Week Two

This week we draw live models for the first time.  We started with thirty second gesture drawings and eventually worked our way up to thirty minutes drawings then back down to thirty seconds. I had never done gesture drawings before and while it was stressful at first I enjoyed it quite a bit at the end. The drawings had more energy and movement to them and I felt like they were more interesting than a lot of previous drawings I’ve done. I never realized how difficult it is to draw ligaments when they are being extended towards you.  There were a few times when the model was facing me and it was harder to draw than when they were in a profile or three-quarter view.

On Thursday we were assigned our manikins and started to dive deeper into studying the human body. I attempted to start the manikin after class on Thursday and I have included an image of my progress thus far. I find it difficult so far because the clay doesn’t always stick to the manikin and it is especially hard to recreate organic shapes. The scale feels really small to me as well and since some of the muscles can be small it is hard to get much detail in so they don’t feel correct. Hopefully after more practice and studying, working with the manikins will come easier to me.  I’m interested to see how my drawings will change as I start to understand the human body more. I find that I struggle with proportions a lot so I am hoping to improve that over the semester.  This week was full of firsts for me so they are more of a challenge right now but I am looking forward to getting better at them.

My manikin so far.