Week 15: Final Portfolio

                            Flickr Final Portfolio

This semester has gone so fast, but It's been great! I have learned so much about the human anatomy, and how the body works...it's been really amazing to spend an entire semester drawing directly from a model. At the beginning of the semester it hard to get into the habit of drawing gestures for the first half hour of class or so, because I wanted to start right into drawing the full body complete with details. Your arm also gets tired very quickly, which can be discouraging. I think I have built up a tolerance for it by now however, and the time goes by quicker than ever once you forget about it. The mannequin was also really helpful in understanding the muscles, the class would be pretty difficult without having that knowledge on the side to reference from. I don't think I'll be able to remember all of the names, but I know I can at least recognize their function and placement on the human body.
     I have such an admiration and appreciation of the human body because of this class. The simple things such as studying the shoulder blade, learning the bone structure underneath it, and then watching it the muscles move and flex on the model. Amazing. Our bodies are so fantastic when you really understand them, and I don't even have to be a doctor. I don't know how our nerves and blood cells work as in depth, but I can still have a this great appreciation and wonder from drawing the body, which is cool!
     Its such a great opportunity to also go to the open life drawing as well because the cost is usually so high to draw from a live model, and at Stout everything is paid for. Hopefully I'll continue to attend the drawing sessions next year when I get the chance, it'd be a great way to keep up my drawing skills. I'm a Graphic Design major, but having good illustration skills is also really important to integrate into my portfolio.

Week 14

This was our last full week of classes! I can't believe it...time flies. We had two class periods to work on the head and bust...I had a direct profile view, so I think mine feels kinda flat looking, but I like how it turned out. We also had time for a long pose friday. Another weird angle with the foot harshly fore-shortened, but I did feel like I had a stronger sense of how the head rests on the shoulders from doing the bust pose a day earlier.

Week 13

                                                                                      

We've continued with the skull this week, but focused more on individual facial features. We started with the eyes and nose, and it went pretty well, but all of the planes on the features were very small to capture, so drawing bigger was a challenge. The landmarks and guidelines to help you position the features were very helpful. For instance, the outside edges of the nose line up with the inner corners of the eye, as if there was an invisible line there. The eye has also many small planes that can really complete the eye- such as the small top plane of the lower eye-lid. This usually is highlighted because of the wetness of the eye, and makes it come to life quite effortlessly. It was difficult to position the iris inside the eyeball itself, because the upper eyelid actually covers most of the eye. Its tempting to want to draw the pupil as if fully seen, but you quickly realize that it doesn't look quite right...more like a deer headlights. We did not draw from the regular models, instead we drew each other, so that was a different experience...I can appreciate what the models go through when remaining still, its not easy to be motionless for so long and hold a pose...oofta.

Week 12

Its been a short week, because friday we have no classes due to Easter break. We've just started the skull, which I'm pretty excited about. The skull has many subtle plane changes, which can be misleading when trying to add in value. The head is actually more egg shaped than one would think, and most of the bones below that are towards the front of the face. We haven't talked about specific names of bones yet, but its interesting to see how the cheek bone connects to the eyebrow area. Also the temples of the skull are a key landmark that will help when drawing from a live model.

Week 11

Well I thought I'd hate drawing hands, because every time I try they always turn out looking like sausage links.. but I really enjoyed drawing them this past week. We had several models positioned throughout the room during class. I thought it'd be a good idea to start out with the skeleton model...get a good sense of structure and bones underneath the skin and muscles before I draw a real hand. The finger bones are pretty crazy..each palm has "phalange" bones attached, with a squared off edge. The phalanges are connected to metacarpals, which have more rounded ends, as you can see in these notes:

After I worked on the skeleton most of monday, wednesday and friday I started working on the live model hands, and how the muscles interacted. It was difficult to capture the knuckles just right, because many times you cant see the bone actually, but have to draw it as if it were there underneath anyways. Shading and adding value helped a lot though, which is something I haven't had a whole lot of time to add into my drawings. We spent the entire class time working just on hands, so it was nice to get detailed with them. Hands say so much about a person...rough, delicate, strong, tiny...so interesting.

Week 10

More arm muscles... emphasis on the arm pit and capturing that "gap" between the muscles. The Deltoid muscles come over the side/top of the shoulder, very close to the collar bone. The Latissimus Dorsi is the main side muscle that is usually bigger on males than females, and bulges out quite a bit. The pecks (chest muscles) also draw towards the corner armpit, and the hollow space is formed because of these three joining.

Its hard to capture this when the muscles are completely stretched out, as in the top drawing. I think I drew the arm a bit more slim than it really is...its probably a bit more flexed than that. Slowly working our way down the arm and on to the hand next week!

Week 9

We've continued down the arm and into the forearm this past week. Monday we learned about the elbow and its connecting muscles. Some of the landmarks on the arm were the Medial Epicondyle and the Ulna. The Medial Epicondyle is the bone that stick out on your elbow, and the ulna is the part of the bone closer towards the wrist that has a slight bump. I don't know why, but I think this bone is really lovely.. Its a simple little 'chink' at the wrist that really adds so much beauty to the arm. The muscles on the arm, such as the Flexor Carpi Radialis make quite the twist in the arm when changing from a 'palms up' to a 'palms down' view. When the palms are up and bones are parallel, this is called "supine" (untwisted). When are palms are down and the bones are crossed, this is called "prone". Its interesting to think this way, because I've always thought that when we have palms up are arms are being bent a twisted way, but its actually the other way around, so when we're casually walking are muscles are slightly curved/twisted... Humans are so weird. 

The clay has been getting really complicated in the arms....at first mine all started out very small and thin because the book never really has accurate pictures of anything...but after looking at other classmates and the teacher example...and of course the live model, I realized people, in fact, do not have spaghetti strings for arms. ;)