Blog #15-

Midterm:
So far in Life Drawing 2 I have enhanced my skills greatly. I have started to look at the form of the face with more structure and understanding. I think that my angles and contours have helped this a lot. One thing that I believe that I should work on is my shading. I still have a heavy hand. I need to have a lighter touch with my tools. I think this will come with time. I also think this will help a ton with my work. My skulls have a lot more detail and a stronger form. I think I need to take the same approach with the structure of the portraits as I did with the skulls.
For my midterm project we are doing a second self portrait. I already stated somewhat of the idea I plan on doing for this. My idea is creating a piece that explains the feelings of loosing something fragile and then somehow gaining it back again. I really hope this turns out. I want to do a drawing with color. I also want to have object protruding on top of the page such as stitches or headphones. I have many more ideas for this piece. I'm just unsure of what I want to add at the moment.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/38216528@N07/show/

Blog #14-

The last few weeks we have been focusing on our self portraits. The first one I sat in front of a mirror drawing my self. I think that I have progressed since last semester drawing the structure of the face. However I still find it very difficult to draw myself in a mirror. I need to somehow over come this or try something new. After completing three hours of work we turned in our portraits. I stood mine them while accepting criticism from my classmates. This seemed to be really helpful. However I still can't do it. I tried to reconstruct the form on my page but it was just frustrating.

We also have been creating ideas for our second self portrait. This project has to be seen in a third person point of view. This is also taking me a while to come up with ideas. I think I have decided to focus on the "Loss of something fragile". A little less than a year ago I had a major surgery on my ear. I wanted to incorporate this in my project. I couldn't just focus on my case so I had to expand it on other issues. So I have decided to focus on loosing something and gaining it back. So I'm going to focus on loosing all five senses. I hope this works out he way I plan.

Blog #13-

After we studied the shape and plane changes of the skull we began working on portraits. We studied the planes on all the facial features. It was a review from Life Drawing 1. This first portrait we spent about 2 hours on in class. In this drawing I began with the basic form of the face. Mapping out each plan change. After I felt like I had the structure completed I began shading. I want to work on shading a little bit. I think my hand is still a little heavy.

Blog #12-

Here are some different views of skulls:

Blog #11-

Sooo, again its been a couple weeks that I have updated this. I'm a little behind and disorganized. I'm just gonna post a few blogs explaining each project separately.


I was sick the day that we did the sculpting of the skull. Looking at what everyone else did for this, I think I missed the memo. I thought we were suppose to sculpt the whole skull...Opps! I enjoyed working with the clay though, even though I took the assignment a tad far. I think doing this helped me when drawing the skulls. Sculpting the form really helped me visualize when I was drawing it.

Blog #10-

Sorry this blog is a little late....
Last weeks class we critiqued our front views of the skulls. This drawing I tried to use contour lines. I found it a lot easier to put the shading in. We also learned about the different side planes. I had to erase different parts of my skull so that each side had a specific and similar value to the others.
I was stumbling online today and came across a website that explains how to draw hands...I'm gonna post it and hopefully it will help when we focus on the had in the future

http://www.stumbleupon.com/s/#1qj4x2/www.cedarseed.com/fire/handstut.html/

Blog #9-

Random finding....

http://www.pelourinho.com/movies/c003702/

Blog #8-

This week we worked more on skulls and the different views. In class we studied our drawings and asked questions to the class to find out what we should fix. Looking and comparing my drawings to others I thought that it might be beneficial to start looking at the skull with cross contours. So with that, I began the next 3/4 view with an outline and then continued with cross contours. When I drew the outline I sketched it in with vine charcoal so if i made a mistake it was easily erasable. When I began shading and darkening lines it was a lot easier to see the shadows and curves of the skull with the contour lines. All in all, I believe that this is my best drawing of a skull so far. With adding in the contour lines it enhanced my shading and detail abilities.

Blog #7-

This week we focused on the skull. It had been quite some time since I last studies the skull. After about half way through drawing the first view I began to remember some of basics of drawing it. I remembered that the cranium is 2/3 of the skull. I tried to portion it evenly on either side. After I drew in the basic outlines I began to darken some lines and create value. I think these drawings are mostly successful. Comparing them to the ones we did in ld1, I think I did a way better job understanding the shape and value of a skull. Still again I think the front view is the more difficult view. As you can see, I didn't finish it yet. I'm still working on it. When I finish it I will post it right away.

Blog #6-

Hey, my name is Jessica Sumption. I'm currently a junior at Stout. I'm a double art major studying graphic and multimedia design. I enjoy both areas very much. Although I think I'm gonna drop graphic design and just stick with multimedia. I really want to focus on animation. My dream career would be to work for Pixar...but any animation studio is fine with me I guess. My main areas of interest with animation is character modeling, drawing/ideation of the characters and the interaction with the computer aspect.

Blog #5...Final

I think including Life Drawing into this semester was a great idea. At first I was quite hesitant to take the class but I figured it would be very beneficial to my major. I learned a lot from this class and I hope to learn more next semester when I take Life Drawing 2.
While taking this class I learned many things about the figure. At the beginning my figure drawing was very basic. Mostly outlines of the whole body for gesture drawings. I eventually learned how to draw the rib cage and the pelvis together so they were proportioned to one another. As I page through my portfolio I notice that I pay more detail to the proportions and the muscle structure. I think through the semester I got a lot of help for drawing the figure. The day that we learned proportions helped out a ton I think. I also think when we drew the skeleton helped a lot also because it made it easier when we were gesture drawing to have a basic understanding of what was the main structure.
I think my main strength in life drawing was the facial structure and drawing specific parts of the body rather than the whole structure. As I look through my portfolio I begin to notice that all my drawings that were focused on specific parts were more successful. I believe this was because I was able to concentrate one area versus moving my eyes around a larger structure. I would really like to continue drawing and learning more about every part of the figure. I want to get faster at drawing the figure and concentrate more on perspective and proportions.
I was able to add a more 3D aspect to my drawings when we were doing the longer drawings. I was able to accomplish this by shading and small mark making. When we would get new muscles for the manikin I would try to draw them or at least picture them in my mind when I was drawing the image.
I learned a lot through cross contour. This type of drawing really helps understand the curvature of the body. I believe that this was my favorite form of drawing in class. I also believe that this is a wonderful was to also learn the muscles for the fact you have to draw the outline of them when you are doing the contour.
All in all, I believe that I have learned a ton from taking this class. I feel that I have benefited enormously from this course. http://www.flickr.com/photos/38216528@N07/?saved=1

Blog #4

I enjoyed the field trip to the Walker Art Museum. I have been to this museum countless times, but I never went inside the greenhouse. Inside there I found the Standing Glass Fish constructed by Frank Gehry in 1986. This piece was humongous. It is by far my favorite piece at the Walker. (other than the cherry and the spoon which is under construction at the moment) The glass structure is above a black pool of water surrounded by large palm trees. The reflections of the mirrors on the fish really complete this piece.

Blog #3

This class has been a really fun learning experience. Starting out in the class my drawings were decent. We moved from short gesture drawings to long drawings. We usually begin class with gesture drawings ranging from 30 seconds to 5 minutes. As time is stretched we made the lines closest to us darker and drew more accurate detail. The photo with multiple gestures on it is an example of how we progressed. The longest one we did this semester was 2 hours. I enjoyed having quite a bit of time to work on a drawing, however, I didn’t like the fact that we took a break every 20 minutes. This drawing is the figure of the male that is shaded in.


So far I enjoy the manikin very much. I like working 3-D. Tonight before I wrote this I spent about 2 hours perfecting each muscle. I smoothed out each edge. I really like this project because it helps us understand the model more when we draw. My knowledge of the figure has grown so much since we began this manikin. I now know when I’m drawing where to follow the curves of the body. We also learned how to draw the bones of the body. These were really helpful with our gesture drawings. They become the basic structure when we are drawing.

Blog #2

I think I have learned a lot so far in this class. Today we did a hour long sketch, so far this is the longest we have spent on a drawing so far. I didn't really like the angle I was looking from when we began. I wish I would of moved, but I'll just have to make sure that next time I move. I actually started this drawing 3 different times. I couldn't get the scale to work on my page, either it was too big or too small. I don't know if I'm completely satisfied with how it turned out. I think something that I really need to work on is my line weights. I tend to draw really dark initially and I think my lines end up blending together.

Blog #1

We began class doing 30 second gesture drawings. At first I was really nervous because I didn't know what to expect. But as class went on I realized that I was only drawing a still-life and not to worry anymore. As I sketched everything seemed to flow and got easier. My hand/body seemed to remember to draw again after not doing it for so long. The use of conte for the first time was interesting. I like how we learned to sharpen our tools, it was very nice to have smooth crisp lines.

This is a 5 minute sketch we did in class. As the drawings got longer more detail was added. We began darkening the lines of the body that were closest to us and fading the parts that were farther away. It was also nice having more time so we could concentrate on the perspective.

I really enjoyed the contour line drawing. I love long drawings and being able to add detail. I am a detail freak! Anything that can be added that I see will be there. But anyways, the lines on this drawing are about half a inch apart following every curve of the models body. I chose to draw the rib cage and the hip region.