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.