Semester 2 Week 12 Life Drawing Conclusion

Life Drawing Semester 2 Reflection

Feb 1.

My progression this year has been slower than the last, as far as I can tell. This isn't totally surprising to me, since I started the first semester with almost no experience in life drawing, and I ended it with some competence. Progressing from then onwards is bound to be slower, as I have to tweak and alter my drawing style, rather than building it up from nothing. 

Feb. 3

Upon looking back, though, I think I've forgotten what my skill level was at the beginning of the semester, I forgot how, when coming back from holidays, I was struggling to get any solid drawings down, and had to resort to focusing on the torso to get anything usable.

I was stiff, rusty, and not thinking about my drawings. The only point early in the semester that I felt at all successful was when we drew with ink instead of Conté sticks. Then, I felt like I was more in control of my drawings, and could avoid the messy, lifeless drawings I was making.

Early February

On the flipside, I lost perspective. My Ink drawings really brutally elongated the pose, and forgot about balance. I still had the same problems with my drawings, but I was just hiding them in the ink style. 

I think the two main influences on my drawing from then to now were the supplementary classes and the  storyboarding challenges in class. I really think that I wouldn't have progressed much without those classes. The extra classes, while tiring, gave me a chance to get more advice, and to work on specific parts of my drawing for up to two hours at a time, which was a useful tool I didn't realise at the time. 

An example of the more specialised practice we got at the extra classes. We wouldn't be practising something like this in the normal classes.

Some drawings from the supplementary classes early on in the semester. They're probably the best ones from February 2018.

It made sure I was practising. the drawings from these sessions tended to be better than the ones in class, in my eyes. I had more time to get settled into drawing, and more chances to draw different poses.  This is why I feel like those classes most heavily influenced my drawings.

The second piece of the Life Drawing in Semester 2 that had a strong impact on me was practising storyboarding characters. This forced me to think and draw dynamically, and to really start thinking about the perspective I used to draw the models.  

I think this is the best example of how the storyboarding made me cast my perspective to somewhere I wasn't.

This, combined with the extra classes, helped me develop this semester. considering the number of cancelled classes this semester, I think I've done quite well. 

The drawing here, one of the more recent ones, shows some of my progression from the beginning of the year. This has definitely been a whirlwind few weeks, so maybe I'll find some more perspective with some space, but considering the circumstances, I'm satisfied with my life drawing abilities at the moment.

In the future, it would be nice to get a better understanding of human anatomy so I can get more solidity in my drawings. I'm also pretty weak at drawing women, and I'd like to practise that a lot more, since the difference between a class with a female model versus a male model is night and day. I'm just not as familiar or experienced with that side of the life drawing. 

So, I'd say drawing women, and general human anatomy,are the biggest challenges facing me at the moment in Life Drawing. I'll try to keep doing it a bit over the summer, but we'll see how I manage that hurdle.