Coming to a Close

And so we have reached the end!  I am amazed that the fall semester has wrapped up already and as we all finish up our last finals I am happy to look back on the progress I made in life drawing this semester.  I have come so far!  I can see so much improvement since the gesture and long timed drawings of the first half of the semester . My forms are more life-like, my gestures more dynamic.  Starting this class I would have told you that, no matter what I learned, I would be content with letting my life drawing career end at Life Drawing I.  But now that I am finished, and I see what progress I have made, I am interested to see where I can go from here.

Before now the human form had always been an area of hazy recollection.  It was something you always assumed you knew, I mean, you see the human body everyday.  But when asked to sit down and lay out the body like a map, I found myself completely lost.  Similar to how you may walk up and down the steps in your house daily, for years, but when someone asks you how many steps it contains, you find yourself a stranger in your own home.  And so I found myself a stranger in my own body.

Then slowly, lecture by lecture and sketch by sketch, I was reacquainted with my own body.  Now I can see the connections of the muscles and bones.  It is all very exciting.

If you are interested in seeing more of my work this semester you are welcome to visit my online portfolio HERE!

I have seen the most improvement in my contours.  Faces and hands are the areas that still need work.  I am very thankful I took this class and I hope that I may have the opportunity to take Life Drawing II in the future.

Knuckle Head

Class this week involved drawing the head and the hands.  So sadly, unlike my earlier hopes, the hands turned out to be a lot harder than the feet.  My fingers still looked like sausages and I just could not get my shading down.  Matt and I attempted to draw each other's hands, but, no matter how many times we had to start over because one of us moved, the inner structure was still a little mystifying. I did, on the other hand, find the skull to be much more enjoyable to draw.

There are a lot of elements of the skull that are not as one would suppose.  For example, the face only takes up 1/3 of the skull.  Because we put so much importance on the face it always seems to take up a large portion of the head.  But strip away all hair, skin, muscle, and tendons, and the majority of the skull is just there to hold in the gray matter.

When I think back to those nature specials, the one about how man evolved from a monkey, I remember the progression of skull sizes they loved to show.  The ape's skull was always small and ball-like, but as the genes grew closer to the current homo sapiens the brain cavity increased and the face flattened and shorted.

So, I guess this whole brain thing is a pretty big deal.

Time to Get in GEAR!!

The semester is coming to a close and suddenly we find ourselves with a heap of work.  One of the nice things about life drawing is that, on the whole, most of the work was achievable in class with only an average hour or two on the weekends.  I am realizing the reason that is is because there is now suddenly about a hundred pages of muscles, two shell drawings and a portfolio to mash together!!  But I am being dramatic.  We do have all that to do, but it is over the course of two weeks - nothing that can't be handled if I do a little every day.

The muscles seems to be coming along better than before but that is hard to say for certain.  After "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" and "Galaxy Quest" (yes, I am, in fact, five years old) I had some muscles on the shoulder blade and half a forearm done.  That leaves about 3 movies left until I am finished!  There is something nice about putting the manikin together.  I never realized how many muscles there are in the body!  Although mine is not very accurate, it does give you an idea of the complexity of the human form and all the connections that are required to do the things that we do.  Even now while I type this you can imagine the tightening of so many muscles just to get these words on the page.

I have started taking a boxing class with a couple friends and it is nice that it correlated with Life Drawing class.  As I feel my muscles growing (and getting VERY sore) I am able to pinpoint some of them on the manikin and realize why they are the ones that are going through a growth spurt.  Hopefully some day I will be able to rattle off the latin names as well!

"AH!  I think I pulled my semimembranosous!!"