Life Drawing and Building Clay Muscles.

   Last week was not a typical week because my class time was cut short due to advisement day.  On top of that, I also participated in mid-program review.  For those of you that are not familiar with mid-program review, it’s a benchmark for all art and art education majors.  I presented my artwork to a panel of art facility and explained why I’m an artist.  Everything went good and I passed this benchmark successfully.  It was a good learning experience, and I found it to be beneficial for me as an artist.

The time that I had in class was spent drawing the shoulders, biceps, and triceps.  I’m making my way down the arm to the forearm.  A goal from this course is to be able to accurately depict the human form in a 30 second gesture drawing.  I’m doing this well, but I still need to work on my line economy.  Some of my gesture drawings are stylized and have too much line work.  Less is better when I only have a short time period to draw the entire body.  After I do several gestures drawings to get warmed up, I then typically do an hour-long pose.  These allow me to focus on the human form and really develop accurate features and proportions.  I don’t spend a lot of time developing value or shading but I do focus on variation of line quality.

I’ve made a lot of progress on my manikin and now feel more successful when building clay muscles.  I believe the upper portion of my manikin is better then the lower because I’m really beginning to understand how muscles work.  My lower portion looks flat and several of the muscles lack a life like appearance.  Some of the clay chest and biceps muscles are a little bulkily but also look more round, three-dimensional, and life like.