Reflections on Life Drawing

So in the past week for Life Drawing, we have been working on gesture drawing (seen to the left) and contour drawing, which I discussed a little in my last post.

For our last class, we focused on learning about the functions and display of the spine. At first when we learned on the first day of class that we would be learning about individual parts of the body to progress in our drawing, I wasn't too enthused.

Now that we have actually focused on a specific part, I've learned that it is extremely important. By doing so, we are able to understand how the body is functioning as well as concepts in drawing such as fore-shortening. We also were able to work on our line weight, which is something I would like to continue to do as I know I have a bit of a heavy hand when it comes to drawing.

The only thing I have a hard time appreciating is keeping your hand off the paper as you draw. It's supposed to make a more fluid movement through your arm as you sketch, but I almost feel like at least a part of my hand should touch the paper so as to keep an intimate connection. By taking my hand off the paper, I feel like I'm breaking the flow - that I'm losing that connection between myself and my subject.

Anyways, that's my reflection for this time around - more next time!

Contour Drawings

So for our last class, we worked on learning the differences between gesture drawings and contour drawings. After discussing them, we performed two examples: blind contour and continuous line drawing.

The one show here is my blind contour drawing, where the point is to draw the figure without looking at your drawing as you develop it. We took 30 minutes to do this. Personally, I'm not a fan of any blind drawing - I think this has to do with my impatience and my OCD for perfection. I want to actually look at my drawing and fix what I've done.

Anyways, we have to develop three words based on our drawings, so I choose:

• Heavy
• Smooth
• Death

If you want me to explain those in any detail, just leave a comment (critique) and I'll do my best to explain. Enjoy my craptastic artwork!

Proper Introduction

First of all, thanks for reading.

Anyhoo, my name is Megan. I'm 24 (6th year of college) in the Art - Interior Design major at Stout, minoring in English Writing. I like to write, draw, listen to music, surf the Internet, and play games in my spare time. I also am a big fan of Japan and its culture, and I hope to one day be able to visit there. Right now, I'm working to hopefully be able to study abroad in France this summer for the Color Studio course.

I'm taking the Life Drawing class to hopefully work on developing my drawing with a better understanding of anatomy. It will be a challenge to apply skills that do not involve rendering, especially as that has been something I've been working on developing the past couple of years. The following pieces are just a couple of things I've done in my free time (neither of which are finished) a while ago based on some characters in the book that I'm working on writing. Click to enlarge and enjoy!

Brand New to Blogging

Hello there. My name is Megan, although a nickname my friends have come up with for me is Strawberry Meggs, which is what I will be going by in this blog.

The main focus of this blog is for a class that I am enrolled in for Spring 2010 known as Life Drawing I. I will be sharing my reflections of what I am learning in this course, as well as images of my works and notes taken.

Please bear with me in the beginning as I edit this blog, as I plan to be going through the html to personalize the layout to my own tastes.