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.