Flickr Link and Final thoughts.

Well despite finishing the skeleton to the level I wanted I'm still quite pleased with it.  Looking back to the very first Life Drawing Class I took last year, I think I've grown in leaps and bounds as an artist, but I still have a long ways to go.  I've finally became comfortable with my artwork, I find my self doodling more often, drawing in my various sketch books, which in turn helps me be more creative in design and ideation. 


Here's a link to my flickr account with the various work I've done this year.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/24927913@N08/

The Skelton Cont. IV

Before I know it everyone is finished up their own skeletons and I for some reason half maybe half done.  Some are amazing!  Others are good, but many of them didn’t hear the call of the challenge to draw the entire spine.  Maybe I should have done something much more generalized, I would have completed it the skeleton had I not taken the time to draw every nook, cranny and undulation of the vertebrae.  I also would not have learned more intimately of how exactly the spine works the way it does.  It’s absolutely fascinating to see how this most perfect design, this infinitely complicated vehicle is with us every day and we take it for granted.   To see how the vertebrae slowly change from the very top of the spine all the way to the bottom blows my mind away, from a distance I tried to draw each vertebrae as best as I could,  I thought I understood how they’re constructed, how they interact, but upon closer inspection, I was blown away.  They seem to hinge together near the back, but also overlay each other and at the same time accommodate just enough room to fit each rib in it’s own specific location.   I would need another semester to accurately draw this spine the way I wanted it, something is going to have to give, and it did, as was evident in the lower half of the spine, the lumbar got too confusing, became so condensed I had too much spine left, so they became much more generalized, to my disappointment.    I also had to very little time to complete the left half the body, which I guess was fine to me, since I thought it would be a neat gesture to see the right half shaded with so much contrast, then to see the left half fade into a general outline.  Besides, I was happy with the progress that I had made on the ribs, bone shading and spine shading.

The Skeleton Cont. III

After some slight modifications from Amy (the angle of the femur, which I’m so thankful she corrected, as it gave the drawing so much more emotion and flow)

I began on the spine, carefully numbering each as I completed them, squinting, finding the necessary line to draw, looking to my easel, forgetting what the line looked like, looking back at the skeleton, counting down from the top vertebrae to find the line in question, then placing the line on the page.  This became pain stakingly slow, as I was quite a distance from the model.  A voice in my head started to grow louder and louder (maybe it’s best you come in on your own time and then you can draw from a closer perspective)  bad news, as I commute about an hour every day to school.  Mondays and Wednesdays are out of the question, print lab duties, and Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays my Fiancés would love to see her lesser half.  So I avoided finishing the spine, noticing the days left to work on this drawing were dwindling fast, I had to focus on other parts of the body, hips, arms, ribs, femur, scapula (one that I was particularly proud of) and foot.  If I could just draw the lines, I could begin the shading process that I wanted to use to make that skeleton fall right off the paper with.

The Skeleton Cont. II

            After finally getting my board setup and the paper bought I stared at the skeleton for some time thinking about the best way to begin this adventure.   I decided that I will have to roughly map out all the key body parts, head, torso, spine, hips and legs to make sure that it all fits within the paper and doesn’t come too close to the edges, the last thing I want is this six foot skeleton to appear to be crowded within the confines of his own existence, especially with his cocked leg, and his right arm dropping as if he wad his own swagger, he looked confident, he looked comfortable.  I reflected back to my past drawings and what had worked and what hadn’t.  Sometimes I start drawing, and get so involved I don’t take a step back to see how it looks, and what’s worse is that if it doesn’t look right, I won’t change it, I’ll try to sketch or draw around it, as if telling a lie and trying to make myself believe in it, pushing and drawing, sketching, scratching, getting deeper and deeper as I go, with no way out.  What do they say the difference in good art and bad art is?  Good art is finished and well thought out, bad art is hastily thrown together.  Might have been Duchamp or maybe even Grant Wood.  At any rate, I came to the conclusion that I need to start this drawing strong, from the foundation.  The curve of the spine must be exact; the angle of his shoulders must replicate the same heaviness that is on the skeleton’s arm, as it comes towards the viewer.  This will be the first thing I want the viewer to see.   His stance should be matter of fact, his legged lifted as if he was a walking advertisement for Captain Morgan’s Rum.  With the foundation of this awesome structure in place, I could now focus on the biggest challenge of this drawing, erecting the column of this vessel, the spine.

The Skeleton

Ugh, the skeleton!  A very daunting task, the life sized scale of this drawing is by far the largest I’ve ever done.   Challenging, frightening, but after tackling the facial drawings I believe I had enough confidence to do this skeleton well.  It also helped that we had 3 weeks to work on it.  I choose to take it on in small, easily digestible bites.   I got off to a slow start, didn’t get my spot picked out till everyone else had theirs, mainly because I didn’t get paper( I was hoping to share with Jordan, but his paper wasn’t as long as we had expected, so I waited till the following drawing period to get my paper.  By then, everyone present, and not present had a spot.  Yeah, that’s right, someone had apparently reserved a “spot” for a classmate who was gone that day, what bull shit.  I guess I could have been an asshole and stayed there, but then I’d have to deal with it for the rest of the semester, so I politely deferred the position and moved elsewhere.  After some hunting and with the Amy’s assistance I found a good angle at an eye squinting distance, peering in-between two other student’s drawings.   I immediately was drawing to the pose, a rear ¾ perspective that showed character, emotion and flow, the perfect opportunity to make a strong drawing, one that I could be quite proud of.

Drawing of Nathan Cont.

Proportions seemed accurate and in this drawing I think I finally began to tackle an idea that Amy had been trying to show me probably from the very start, but perhaps my mind wasn’t picturing what she was saying exactly.  But I began to develop the idea that I could hold my pencil out to mimic the angle I see and see where it goes in correspondence to the rest of the face, does the eye brow continue to curve down and this line could be extended to intersect the corner of the jaw just below the ear?  Hmm, does my drawing have the same correspondence, Eureka!  Another tool to measure my accuracy.   I’ve used small little mental tools like this before, like extending the pencil to check if what I see is the same angle as what I had drawn, or to pay close attention to the negative space as an indicator to what I’m drawing, but this was like unlocking another padlock in my mind, letting me grow just a tiny bit as an artist.   I tool I will cherish henceforward.

Drawing of Nathan

Another challenging drawing that was interesting as much as it was frustrating.

Interesting because of the pose; as he was positioned above us as his face looked upward revealing a very foreshortened face.  And frustrating because of how strenuous the  pose was, as Nathan had dozed off more than once during the modeling and every time I had drawing a line that seemed acceptable to me, his  neck would roll, and his head was tilt another inch, so my check bones, chin, lips, eyes, nose and forehead were all at slightly different angles.  I was pissed at first, but after I seen the others were having similar problems I decided to just draw as fast as possible before Nathan had a chance to move again.   And I think it turned out quite decent.  This drawing seemed to have more of a likeness than the drawing of Dan, but perhaps a little less than the drawing of Jordan.  Nathan’s features are more soft and it was also hard to capture this likeness with the angle we were viewing his face. 

Drawing of Dan

Dan has such a distinctive look it was hard for me to capture the essence of his facial expression and features.  He has a pronounced jaw line that is wide with well-defined lips and characteristic eyes that could have landed the leading role in a western classic.  Dan is classically handsome and on a side note would be the perfect character in my Senior Show, which will be a dirty, grubby western trailer modeled from 3d and animated with as much realism as possible.   

Dan also has a pronounced nose that I seemed to probably capture the most accurately from entire experience.  Often times I had difficulties drawing his inset eyes and ears but the thing I struggled with most was his lips.  First they were too large and loomed out over his chin, then to thin, too short, too small, too hastily drawn is what it had finally ended up becoming.   His hairline was higher than most, but that had only added to his character, one of the few things I thought I captured well.   Overall, Dan was a great model to draw from but the most challenging, and thus the most unrealistically portrayed in an attempt to capture his likeness.   It lacked character and emotion

Drawing of Jordan

This was probably my favorite of the 3 facial drawings.  I have a tendency to draw from imagining outlines more than blocking out a three dimensional shape.  And as I’m a slow worker it takes several attempts to draw a  line that I perceive to be just like the one I see on someone’s face.  Since Jordan was sitting in such away that I could see a rear ¾ perspective I could immediately see the pronounced brow of his forehead, nose, chin and neck.  If any of the 3 facial drawing had achieved any sort of likeness I believe it would have been this one.  To me I could look at this drawing and see the same facial features on my drawing as I had seen when looking at Jordan.