I feel as though I have come a long way from ‘attempting’ to draw the human body before I took Life Drawing 1, to gaining a much larger understanding of the form of the body in my current drawings. I think that learning about the bone and muscles structure part by part with lots of practice in between has been a very useful way of learning. By going slowly in each area (spine, rib cage, pelvis, legs) it has really given me a chance to concentrate on that particular area and understand it. The Maniken skeletons have also been very helpful. Even though painstakingly putting each clay muscle on is not the most fun in the world, it is definitely helpful to know the muscle structure.
I also really found the way that we started with the short gesture drawings and worked gradually up to the longer drawings each class. The short drawings felt like a really good warm up and helped familiarize me with the body again at the start of class. Sometimes it was hard for me to go for the entire hour long drawings and I felt like I must be drawing too quickly. I would then go back and look at each area again and try and fix anything that didn’t seem correct.
I think my strengths are my ability to show the curves of the body. I say this because I used to be a stick person drawer so it is a very large improvement for me! I think my biggest weakness would be not looking close enough at the model and looking at my paper too much. Especially with the leg muscles I don’t think I was looking enough to really see the leg muscles. They ended up looking too cylindrical.
I think my goal for the second half of the semester will be pretty similar to other people’s goal: be able to draw the WHOLE human body! I feel like it is really coming together at this point, but the really difficult parts like the hands and feet are still to come. I am also really looking forward to getting to do the ink washes on the shell contour drawings. I have enjoyed this class so far and look forward to the rest of the semester!
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