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…