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…