Week 3

Another week of Life Drawing has just flown by; its crazy to think that we've been drawing from a live model for 3 weeks now. This week has been focused on finding the spinal cord  and also the "egg"" shape within the rib cage. Its not so much a challenge when you have point blank view, but it can get pretty tricky when the model twists and lines become deceiving. Towards the end of this week we started drawing from a male model, and it was like a whole new way of drawing. Many features were the same on both models, but a male model is very geometric and angular, compared to the delicate, graceful curves of a female model. Both are very fascinating to draw however. The muscle structure of a male is much more complex, and there are so many layers to them. For women I think that the muscles are very slender, or unseen because of extra fat...but in male models you can really refer to the clay manikins that we have in progress. You can see the neck muscles bulging a bit more, or on the bicep/tricep muscles of the arm. 

The manikins have been really helpful in understanding the anatomy of the human person. I struggle with remembering the long names, but I can at least recognize where they are on the model. 

These sketches are some 1-2 minute drawings from in class this week. I give a lot of credit to our in class models, the poses are beautiful. I definitely couldn't hold the poses for as long as they do, its really quite a talent to know what a good pose is that will help the artist in their sketches. 

This second image is of the first cross-contour of the male model. Again, drawing from a male model was very different. After drawing from a female so long, I just wanted to draw circles and curves like I have before, but  males (for the most part) have anything but- the  torso and shoulders being very geometric. I've got a long way to go before I grasp cross contours....I have a habit of just drawing across instead of following the actual 3D shape of what the skin and muscles are doing. I really have to force myself to see those shifting plains and shapes, like looking at a topographic map.