Final Reflection

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The semester has come to an end and now it’s time for me to reflect on what I’ve learned.  Like most studio courses there where times when I succeeded and other times when I struggled.  This course was very informative and I learned a lot about drawing the human body.  I found life drawing to be one of the more challenging art studio courses that I have taken. 

I still remember the first day of in-class drawing.  I left that class with an extremely tired shoulder from producing so many gesture drawings.  Although I didn’t like them at first, I soon noticed their beneficial factors.  It’s interesting that in most cases my gesture drawings are proportional accurate.  Gesture drawings are the foundation to life drawing and it’s important to be able to capture an entire pose in under a minute (Gesture Drawing 1).

Aside from gesture drawings, the manikin was another important aspect of the course.  I spent several hours each week building clay muscles.  This allowed me to develop a deep understanding of the human muscular system and also helped me identify and accurately depict the muscles during drawings.  I worked hard on my manikin and I’m very satisfied on it turned out (Manikin 1).

The last major component of this class was based on long drawings.  This is where I was able to develop some very beautiful drawings.  Along with the beautiful drawings came struggles.  Throughout the course I struggled with contour lines and foreshortening.  I did my best this semester at trying to make theses components feel easy, but I still find them very difficult.  They are the more challenging aspects of drawing.  Overall, this course was a good learning experience and will help me become a better art educator.

One Week Left

          My spring semester is coming to an end, and that means there is only one week of life drawing left.  It’s surprising how fast the semester has gone by.  This course has taken a lot of hard work, but it was worth it because I’ve learned so much about drawing the human body.  At this point in the semester, I’ve learned about every section of the body.   Now it’s just a matter of connecting all the pieces together. 

I had two class periods last week, the first day I spent most of my time working on my manikin, and the second day I focused on drawing.  One component of life drawing that I really enjoy is creating gesture drawings.  My favorite time length is around five-minutes.  This allows me to quickly capture the gesture, but also provides enough time for me to reevaluate my drawing and make adjustments.  It’s interesting how some poses are relatively easy while others are very challenging.  Most of the difficult gesture drawings evolve a certain degree of foreshortening.  Foreshortening is a component of life drawing that I’ve been struggling with the entire semester.  I’ve also had several issues with developing contour lines.  I understand were most of the mussels are in the body, but I find it very difficult to create contour lines to show them.  I believe contour lines are one of the more challenging aspects of drawing in general.  It’s an element of drawing that takes a lot of practice to become good at.

            Aside from drawing, my manikin has been a wonderful learning experience.  I finish the last mussels this weekend, and believe the finished product turned out very good.  I spent a lot of time making sure the mussels were built accurately.  I even ended up having to rebuild several muscles.  I had some issues with the forearm becoming too bulky and had to shave some of the muscles down.