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.