Final Life Drawings

The Walker Art Center Visit

I enjoyed being outside on such a beautiful day (although a bit windy). Taking a stroll through the sculpture garden seemed like the perfect thing to do. I had seen the large glass fish inside the garden, but had not really taken the time to truly look at it. The title of the sculpture is Standing Glass Fish, and was constructed by Frank Gehry in 1986.

 I had not known Gehry built such sculptures, although I suppose t makes sense seeing as Gehry has used the fish motif in some of his other work. The way the light bounces of the glass scales is quite magnificent, and there are so many of them! The size of the fish truly inspires awe and fits perfectly among the lily pond and orange trees.

Summary of Semester

I thought I knew a fair bit about gesture drawing before taking this class. But upon reaching the middle of the semester, I realize just how much I have learned. The biggest shift in thinking was imagining all of the long and cross contour lines to express the shape of the body, rather than simply using outlines. Thinking about the egg shape of the ribs also proved to be infinitely useful. THe terminology is also something new to me, from the actual names of the muscles (i.e.lumbodorsal fascia, spinalis cervicis, etc.), to the way in which you view the model (i.e. anterior/posterior.) If you look at my long drawings, you can see that I had made adjustments to the torso, I had been previously making most of my torso's a bit too long, but then adjusted and corrected the proportions accordingly. 

The way in which I stood facing the canvas changed as well, with me gaining a wider stance and standing a bit further back, to allow more use of my entire arm. 

The contour lines in my leg drawing was something a bit foreign to me, but I believe I have honed my skills in making the lines thicker when they are protruding towards the viewer. Also, making the lines darker in some of my gesture and long drawings when the parts of the body are closer was something that I improved upon.

As I progressed with my clay model, I realized that many of my muscles were too flat and needed a rounder shape, so I added some bulk to places like the gluteus maximus and longissimus thoracis. Making the tendons skinnier around the bottom of the leg was also something I came across and fixed.

Long Drawings

Leg Contour Drawing

1 Hour

1 Hour

Gesture Drawings

2 Minutes

2 Minutes

Midterm Maniken

Posterior View

Lateral View

Anterior View

Hour Long Pose

The egg shape that began the torso in this drawing proved to be useful in mapping out the angles of the rest of the body. Normally, I would skip drawing the egg and simply would have made an outline. The placement of the hips was also something to be learned, as I had put them too low, making the torso longer than it should be. But I moved it closer to the ribs and fixed this mistake