Journal

Today we started learning about the foot. Feet and hands have always been a challenge for me, but after learning about the bones and muscles and the inner workings, they are even harder to draw! We only did two fifteen minute drawings of the feet today and one challenge I've already discovered is finding the right length of the foot and also making the toes the right size. I feel like I don't really know where to start with the foot...for the torso, we had landmarks on the inside, like the ribs and the pelvis, but it's hard to pick out a form-defining shape inside the foot without drawing all of the bones. Nevertheless, I thought the pelvis was hard when we started that...it's just going to take more practice. Everything seems more overwhelming on the first day.

Midterm Progress

Thus far, life drawing has not been really what I'd expected. What we're doing with the gestures and longer poses is great practice, but I expected to be learning more about proportions and drawing complete, finished drawings. In my life drawing class at my previous university, we didn't even look at a model until we'd studied proportions, such as how many heads fit into the length of the thigh, and so on. But it has been very beneficial for me to combine the knowledge I have from that class with what we're learning in this one. I really enjoyed learning about the different parts of the spine and how to draw the spine and the ribcage and the pelvis. Also what is good about this course is the muscle studies. It's been helpful to have a little bit of understanding of the muscles when I look at the model. I can then better articulate the correct shapes and shadows that I see on the model since I know that it is just a certain muscle group that I am seeing. Another thing that has been helpful in getting me to notice little details on the model is the cross contour drawings. I am getting a better understanding of the form and the roundness and curves of the human body, but sometimes I get tired of always doing contour drawings. I would really like to do some figural work including shading instead of just always line work.
Even though the work in this class sometimes seems tedious, the continuous practice, I feel, has really helped me a lot. I feel like my drawing and observing skills are really improving. I also really liked going on the field trip. Studying the animals at the Bell Museum was very interesting and made me realize that the skills I'm gaining in this Life Drawing 1 class can pertain to all things from nature, not just the human form. I have thought of many life/nature related projects that I'd like to do with own my future students.
Here is the link to view some of my work from the first half of Life Drawing 1.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/48324086@N05/

Journal

This skeleton thing is really harder than I originally thought it would be. I am fine making each muscle and putting it on the skeleton, but what is difficult is not being able to see what each muscle looks like in relation to the others we've built so far. I feel that it would be very helpful if the book had a picture of the "muscles so far" of groups of muscles on each page after the new one has been added.