We are Back!

    Back from Spring Break, and mother nature wasn't done messing with us yet. On Monday we were assigned some more clay muscles to put on our mannequins. These muscles are part of the shoulder girdle. I feel like we are really expanding our mannequins into an actual human and I can see it. It is amazing how complicated it is and yet how simply it works. Anyways, Monday we started to draw the shoulder blades on our drawings. It is great to have a model that it is easy to see pretty much everything we need to on. The way the light hits these markers really creates a prominent line. I was both frustrated and content with my drawings. It kind of seemed like I was just putting a curved line in for where the shoulders connect to the arms in the quick gesture drawings. Amy did come by and say it was the right idea, so it must be so. When she demonstrated on the back of the model where the shoulders were and had her move them, it really reminded me how amazing the human body really is.

My Friday Frustration

    A main issue I have and am trying to get better at is the size of my drawings. I tend to draw pretty small. Even in our longer drawings I intend to draw the size of the page, and I start to lay it out, and before I know it, it is all in the center of the page again with a lot of negative space on the top and bottom. I have gotten better since the beginning of the semester, but I need to push it. Wednesday was a weird day because of the snow and many people not in class. We had drawing time which was nice. Friday in our long drawing towards the end of class I was frustrated. I took my sweet time, and barely got the figure done in the hour. I spent A LOT of time trying to get the rib cage right. My view was where his leg was in front of his torso, so I had to try to x-ray through his knee to figure it out. As for the clay muscles, I worked on them after class. I intended to get them all done, but once I had 3 left I quit for the day. Why? So that I have more to do when I don't have time to do them, I suppose.

A New Week

    Well, it is Spring Break, and yet another blog post is in order. It may be the excitement of break or the long drive home, but I am exhausted. This week I think was an interesting one learning about the human foot. Starting the week working on clay models was a little disappointing because I wanted to draw, but it provided time to catch up. It was great to actually get to complete all of the clay that wasn't due until Friday so early. We learned about a lot of different muscles in the foot such as the Extensor Hallucis Longus and the Tibialis Anterior. It is very interesting discovering how these muscles fit within the foot and why you can see certain ones more easily.
    Drawing the foot was going well but I realized that I was outlining quite a bit. I tried to incorporate more contour lines in my drawings this week. I think this was more apparent in my final long drawing on Friday. I was at first drawing toes in and they did look kind of like sausage like we mentioned on Friday. I believe I fixed this with the new content we learned on Friday. Learning about the parts of the toes such as the metatarsals and the phlanges. Knowing what makes up the toes makes it easier to draw them because you know they should bend in certain places.
    On Friday we had some 5 minute drawings and an hour long drawing. This was great to really work out proportion and get contours in to shape the foot. It is so amazing how even one contour line can make something look 3-dimensional. I always knew this, i just came to re appreciate just how simple drawing can sometimes be. If one line can achieve this dimensionality. It makes me think if I am trying too hard sometimes. 

Mid-Term!!

Here is the link to my flickr! http://www.flickr.com/photos/ryanhuettl/sets/

    Well, it is already Mid-term and this semester seems to be flying by. Life Drawing so far has been a real interesting experience. I have always wanted to take this class to learn to draw the human body better. The semester started out slow, just learning about the spinal column. It wasn't always easy though, trying to figure out what the spine would curve like in different positions. Adding in the egg shape for the rib cage was harder than I thought it would be. Trying to get the proportion right can be very frustrating at times. The models we have had have been great. It is fairly easy to see the ribs and the spine on them to make it easy to see the "markers, " and draw from them. As you can see in many of my drawings, I have been working on getting the ribs to be more in proportion. I have been drawing them too long most of the time. In the drawing to the right I was working on getting the pelvis to be the same width as the rib cage.
     As confusing as the angle of the ribs can be, it is easy in comparison to the pelvis in my opinion. At first it took me a while to understand the spacing between where the ribs end and the pelvis begins. I think I have made a lot of progress with that. I can get the normal anterior and posterior standing view right for the most part I think. What I find kind of confusing is when the model is sitting or at a strange angle or position. I am still trying to get right what angle the pelvis would actually be at in these positions. I have made some progress with this, but I still feel like I have a lot to learn.
    The 30 second drawings were very irritating to me at first because I would draw so slow that I would only have half the figure in by the time the buzzer went off. I have always been more into drawing detail so I had some habits to break. I am happy to say that throughout this first half of the semester I have improved my speed at drawing the quick gestures.
    The manikins have been interesting as well. I think it is interesting learning about the different muscles in the body so that we know what is making up the parts of the body. I didn't initially think we were going to get into the muscles as in depth as we are, so it was a nice surprise. As tedious as the clay muscles can be I think it is a good learning tool so we can get a visual of it on a body rather than just reading about it or taking notes in lecture.
    This second half of the semester I think I will see a huge leap of improvement. I am going to have to work on my proportion and how I handle foreshortening. I also have to do more with contour lines. The way I see it, this first semester was building a base knowledge of the spine, ribs, and pelvis. I don't know if there are any specifics I would like to learn since I am sure we will get to the legs and arms. I suppose I would like to have a better understanding of hands and feet. I am just assuming we are not going to get to the face in this life drawing class. I am not sure what we will learn next or what we will get to cover. All I know is I am excited to find out!