Reflection

So yea, it's the end of the semester and I didn't do much with the Blog. I'm terrible at doing online postings on a regular basis, I can't even check my email regularly. Aside from that I really enjoyed the semester aside from the blog.

I find it FANTASTIC being able to do actions and feel the bones beneath my skin and actually know what the bones look like, and how they connect and rotate in the joint. It's a little creepy, but my understanding of the movement has increased so much from the beginning of the year.

This semester I also finally started to understand the concept of drawing with your whole arm and not just the wrist or hand. Not only does it bring life to the drawing but it is SO much faster. At the start of my school education I was extremely meticulous in how I drew and needed to refine everything, but all the studios I've taken has taught me to be flexible and spontaneous. It has been so liberating to just draw and not erase.

I greatly look forward to next semester when I have more freedom to actually explore a specific area of study. I want to look in to expressions and how the start to form on the face, also I want to dabble in some extreme body movement studies, particularly in the area of dance. Then taking both these studies and merging them into a fantasy atmosphere.

Yea! I can't wait for next semester!

Model

Unfortunately I wasn't able to come in and finish the shading on this, but I think it turned out decent for a 3 hour ordeal.

Self Portrait

I'm pretty frustrated with the self portraits. I've never been able to make an image look like me if I didn't do the square map out. Unfortunately it looks like it hasn't changed. Though because of what I might study next semester, it might change this.

Skull

Study of the facial features

Study of the skull

study of the skull

Second Skelly

First Skelly

Hand

Hand drawing, the last thing we did before starting on the skull. I do wish I had exaggerated those middle and front bones a little more, the planes become a little flat.

Leg and Arm

About mid-semester. Learning how to do planar drawings of the bones and such.

rib and spinal bone

M.C. Escher the graphic work

I have a book about M.C. Escher and all the writing in it is actually done by the artist himself, which I find surprising and fantastic. Art historians put together biographies and commentaries on artists, but the artists don’t seem to have much say. Then again perhaps this is rightly done because the artist is concerned with visual presentation and not necessarily literature. I still find great joy in seeing an artist concerned with his audience so much that he would take time to write himself about the art he created.
M.C. Escher stated this discovery: after searching and devouring the techniques of drawing, doing work just to discover and better techniques become less important. Only once the techniques are understood fully can you start communicating thoughts. I believe this is a great view to have in Life Drawing two. We are still developing technique to make it second nature so that later in life we can communicate ideas without worrying about our shoddy technique hindering us.
I was also surprised to hear Escher say the perfect image in the mind is much different than the visual image an artist creates; they will never be able to bring about exactly what they expect. Even coming from someone that seemed to have mastered the graphic arts, Escher still could not perfect what was in his minds eye. But he did realize visual image can be refined into something unexpected. Once it's visual state is made the rest is like a relaxing dance when the technical skills that have been mastered take over and give the mind a rest.
Just as a ending though M.C. Escher states something that surprised him: Though you produce a work that seems impersonal in nature in order to express a simple idea or appeal to a group of individuals, it seems no one can express or write a description of the work suitable accept the artist himself

past work

At the moment my concentration is Drawing and the only "upper level" courses I've had for drawing are this one and drawing two if that counts. My pastel work in drawing two turned out ok, though I still would like to keep working on color use because I feel I still have more to learn. My first piece, the pastel still life project, doesn't have much self expression because it was purely an exercise working with color.

The project with the pine tree we had more freedom. We had to choose one subject and take pictures of it in warm and cool lighting, then use toned paper to recreate the photo. I picked a pine tree because of its innately cool color. I wanted to explore how to make the colors warm without making it unrealistic. It was more difficult than I had expected and turned out to be a patience tester, but also a learning experience.

My life drawing one piece was done near the end of the semester. I see the progress made in my figures and am shocked. When I started life drawing one I would have struggled for hours on perspective and understanding proportion. In this drawing there are few erase lines and I'm happy with the confidence in the lines.

About me

The thing I look forward to learning the most like mentioned in the above entry are facial expressions. Understanding how the mouth effects the nose and the eyes. How to make those subtle changes to get all those feelings in the face that aren't meant to be communicated but are.

The reason I find this specific topic interesting is mostly the psychology of it. I want to learn to communicate whats being thought without adding words to the picture.

The interest is there because I believe a person resides in the mind (not the brain). The mind is the most powerful thing God created and to capture that moment when the mind influences the face to change when our guard is unaware of our nonverbal communication is fascinating.

As far as the figure goes in exploring these ideas I haven't decided if I want to make the body passive to allow the viewer to focus on the expression more, or to active the body as well to enhance the feeling i'm trying to portray

I think the best form of research for this is actually focusing on expressions when talking with people. Also reading psychology books on reading nonverbal communication would help to recognize the different expressions. I can find these resources in the library and just hanging out with people and studying them.

When talking about medium, and format I'm unsure of what would be the most effective when dealing with a simple bust of a person though I believe medium to large is necessary for the scale to get the detail in the expression correct.

The Start

I've never made a blog before, and haven't been into blogging ever, but hey! I'll start now. The page was just so empty i thought i would write something on it.

So i'm thrilled that we get to focus on the face for a month! Expressions are so fascinating and hard to capture accurately.