Begnning this course was so exciting to me, I’ve always been infuatuted with the human body and its aesthetics but I was never able to properly relay that in my drawings because I never learned how to do so and had limited resources. I enjoyed my first drawing from life expierence so much, and putting full trust in the process gave me a great deal of happiness as I was seeing improvements in each drawing.
Gesture Drawings:
Firstly, we were introduced to the concept of gesturial drawings. Even after watching the demo, I felt like I didn’t really get it. However, after a couple attempts it made so much sense to me. My art teacher in high school used to tell me that I shouldn’t just begin to draw on an empty sheet of paper, but I never knew what she meant. After creating a few gesturial drawings I realized that that’s what it was; simply mapping out a skeleton of the body before further enhancing it and it could be in any way that the artist desires.
Looking at my gesturial drawings I can see that I actually began by outlining the figure rather than creating a map of it, but eventually by the 3rd drawing I got it.
Understanding Proportions:
One of my goals for the figure drawing chapter is enhancement in my understanding of proportions, and my ability to illustrate more lifelike drawings. For our homework assignment, I made it my goal to attempt to grasp a better understanding of proportion and found that creating gesturial drawings first greatly helped in creating alterations to the drawing and guding the eye towards the right angles and shapes.
In the next class, proportions were given extra focus in a manner that shocked me. We were asked to look at the model for around 3o seconds and then draw what we memorized. Even though my results barely resembled the figure’s actual appearance, this exercise showed me the importance of really truly observing the figure, not as a whole figure but rather as an abstract disected version of the figure simplified into shapes that can easily be memorized.
We also started using the pencil as a measuring tool wish I was taught to be prior to this course, however, enhancement in my memory and observation of the figure allowed me for more accurate results. In addition, I was struggling with drawing hands and feet but found that I can create gesturial shapes of them in order to get them to be proportionally correct.
Even though I was slowly figuring out methods that work best for me and allow me to see figures more clearly, it was taking me more than the provided time to finish my work. I hope by the end of the chapter I will have gotten enough practise that will allow me to speed up the process. For now, I am neglecting whether I like the results of my work or not and instead focusing on the learning curve and my understanding of what I’m being taught.
Final Thoughts:
The two previous classes allowed me to find methods that suit me and my abilities best. For now, this is what I found to be best:
- Create a loose gesturial drawing of the figure’s motions.
- Create shapes that illustrate the feet, hands and face of the figure.
- Asses the proportions of the body, adjust if necessary.
- Begin adding shadows to the large empty areas of the body.
- Continue adding shadows to the smaller areas.
- Add details to the feet, hands and face.
- Finalize by adding any extra details.
