Final post for LDII

 Gallery: http://www.flickr.com/photos/akibaboy65/sets/72157625644576106/

As I reflect on the whole semester of Life Drawing II, I think about how much I've grown over the course of drawing dozens of skulls and faces for these months. Focusing on the drawing of the head was really interesting because I had previously developed a very rigid style on my own on how to draw the head. It was mostly based on cartoons and expression, namely what was easiest to convey. When you give character large mouths and eyes and very dynamic facial bone structure, it's easy to convey ideas better. For example, a villain character's face will almost always have large eyebrow bones that jut out above his eyes sharply to give him a strong, disapproving appearance at all times. These are the kinds of things that become habit when drawing faces and heads. I've had to learn how to pay attention to the actual correct form of the skull and the relationship between the face's features etc.

When drawing my classmates, Dan, Brandon, and Jordan, I noticed how drawing a lifelike face requires a lot of subtlety. If I drew my lines to heavy, or didn't follow the form of their face completely perfect, I was accidentally making the figure look older, or angrier than they really were. With Jordan's drawing being the last of the 3, I learned to use light repetitious strokes in order to create layers of form that could be played around with. Brandon's face drawing on the other hand features a lack of foresight on my part, and the hard lines I used to draw his eyes make him look a little pissed. This was another important thing I realized that I needed to practice, the way in which my lines spoke.

Our final skeleton I think was my most challenging drawing yet. While its large scale constantly required monitoring of the overall perspective, I also had to realize effective time management. My favorite part of the drawing was the feet, because there was so much texture and hidden shape within the bones that it became a huge challenge to express them on flat paper, with theoretical lighting.

Overall I had a great time this semester, and am inspired to keep practicing Life Drawing because I realize how pivotal it is in the work I do.

Our last project is all about making a full scale drawing of the skeleton. It's really crazy to take on a project like this and still keep things in perspective. On one hand I would like to just pick individual sections and finish them completely, but on the other hand it's important to always be able to go back and respond to oversights within the work. For example, I constantly have to make corrections to the size of the rib cage and the pelvis. It wasn't until I felt comfortable with their sizes that I could really get to work on the details. Furthermore, the sizes of the hands and limbs are important, as that is one element that cartoon skeletons usually mess up.

While it seemed like 3 weeks would have been plenty of time to work this piece over, it is actually kind of a challenge to not want to rush certain elements of it. I was originally planning a sketch layer, which would be worked over later in charcoal to imbue it with more personality, but I quickly realized that the sketch layer would have to be worked through into the final layer, as time became an issue.

This week we are planning on creating a room of our drawings for the senior show, so I hope this drawing turns out well as a solid representation of everything I've practiced and learned from this semester. I can definitely already see some of this class showing through in my own work.