LAST BLOG!!!!

It was a good semester. I think it was more successful than life drawing one for some reason. Maybe because i knew what to look for in this class. I had expectations. I think it was a great semester. i really got into the swing of things and enjoyed what i was drawing. I not only saw my skills excel, but also the skills of my classmates.

Anyways, here is some of my better things that i created this semester. The last skeleton drawing really was tough, but so good to get done. I feel like a really wrangled the assignment and did a lot better than i thought i would!

last week?

GOOD LORD! i havent blogged in weeks. I was pretty proud of myself this semester--you know, keeping up with the good ol' blog. But lately its been slacking. Id like to blame it on finals and pre finals and projects, but i should really be able to be on top of things like a lil' blog. We have been working on the full skeletons and its been freaking me out! Its no longer just focusing on one area. There are so many small little details that are hard to pay attention to. I am such a 'big picture' person, its hard for me to really look closely. Ill post pictures of the finished product when im done after our show!!

wa-oh, wa-oh.

whoops. i guess im not very good at keeping up with blogs. Its a stressful time of year. Many people can argue that thanksgiving break helps them out, and they get all rested up for the last kick of the semester. Not this girl. I stayed in menomonie this year (for the second year in the row) due to poor planning on my mother and sister's part. I'm not complaining though. I got a lot of stuff figured out and done, but I still have a lot to go. Feeling rested is hardly whats happening with me. I'm feeling stressed to say the least.

Im going to try to pull myself together and really try to nail this final project. its interesting trying to draw on a piece of paper that is practically my size. its exciting though. we'll see where this goes!

portraits.

This week and last week we did portraits. Man, it is hard to do. Its hard to make it resemble the person you are drawing. I had fun though. I was really genuinely interested in drawing these figures. I think the hardest day was the modeling day. Sitting there for 3 hours completely still is so hard. Now i know why not everyone models for life drawing classes. haha.

it was...CHICAGO.

I went to chicago this weekend with the fine arts association. It was a crazy and fun weekend, but now I am in such a haze--I just don't even know what to do with myself.

We went to the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Institute of Art. At the mca there was a Luc Tuymans show that was pretty interesting. It was a large body of his work, so there were a lot of hit and misses with me. He had a lot of different jumps in concepts in his work, but they were generally all addressed the similarly. Naturally, some pieces worked better than others.

Im excited to do more drawings this week in life drawing. I really like seeing that i am able to draw better and more realistically. At this point in my college career i feel like the conceptual part of my art is really coming forward and that learning all of the basic techniques is falling back. I mean, when I think back to my first year at stout, it was all about drawing for hours at a time staring at still lives. I think what I'm getting at is that its nice to be able to still work on purely visual and technical skills.

yep.

This week in class i messed around a lot. Haha. Ok, so i didnt just have fun, i practiced drawing too. These portraits are going to be difficult, but they have my attention that's for sure. Im excited to start going with these portraits. Its kind of scary though. Its scary because you expect so much out of yourself and you could (and most likely) will be let down. I mean, you can get that if any drawing. However, with most drawings you can fudge it up a little and it will still capture a likeness. When drawing a person, you could get the proportion wrong in the nose and the whole portrait looks different. It takes a lot of patience.

Apparently this blog is dedicated to Leslie Barlow, considering she is in every picture. haha. HERE'S TO YOU, SICKY!

drawing from memory.

Oh, man. When i was presented with this idea i was just as shocked as the rest of the class. We have spent so many hours just studying the skull and learning all the pieces and parts, and the idea of memorizing all of their correct placements is kind of daunting.

Even though these drawings look a lot more generalized than the skulls i have been drawing, I still am happy with the outcome--I didnt do so bad! I think the most fun part was correcting the skull. I saw that I wasn't nearly as off as I thought when I was drawing the skulls from memory. Also, correcting the drawings made me realize how much i had learned in the class. It was so easy to figure out what went wrong.

The top two images were from memory and the black charcoal in the bottom three were from memory. The red/brown color was the corrections. Despite my generally positive outlook on this activity, I am still nervous about the test on monday! Holy mackerel, this is going to be tough.