At the end, a final look back

I have learned a great amount from life drawing and some of the them I am still working on. Drawing the sea shells has greatly improved my understanding to the structural approach to drawing. By my last shell drawing I can say that I have mastered that technique. Sitting through the class lectures on the different muscles and building the muscles on the manikin has greatly improved my understanding of the artistic anatomy. I have not quite mastered this objective, because I can not draw the major muscles on the live figure unless my manikin is next to me. An on going objective is refining my mark making skills. When I stated the class I was very bad at cross contours but as the months went on my mark making improved. I know I have not mastered it, but I think mark making is an on going skill that changes as a person does. The final objective that I have mastered is communication. Doing the blog posts every week has expanded my thought process about life drawing. It was always an enjoyable challenge trying to figure out what to write about each week. I tried to write about things that reminded me of life drawing but not necessary were drawings that I did in class that week.

There has been many things that I have improved on since midterm. The biggest one is my shell drawings. They have greatly improved since my second shell drawing. What helped me was going in to see Amy and ask her how to show foreshortening on my shell. Another area that I have improved on has been my cross contours on the long drawings. I am not able to see how a line can show a big amount of information. Looking at other peoples drawings and asking them how they were drawing helped me to strengthen my cross contours. The last area that I have improved on was the gesture drawings. I have been very aware of how much distance there is between the rib cage and the pelvis. Looking more and studying the model has helped me work on this.

The line quality that I have learned in life drawing I will use for sketching out ideas more accurately. Also, the drawing eye that I have strengthened this past few months I will use for every day sketching. The final item that I will use from life drawing is about blogging. I do enjoy blogging every week. I have learned through AIGA that blogging is an important networking item to have when you are in the graphic design field. So, I hope I end up using it during the summer to let people know what art I am doing and what I am looking at.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kollersk/

Objects of the face

For two class periods we learned how to draw facial features. These photos are from class and are the proper way to draw the objects of the face.

I found theses photos very helpful when I was drawing my final self portrait. The photo of the nose was very helpful. The only different part when drawing my nose was that when you come down from the nose my eye does not attach there. There is a gap between the nose and eye. I did not realize that until someone pointed it out to me.

I plan on holding onto these photos for a long time. The will come in handy when trying to draw the human face. These photos would have been helpful when I was drawing self portraits in 2D and Drawing 1 & 2.

Sheldon is Done!

After many hours and late nights I would like to introduce Sheldon the half skeleton with muscles. He was finished Friday, April 30th at 12:40 p.m. I would like him to get looked at by Amy to make sure I made all the muscles the right size and shape.

I always looked forward to doing new muscles. The one item I learned from doing the muscles was that never do 25 muscles in one night. It is a lot easier to do eight muscles at a time.

Last Shell Drawing of Alejandro

I am so excited to be doing my final shell drawing. Drawing this final shell angle was hard to do. This is the first time I drew the shell top closest to me. It was not easy angle. I was having the biggest problem trying to figure out how the back of the shell went. I did get it finished with help from Amy. There is some big black lines that I could not get rid of. But, that was my fault for not using the hard charcoal pencil.

The second and worst part was trying to do the ink wash. I started very light like I did last time. The light wash was looking to pink so then I added more and more black so it turned to be a purple. This is where everything went down hill. Adding all the black made the shell look very flat in the middle of the shell. The top point turned out well and so did the bottom of the shell. I tried using more white charcoal but that did not help much. Then to make things worse I did a wash on the back and it made those parts look darker. Now I know that when applying ink to a shell I will look at my third drawing to help me not go to dark.

Alejandro

I would like to introduce everyone to Alejandro my shell. It has taken me all semester to figure out the perfect name. I came to me when I was working out tonight and the Lady Gaga song Alejandro came on as I was running. Then I thought what a perfect name for my shell.

This drawing is of Alejandro the shell. It is very pink which is interesting because the ink I used was orange. Oh Well. I like how the drawing turned out, but there are places where the shell looks flat. It is very hard to draw shells in perspective. I would have liked our teacher to have told use the best way to draw our shells. Although, it is easy to see the progression that I have made since my first drawing. When I was doing the ink wash I started out very light and started getting darker, but I was nervous to add more black. When the ink was dry it was a lot darker and when it dried it was a lot lighter than I expected it would be. I am looking forward for the next drawing so I can do more ink wash. I am not a bog fan of doing the drawing of the shell. We will have to see. I will keep your updated about how the next drawing turns out.

From flower to shell

This weeks blog is about Macy's flower show and how it relates to life drawing.

I was not in class Thursday because I was on a field trip to the cities. I was touring different printing companies for three days with the Stout Typographical Society. On Thursday after we were done with our last company we had free time so I ended up going to Macy's flower show. When I entered the 8th floor viewing area all I could smell and see was spring flowers blooming. The flower that caught my eye was the Calla Lily.

The Calla Lilly is my favorite flower because of its simplicity. As I looked closely at the flower it started to remind me of my shell. The veins and the cone shape opening were the giveaways that reminded me of the shell. The hardest part in drawing the shell is the opening and studying the Calla Lilly for a short amount of time gave a little help to drawing my shell over the weekend.

There was a lot of different flowers at the show and I am glad that I was able to see after many years.

Fields of Contour

This past break I traveled to Grand Forks, North Dakota to visit my brother. As we were driving up there we passed lots of crop fields. The more and more I saw I realized that rolling the cut corn fields started to resemble the contours lines on my shell. As I looked more closely I realized that I was tying to figure out how I would draw the contour of those rolling fields. It is interesting how the average day item that I have seen thousands of times now reminds me of life drawing. It just shows how much this class has impacted me.

A Look Back

Over the past two months I can say that I have learned a lot in Life drawing. Looking through my newsprint I am taken back to how inhuman my first drawings look. Gradually, the drawings start to look like a person as I keep flipping through the newsprint. The last drawings are pretty good, but I know there is still more I can improve on. Just this past weekend, I finally understood how to do cross contour with the second shell drawing. Although, I dread doing the shell drawings, they have helped me understand cross contour a lot more.

One of my favorite parts of the class is building the muscles for the manikin. The first set of muscles were hard to build, but after that they have been going pretty well. Trying to visualize the muscles on the model when we are drawing them I have a harder time doing. Also, trying to find some of the bones on the model has been hard too. I am slowly figuring the tell signs of where the bones are on the model. I can only hope that I will keep improving over the next two months.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kollersk/

Sheldon oh Sheldon

Over the past week Sheldon's femur has grown from being bone to a thunder thigh. Building the muscle was not as easy as the gluts, but it was still a fun night in the Applied Arts Building. I had no clue how many muscles touched the Ischium. Other than that I have a feeling that most of them are going to be pulled off tomorrow for being wrong. Some of them might be to wide or to thick. That does not do a great job showing how big they are. Oh well Sheldon and I will hope for the best. It wont be that much pain for me as it will be for Sheldon when I have to pull his muscles off. Poor thing, I will let you all know how things turn out after class tomorrow. Good luck and happy font finding.

Walking through the Walker

This past week I went to the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis for the first time. I was so excited, but as I was walking through the different galleries I become very confused with the art I found. In the Benches & Binoculars gallery they had 90 famous paintings from all different artists. The part that I did not like was the paintings were so high up you could not appreciate them as much. Other than that the instillation by Robert Irwin called slant/light/volume, I found to be the piece that moved me the most.

The piece is not like any other piece at the Walker. You walk into a white room that is not lit so most of the walls are gray. Then you look at the main part of the piece which is a slanted area of the room that is lit with translucent scrim. This gives the the room a relaxing and peaceful feeling when you sit and look that the white. I never knew how something so simple could have such a powerful effect on a person. I would go back to the Walker for just this piece.

Sheldon

Everyone I would like to introduce you to Sheldon. He is my Life Drawing skeleton that I am building clay muscles for. He was named after Sheldon Cooper who is a theoretical physicist on the TV sitcom The Big Bang theory, which is one of my favorite show. Sheldon Cooper is calculating and cynical, he exhibits a strict adherence to routine, a lack of understanding of irony, sarcasm and humor, and a complete lack of humility. So, by those characteristics and the fact that he is looks like a twig were the deciding factors to why I called my skeleton Sheldon.

Sculpting the muscles for Sheldon have been an enjoyable learning process. Spending hours making a muscle that is three inches can only be enjoyable when you are around the right Chicas. Thanks Emily and Kelli!

Seashell by the seashore

For the past few weeks this seashell has been sitting on my book shelf staring down at me. It was given to me the second day of life drawing and we are to be drawing our shells over the semester. I find myself distant from it because I don't know anything about this shell. So, I did some research on the shell and I found out all sorts of things. I still don't know what I want to name my shell, but when I find the perfect name I will let you know.

The Horse Conch is the shell I have. It is commonly know as the Giant Band shell and its scientific name is Pleutroploca gigantea. These shells are found mostly in bays along the Gulf coast and can be up to 24" long. They can come in a variety of colors from orangish, cream to brown on the outside with a thin scaly covering. The opening of the shell is an orangy-red color and it is a spindle-shaped shell. The creature that lives inside is a snail that is brick-red color and feeds on bivalves and other snails. A little piece of fame that my shell has is that it is the state shell of Florida since 1969. Doing this research on this shell has allowed me to become more attache to this shell.

Spine

Oh the spine. What an amazing part of the body. It is the first set of lines that you draw first in a drawing. Who knew? Also, it is made of four different and distinct curves. These curves allow for the movement of the body. Other than learning about the spine this past week I learned another important lesson when it came to drawing the human body. The important lesson was that it is good and bad views of the model. the best views are when you see the side and either the back or the front of the model. So ya that is the big secret.

Blind contour

Hey again! I know this does not look like much, but that is because I drew it without looking at the paper. If you use your imagination you will see a leg an part of another leg underneath it. If you don't see it don't feel bad I did not see it at first, and I am the artist.

You may think this is a very different style of contour drawing of legs. That is because I was drawing the legs cross contour. Which means I was trying to draw the leg as if there were strings wrapped around the leg.

Three words that describe this drawing are:
Fuzzy, Bumpy & Soft

Introduction

Hey everyone! This is my first post and I am supper excited for it. I am going to let you see into my life this semester but, first a little introduction is required. As you already know I am Sara Koller for the next few months I will be living at my home away from home in Menomonie, Wisconsin. I am a college student majoring in Graphic Design and Graphic Communications Management(GCM). For those who don't know what GCM is (probably the majority of you) it is commercial printing. As you might have guessed by my blog title I am a font nerd and I am proud of it. I love looking a different fonts from digital to metal and wood. My other interests include reading a good book while laying in a hammock, knitting, dancing to music in my kitchen, hanging out with the family, watching the Big Bang Theory and traveling. This past summer I went to Europe for the first time and saw Spain, Germany and Italy. If I ever get the chance to go back I would love to see Greece. This is a snip it of my life.

Looking around my desk I see a wooden manikin tilting its head in my direction and it reminds me of how thrilled I am to be in Life Drawing. Life Drawing will be my only art and design class this semester. I am looking forward to learning how to draw the body. FYI for everyone who has never taken a class like this it is not as awkward as you would think it is. After 30 seconds you don't notice that the person you are drawing is nude. Looking forward to a great semester.