This semester I have learned so much about life drawing. I never really understood that knowing the muscles in the body and drawing them in really helps make it look realistic. Along with learning the muscles, knowing how the bones are placed also is a huge help. Along with anatomy, I learned how to draw contour lines. I never really was taught how to use them, and they really help give the form a third dimensional feel and help the viewer know what is going on.
My strengths in drawing would be the head. I have more practice with drawing the head that when we started learning about it, it seemed pretty easy. I also felt like I did better on the skeleton drawings verse drawing from the model. I would say my weaknesses are the gesture drawings. I am a slow drawing and it is hard to draw the whole body in thirty seconds. My gesture drawings don’t seem to look good until I have a few minutes to draw it. I also think line variation could improve, and since midterm I feel like I have gotten better with that.
The manikin was a helpful tool during the class. I liked that when I was drawing from the model, I could look at my manikin for reference to know how the muscles are laid out. I thought the books were confusing because they didn’t relate the muscle you were working on with surrounding muscles, but I really appreciate Amy coming around and helping tweak them. That definitely helped, I think my manikin would have been really off if she didn’t come around and show us.
There are quite a few things I will be taking away from the class. First, understanding the anatomy better makes everything easier. Second, how to make your forms three-dimensional by using contour lines and adding muscles. And also, getting better at gesture drawings, line control, and accurate proportions.
