week 15: May 9th-15th

Its crazy to think how fast this semester has flown by and that we are done with life drawing one!  I think that I have benefited from this class greatly.  All drawing methods are really about lines but in life drawing one we only used precise placement of lines to show the overall shape of our model figure and contour lines instead of shading to show where the changes of curves are in the form.  Even though we only use few lines it still can take long because we are very cautious with our placement of lines.  Because everyone knows what the human figure looks like it makes drawing him or her harder because if one little detail is off it can make the whole drawing look weird.  For me proportions are probably the hardest part and I have really improved on that since the beginning of the semester.  The best way to figure out if you have a proportion issue in your drawing is to use your pencil as a measuring tool and you can also use your pencil to find the correct angle.  If I use my pencil to find the measurements and to double-check the angles my drawing usually end up looking correct compared to my drawings in the beginning of the semester.  Life drawing one has also made me a faster drawer.  I have always been slow at drawing but having to gesture draw and add in so many features to the human body in 30 seconds has really made me become faster at drawing.  Having to complete the manikin was very useful because our teacher Amy would correlate the muscles that we were working on with what we were drawing for that week.  I found this very helpful and if this was done any other way I think the manikin assignment would feel very overwhelming.  Because we only worked on little groups of muscles at a time it was easier to fix our mistakes instead of covering them up when we added more muscles.  I think that by taking this class I will have better work in general.  It has really taught me to be cautious of my line making because even the slightest curve can make your form do something completely different.  I actually just used my skills from this class to draw a hand for a poster in my GD1 class.  So already this class has benefited me.  I’m not sure how my hand would have turned out prior to my life drawing experience.