FINAL (LY)

So we are finally done with this semester and I am glad to say it was a good one…  I learned a lot about how to make my drawings look (at least a little more) professional, and accurate. The main thing to do is to start drawing as light as possible in order to get the proportions correct. Drawing light was hard to do at the start but now I have noticed that I draw much lighter overall. This made taking pictures of my gestural drawings quite a bit harder. I needed to take them into Photoshop and mess with them a bunch, and still you can’t see very much. Drawing light is easy to do when you stand far away from your page and extend your utensil.

                I really, really enjoyed our trip to the natural history museum in St. Paul (I think, I’m from Wisconsin so I can’t really tell the difference between Minneapolis and St. Paul). I wish we would have went there every day of class, that would have been a lot of fun… BUT SCHOOL ISNT SUPPOSED TO BE FUN so… but really I cant wait for Life Drawing 2. At the senior show type thing that happened this past Friday there was a show of all of their giant skeleton drawings, and I really want to do one of those.

                Apparently I kind of messed up my mannequin, but I think I fixed it. My second to last shell drawing was the biggest piece of crap that I have ever seen (I think it was probably the worst one in the class), I am the most disappointed in (myself) that shell drawing than I have ever been in any of my drawings ever. But I think that drawing was kind of practice for our final shell which in my opinion is way way better… I had the exact right amount of charcoal pencil to finish which helped my luck I think…

Well thanks a lot and get the hell off of my blog…

The following is my final portfolio

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rudolphalec/

This is probably my favorite drawing from this class. The imaje doesn’t do it much justice, there are a lot of details that aren’t visible in the picture. i wish we would spend another day on the skull just because it is fun to draw. Sorry about the crappy picture... i usually take the pictures for the blog at the art building on some machine that helps you line up the picture and takes it from the direct center. As a result of not using this machine the left hand side of the image is all dark 

I think it is interesting how the skull is so static. The only part of the skull that moves is the jaw. I don’t know it’s just cool to me. It is also interesting how the front portion of the skull is so thin, it is about as wide as your two front teeth. The lecture we had that day helped me draw this picture a lot. Again I wish I had my newsprint here but im snowed in and it really sucks how you cant get into the art building at all times anymore.   But in my pad I have a few drawings of the skull (from the lecture) that turned out kind of cool.

In the above drawing I had to do a lot of measuring because the skull is so big. It is hard to find how the cranium actually sits in space again due to how big and smooth it is. But, in the end I think I grasped it as good as I did (that probably only makes sense to me). I also think I learned a lot about line weight in drawing the teeth. I really like the way that the teeth turned out…

the hand...

This week we had a lecture about the hand. I wish that I had my drawing pad here but my front door is nearly snowed shut… but in my newsprint pad I have some drawings of the finger bones that I really like. But oh well… in this drawing I used a brown pencil at first to draw the bones (you can barely see the pencil marks) after I had the hand drawn I used some of my markers to add value… because I have kind of been getting sick of the whole cross contour thing. I drew my own hand, but we were supposed to draw somebody else hand. I think the hand drawing is ok, but id rather talk about the bone… I was going to draw my hand holding the bone but I just finished the bone by itself… I really like the way that this drawing looks (or at least this part of the drawing). I tried to think about the cross contour process. It is really weird to me how some days you can really see how the planes shift and it is easy to draw something in cross contour. And a lot of other days it seems impossible until you really get into it. I like how the lines on the bone only cross each other a few times… I think im going to do my final drawing like this…

bla bla bla

This week I actually remember what we did… first we went up to room 319 to talk about how to do the ink wash. We definitely talked for way way (way way way) too long about it…  I think everyone already knew what to do but oh well. I always get super restless when we talk (without having to draw anything) for too long. Finally we went back to the room and we drew our shells and practiced the ink wash mine didn’t turn out good at all… I just wasn’t feeling it so I went fishing…

uh oh spaghettios

I haven’t been doing these posts for about a month now so I’m kind of behind here. Due to this I’m probably going to forget a few things that happened this week (and the next week). But anyways…

I don’t remember what we talked about this day but I do remember that I drew this picture… I found that in these long drawings I take a long time to get started drawing the actual figure. I try to figure out where the still life stuff intersects with the model so I can make measurements form there. As you may see in the drawing I figured out the perspective of the box and chairs. Next time I make a long drawing I’m just going to jump into it right away.  I feel that it could make a more interesting drawing… I am getting kind of tired of my drawings and I think I need to start thinking differently to achieve the look that I want.  The models right shoulder looks a little off, but that’s all I can see that doesn’t look right (to me atleast). I had a really hard time with the face and head (now that I look at it more her chin is kind of messed up also) .  I like the background (the pipes and wall) I feel it helps the perspective and shows the space.

Field Trip...

On Tuesday, November 23^rd I did a whole bunch of drawing, despite the fact that the bus for the field trip was really, really late. On the way to the Walker Art Museum I figured that I would practice my cross contour skills by making up (and drawing) some kind of buttress root system (pictured below, Figure 1). There are places in the drawing that represent what I was going for relatively well, and there are places that it doesn’t work so well. A few of the lines “cross” their “contours”, but only a few. 

 Figure 1

Once we arrived at the Walker I drew sketches of two works that I enjoyed, or that caught my eye. The first (pictured below, Figure 2) is a sketch of Alec Soth’s Cadillac Motel. I should mention that I changed the colors. Originally the piece is a photograph, consisting of variations of white, red, grey, and yellow (but I didn’t have any of those markers on me so…). I like the way Alec Soth saw the “beauty” in the rectilinear forms that made up the hotel front. That and the (original) colors are very cool due to the snow on the ground.

 Figure 2

The second sketch (pictured below, Figure 3) was of Nelson Leirner’s Homenagem A Fontana II. This piece is made of cloth, and instead of seams there are zippers holding the different colored cloths together. I just liked the colors and the zippers. 

 Figure 3

Finally we went to the Natural Science Museum and drew from the stuffed animals there. There were so many interesting animals that I wish we would have spent the whole day there. I tried drawing an owl which didn’t work out so well, so I drew a duck in the water, which in my opinion turned out better. Looking back at the duck drawing (pictured below, Figure 4) I could have drawn his “cheek” a convex instead of concave, but I think most of the other choices that I made worked in the end.

 Figure 4

I also drew a Morel mushroom (pictured below, Figure 5).

Figure 5

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So… this is my “reflection” on this, the first half, of the first semester, of the 2010, 2011 school year. I have been enjoying this life drawing class, and I have certainly learned a lot. Both, drawing techniques, and anatomical lectures, have helped me render the human form much more accurately than before this semester. A definitely appreciated the technique tips like “try to draw as light as possible”, and “stand farther away from your paper”. Drawing lightly allows you to rework lines over and over again without leaving deep, dark lines on the paper.  The result is usually a cleaner line and, in the end a more craftsman like piece.  Standing far away from the paper, drawing with an outstretched arm, allows you to see the whole piece of paper, and move with the lines you lay. In class we were instructed to tape our charcoal to some sort of a stick in order to move our stance even further from the paper. I feel that this “extended instrument” thing will stick with me for a long time. The anatomical aspect of the class also helps. Now when my back or arm or whatever hurts, I will understand where to tell my girlfriend to rub… the shapes of bones have always been interesting to me, but knowing how and where the muscles are attached to them takes that interest and informs it to help my “drawing skills”. Something I would like to work on is making more accurate directional marks that (attempt to) show forms. I feel like I don’t know many, or any rules for how to show how an organic form relates to the space it occupies. I just wish that more than one single person would be willing to model for our class. We have been drawing the same naked person for eight or nine weeks…

FLICKR MIDTERM

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rudolphalec/

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I guess this post is supposed to be about our critiques in both of our groups. We critiqued our first of five shell drawings. This drawing was supposed to be a cross contour drawing of our shell. I wasn’t there for the first critique but there was someone who was in the group I would have been in if I were there the first day, in my group on the second day. She said that the group liked how I avoided using outlines, and how it recedes into space.  She also said that mine was the only one in the group that filled up the page. Again I wasn’t there so I don’t really know what to say about that. I agree that I tried not to make any visible outlines, but there were a few.  In the critique the second day the group said the same things that the other group said. My teacher Amy Fichter said that I could have used line weight a bit better to show some atmospheric perspective, which I also agree with. I kind of ran out of time, and felt like crap the day of the critique (which is why I wasn’t there). I feel that the inside of my shell that is visible could have showed the volume of the shell a lot better, it just doesn’t look right because I redid it too many times and drew a bit too hard. Also the thin parts of the shell could have been thicker by showing the skinniest plane more often than I did… and that’s pretty much it…

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Class was canceled on Tuesday due to the temperature of the classroom, and on Thursday we just didn’t have class so heres three hundred words from Wikipedia about numbers … A number is a mathematical object used in counting and measuring. A notational symbol which represents a number is called a numeral, but in common usage the word number is used for both the abstract object and the symbol, as well as for the word for the number. In addition to their use in counting and measuring, numerals are often used for labels (telephone numbers), for ordering (serial numbers), and for codes (e.g., ISBNs). In mathematics, the definition of number has been extended over the years to include such numbers as zero, negative numbers, rational numbers, irrational numbers, and complex numbers.Certain procedures which take one or more numbers as input and produce a number as output are called numerical operations. Unary operations take a single input number and produce a single output number. For example, the successor operation adds one to an integer, thus the successor of 4 is 5. More common are binary operations which take two input numbers and produce a single output number. Examples of binary operations include addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and exponentiation. The study of numerical operations is called arithmetic.

The most familiar numbers are the natural numbers or counting numbers: one, two, three, and so on. Traditionally, the sequence of natural numbers started with 1 (0 was not even considered a number for the Ancient Greeks.) However, in the 19th century, set theorists and other mathematicians started the convention of including 0 (cardinality of the empty set, i.e. 0 elements, where 0 is thus the smallest cardinal number) in the set of natural numbers. The mathematical symbol for the set of all natural numbers is N, also written .

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I recently had to reimage my computer, and I happened to misplace my cameras software… therefore I can’t really upload any images… but. I’m kind of behind on these blog posts so this is for class two weeks ago. At the beginning of class our teacher Amy Fichter made us all tape our drawing implements to something long in order to draw while standing far away from the paper. Holding the tool at the very end with your arm extended allows you to get away from your drawing. Also this allows you to stand as your subject is standing… or at least imagine what muscles they are using to stand/sit the way that they are. I liked this distanced approach to life drawing. At first I was kind of shaky and kept inching down towards the tip of my charcoal. But after a little practice I got more and more used to it. I liked how with this technique, since you are already standing away from your drawing you are able to see how the marks you have made relate to each other and to the model. And I like to lean back and forth when im drawing… just to move around a bit. Im not sure but I think that we had a lecture about the rib cage. This was a very useful lecture because the ribs (in my opinion) can make a drawing “cool” or crappy… I have always been interested in drawing bones, and the curve and intricacies of the ribs seem like a lot of fun to draw

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And in the third week god said let there be life… and it was drawn… this was our first week of class with a model to work from. I have done some life drawing before in Tim Tozers drawing two class. But back then I didn’t really understand how much the spine truly curves, which is definitely why my drawings were pretty crappy that day. Having drawn the skeleton the week before, I feel that the model was a little bit easier to draw.

We did tons of minute long gestural drawings, and slowly we were given more time which resulted in more and more detail. I learned how the position of the hips affects the entire position of the human body. Our gestural drawings were meant to have little detail of form, and portray proportion, but I can’t say that I had succeeded in this more often than not.

I had a much easier time drawing the model when she lay down and we had a full thirty minutes (above) to draw her. I believe that this drawing was my best this semester. I think my line weights show form and depth well, and my use of light contour lines followed the form in the way that I wanted them to.

After the thirty minute drawing our drawing time decreased, and this was when the model was in the position shown in the second image here (below). I like how this drawing turned out a lot. It reminds me of (the missing position in) Leonardo da Vinci’s vitruvian man (he could have stuck a triangle in there to). Leonardo da Vinci is an artist that I aspire to be inspired by. He is able to show form in a way that is aesthetically pleasing to me, I like his "unfinished" style.

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In this, the second week of life drawing, and it was a week indeed. We had an anatomy lesson at the beginning of class. We discussed the curvature of the spine, and the Latin terms for the vertebra. I was surprised to see how much the spine actually curves. Once we got done with the lecture we tried doing some gestural type drawings if the skeleton mannequin in the classroom. I realized that I really like the forms that bones make. They are a lot of fun to (try to) draw.

There are a lot of subtleties to the forms at both the joints and the length of each bone. The drawings were meant to be quick yet descriptive. We started by finding the position of the spine in space, and placing the ribs, hips, and collar bones (if time permitted) onto the spine (and hopefully in the proper place). I enjoyed finding the shape of the ribs. Both the overall shape, and the points on the ribs where cartilage keeps them all together. I found many interesting shapes in both the positive and negative spaces on the midsection of the skeleton.

            This drawing session helped me understand how to use line weight to describe an organic form, at least a little bit better than I was able to before. We were to draw the skeleton, then the mannequin was turned and drawn again, and turned and again and again. The turning of the skeleton gave us all at least two different three-quarter views, which are much more interesting than most straight on views. Now knowing this, my sense of composition will be affected (although the space available in the classroom is not optimum for everyone to be able to get exactly the view of the model or whatever that they want)…

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During the first week of life drawing one we were given shells with which we will be studying all semester. The first exercise we did were blind contour drawings of the shells. I liked how we were instructed to lay a sheet of paper over our drawings, in order to put the “blind” in “blind contour”. I feel that the sheet of paper forced us to think a lot more about each and every aspect of every line we drew. And once we made a few lines we had to judge the distance between where our charcoal was and where we (thought that) we wanted it to be. It is very tempting to look at your lines without the cover sheet, and I appreciated the thoughtfulness that was required. I believe that it produced much more interesting drawings.

            Another thing that I hadn’t ever done was hold the object that I was drawing (in this case a shell) in my hand. It is very helpful in visualizing what happens to the lines after they disappear off of the composition. Being able to see where these lines go allows you to observe the curves and understand why the surface moves in the way that it does.

            The second thing we did that day was make single line contour drawings, by using a single line to show the shape of an object (again a shell). This exercise made me think about mark making and line weight. Although my drawing didn’t really appear to be one line (and it was probably about five lines) I did keep my charcoal on the paper the majority of the time. I like the way that my drawing turned out… but it could have been a whole lot better…

"proud"

i heard that we were supposed to write about a few images that we have made that we are proud. and these are the following:

this is a 3 layer stencil that i made my sophomore year. it is in the bathroom at the place that used to be called "yo dawg" terrable name, sweet bathroom. i used drywall tape to make the gray portion. im proud of this image because the bathroom looked like crap before me and my old roomate (jake olson) got to it.

this is my final project for presentation techniques. it is marker on marker paper. i am proud of this work because of the amount of detail, and sheer amount of time spent on each and every brick.