We spent this week wrapping up our 3-skull perspectives project. Monday was just a workday, but still had a lot going on. Focused a lot on building shape into my skulls by using artificial shading and by using expressive mark making. I like the rugged, sketchy feel I draw with, but equally appreciate the careful, controlled looking appearance of Amy’s sketches too.

Wed. we critiqued everyone’s work in small groups. Having the “expert” with us was pretty great because some interesting feedback and concepts were thrown around. We also chatted a little bit about our majors and how our studies in Life Drawing have related to multimedia and whatnot.

Starting over with skulls

Reflecting back on this week, I’m thinking how powerful this class is, and how it forces you to rethink a lot of the habits we develop or pick up on our own.

Monday the 13^th we had a simple session of doing skull gesture drawings. My usual approach to a drawing a seen object quickly got me in trouble, because it becomes a simple job of tracing the imaginary lines I’m seeing when I look at the skull as a mental illustration. As I progressed through the day, I really had to step back and try and describe the three dimensional aspects of the head, and to abandon the idea of the lines that were composing it.

Part way through the day we stepped out to take a look at different illustration artists, and how they compose drawing of the head, skull, face, and everything in between. It was interesting to me, who has a hobby illustrating and designing graphic novel characters and settings, to see exactly how to approach it. Too often I get stuck in the usual traps of what I think the character’s head should look like, and there’s several traps and bad execution that comes with that.

Finally at the end of Monday’s class period, we did one last thirty minute drawing, and I was pretty pleased with how it turned out. Granted it was more simplistic looking than my previous attempts, but getting rid of the need for it to look “good” made sure I spent more time getting my proportions right and all that. It was a good base that could be worked on more thoroughly in the future. I’ve also learned more and more to not be afraid to entirely erase a “completed” drawing and to start from scratch on top of the image.

I missed Wed. due to back problems.

First Post

Setting things up, more to come.