

As for the Walker, there were a lot more pieces that I liked than I expected.  With that said I will now say that there were a LOT more pieces that I didn't like.  Now that I think about it I should have made notes on those pieces but alas, I did not.  I did get a brochure though, I'll see if I can find any in there that I didn't like... Nope, not much in there.  There is just a lot of things there that I just don't get, a lot of pieces that seem arbitrary to me. An example that comes to mind was the room the big sandbox-like thing filled with blue pigment surrounded by things painted blue. It just seems pointless to me. I sometimes thing that the Walker is where artists go to dump there trash and then it gets displayed there.  But, like I said, there were some pieces that I did, and still do I suppose, like.  Most of the displays I liked were of photography, like the black and white photograph "Obsession With Levitation" depicting a seemingly normal, old street and a man falling or diving off of a wall by the sidewalk and the photograph of the dead dog.  I thought these were great images because they have good composition and a strong and intriguing subject. A few of the other pieces I think are worth mentioning include the scorched cardboard images, the coral sculptures, the piece called prayer (big white piece of canvas with writing all over it), and the giant pool table, La Fortune (After Man Ray: 3).

Last week we only had one class and I'm pretty sure all we did was practice inking our shell drawings. I forgot to take a photo when I was taking all my photos but when I have one I'll ad it and write more about it. For now I am just going to move forward to the next post that I missed.
So, I finally took the time to look for the practice shell that  I did in class that one week, and when I go to look for it it's no where to be found. I must have accidentally tossed it when I purged my locker :/ woops. No matter, I did more practice ink washes on my two previous shell drawings, the first try on my second shell and the second on the first. I really don't have a clue how to apply the ink and that seems a little obvious in the first example I think. The second one looks a little better but I still feel like I don't understand it. I even went on to applying ink to the third shell drawing and I don't think it turned out, but it is purple so that's a plus. I don't really know what else to say about these so I think I'll just not continue about them.


This post should be from the week our 2nd shell drawing was due and when we focused on drawing legs.  As far as the shell goes, I think my second outbads my first.  A few things WERE actually better are the use of the page, still not great, (looks better in the photo because its cropped, I was using a lens with a fixed focal length and I am short and didn't feel like propping it and backing up) and I think I controlled the light to dark a little bit better.  Aside from those two notes, it is, to me, less successful than the first.  It has a worse diagonal axis, the atmospheric perspective is worse and it seems to be more flat.

 Here are a few more of my drawings that are from the same week.  Actually, I think one is from before that but I didn't see it posted so I thought I would put it up with the other two anyway. I pretty sure the headless figure on the top right that is from before.  I remember the drawing on the left going pretty well, I wish I would have been able to develop the legs a little bit more but overall I am satisfied with how it turned out. I think I was able to capture the shape while properly foreshortening the figure.  As for the one on the top right, I got REALLY frustrated and had to leave the room to calm down multiple times.  For some reason when I draw and I feel that it isn't looking the way it should I tend to get flustered and angry (part of the reason I chopped off her head).  Looking at it now, I think it looks better that I thought it did when I was drawing it, but it could still use some work.  The drawing on the bottom right I don't really remember drawing but I think the angle of the drawing makes the picture look really flat and boring.  One of the problems I do remember was with the bottom half of the leg getting too skinny or too fat and I think she moved once which changed some stuff.

A Post This Week For Last Week

 Last week was all about the drawing of the feet and legs as well as the crafting of the muscles of the lower leg (Pictures will come).  One of the challenges for me this week, besides only having one class session, was the lack of warming up with gesture drawings.  We didn't have any official gesture drawing time but I did go through with a few before I started my long drawings.  It didn't realize before now how much the gesture drawings really affect my longer drawings. Not only do they help me start to see the form but they really help me loosen up after not drawing for a while.  Although I feel a constant struggle when I draw, and I am never completely satisfied with what I produce (whether you think I should be or not) I felt that the drawing of the feet went much more smoothly than most other parts that we have focused on so far.  To start my feet I use the technique that Amy illustrated on the chalkboard, the one that consisted of first drawing two overlapping, long, box shapes to make a geometric foot-like shape.  I had a problem with the length of the foot, sometimes it would look a little too short and I would fix it and it would then look a little skinny/too long.  Overall I think that the box strategy really helped show the side and top planes of the foot, giving more dimension.  As for the manikin, I think everything went well, only ran out of clay one time.  I think the shape of the muscles seems convincing and that they are crafted fairly well.  Aside from the problem of clay not always sticking to the manikin, one of the problems is that the newly built lower leg muscles seems to make the muscles on the upper leg appear a little small. And I think they might be.

Flickr Portfolio

Midterm Portfolio

Week 6

Ahh, the first shell drawing.  It didn't turn out that well as far as I'm concerned.  In the group critique we decided that there were a few things that could be improved.  For starters, the diagonal axis could be a little more dramatic, this one isn't bad but it could be better.  Another thing that was mentioned was the usage of the page. My shell could definitely have been a tad bit bigger.  As far as outlining goes, it's not the worst but there are some really heavy lines on the front end of the shell that really pop out and scream outline.  Something else that can be improved on is the atmospheric perspective, the back of the shell should show less detail to make it look more convincing. It shows the shape well but there should be fewer and lighter lines in the back.  As for the good things that appear in my scribble, the lines do a fair job at describing the form of the shell and the contour lines are nice and varied, no two lines are exactly alike.

Week 4

Week 4 and I still think that this website was built by a moron.  Anyway, here is Alastor again, rebuilt and with abbs.  This time around went much better than the first time, especially with the aid of the visible body website (though it and the book don't label things the same).

This week didn't go all that well for me, for some reason I just couldn't get into the right mindset or something, or as if I totally lost any previous understanding of drawing the human form. Well, I survived. On to next week.

Ah, the first shell drawing. Not quite done. I don't feel that it is going all that well either. This would be my second or third attempt at it. The first attempt, on the back of this one, was atrocious. I'm not sure what I find the hardest about this assignment but three things that I am really struggling with are slowing down, drawing lightly and just understanding the contour of my shell. Oh, I should include not getting frustrated in that list. I struggle with that too. At least I haven't broken anything. Yet.

Week 3

This week in life drawing we started experimenting with cross contour lines in our drawings.  My first attempt <-- isn't anything special but I thought it turned out alright.  I didn't really understand how to do it right away but after a doing it for a little while I slowed down and I felt like something clicked in my brain and I could do it a lot better than I had been.  Unfortunately, this feeling didn't carry over from Tuesday to Thursday.  All class period I just felt like my synapses weren't firing properly because none of my sketches seemed right to me and it just got worse as class progressed.  At the end all of period the majority of my attempted cross contour drawings turned out as a jumble of frustrated black marks all over my page.

After taking my manikin to class on Tuesday I decided that I just had to reconstruct his spinal erectors.  I just tore the muscles off before I started this blog, so here he is, back to being a naked manikin.  This time I am going to pay more attention to detail and craft and try to get it right on this time.  On a side note, I feel like I should give the manikin a name, it would be easier than referring to him as "the manikin" and the like.  I think I'll call him... Alastor.

Week 2

 The first step of the manikin project, for me, was getting the darn thing to to stop moving around on the stand.  A little super glue and a screw fixed that problem. At least for now.  My first attempt at putting muscles on the manikin was a little frustrating.  Getting the muscles in the right shape and in the correct location was one thing but I got it done. Is it quality work? We'll see. Probably not.  The real frustrating part for me was following that blasted muscle atlas.  I found it quite irritating when it would show a picture of one muscle on one page and on the next it shows a different muscle in the same location.  What do I do?! Were they just kidding about the first muscle? Haha, just kidding, this is the muscle that actually goes there. I would have thought that showing the first muscle on the first page and then on the next have a picture with the next muscle on top of that would have been more helpful, if not logical.

This week was also the first week drawing with a model.  I found it a little surprising that it wasn't as weird as I thought it would be,  I only thought it would be a little weird but it wasn't, except when you make eye contact. That occurrence is a little awkward.  The gesture drawings were fun but every time I thought I was making progress it seemed I would take a few steps back in the next drawing.

Week 1

So the first week of Life Drawing seemed to have gone OK. I would have to say that if feels kinda good to be drawing again.  I don't think I've ever drawn standing up before, so that is something new and exciting. From the in-class exercises I noticed that I tend to push myself a little too fast and I have trouble slowing down.  I would have to say that I preferred the drawings when we observed the skeleton over the shell drawings, not that didn't like those too, I was, and am, more happy with the outcome of the skeletal observations. I do feel like this first week could have gone better, better drawings I mean, then it did, but then again I do have really high standards and get upset at my work quite easily.  O'well, I'll get there. I really can wait to start improving my skills at observing and transcribing what I see.