The Very Life of Art

Life drawing has given me new perspective on the actual use of space. It is nearly impossible (at least for me) to just put line to an object. Contouring objects, I found, requires an extreme amount of patience working with details and angles to create realistic space and proportions. In trying to perfect an object, it is easy to lose the emotion or life in it. No wonder artists like Michelangelo, Picasso, Monet, and Escher are known the world over. While all four had four completely different styles they had the capability to bring life to their art. Contouring is the approach I first took to drawing. It is slow, technical, and while it can be nice to sit back and look at your work after you are finished, it can be quite a boring process and as stated earlier, can be some what lifeless. Here is an ink contour of corn I did within our first weeks of class.
Don't get me wrong, it is not completely a bore, drawing each little kernel showed me the different characteristics of each one. Pictures can still be good and sometimes quite unique with just the use of contour. I just thinks it falls a little flat without tone, maybe too stiff. However, Life Drawing opened me up to the wonderful world of gesturing! It is energetic, fast, and often times (for me anyway) allows for my emotion of the study to shine. I was never good at lightly gesturing. I always got too involved with the movement to worry about the darkness of my modeling. However, when we moved on to having to put contour to the gesture, I of course had to move to a harder/lighter pencil. Here is one of my first comprehendable figure gesture. It is a 30 second study.

As the class moved on throughout the weeks we were able to increase the time of our gestures to make them more "complete". Here are some of my favorite 3 to 5 minute studies.





I am sure there are some major technical errors (phooey on technicalities in art)in all of these gestures. But, what I like about these quick studies is that they are the starting point in which I am getting the idea of weight. You can not see the chair that she is sitting in, but the weight of the figure tells me that it's there. I am also getting more accurate with the twists and turns of the figure. Moving on through the class we began to study specific parts of the figure. Here is a a 3 minute feet gesture, it is my favorite of all the figure parts.

The left foot (right foot to the onlooker) seems to want to float away a bit but I like it still.
Nearing the end of the semester our model took to poses that would present challenges to the drawer. In this gesture our model is laying down and my view was severly foreshortened. Adding to this difficulty was her long flowy skirt she decided to wear instead of tights. I had the make the skirt look like a peice of clothing and not a big blob.

If anyone out there draws, then you know what I was faced with. It is a gesture that took me 20 minutes. It looks like a 3 minute gesture though. At first I hated this gesture, I thought it was a failure. At the 20 minute mark I should have technically had put some contour to the gesture. However, looking at this gesture now, it has become one of my favorites. It is almost abstract and I like the layout on the paper.
Here is another figure drawing, but this time, some contour has been added to the gesture. I didn't like this study at first either.

Again, there is that flowy skirt. This view presented a few challenges. Her chest was spread out and that knee wrapped in her skirt gave me the weirdest foreshortened view with an extreme twist in her hips. This was definitely a challenge. I HATED this at first, I wanted to throw it out, and I would have if my teacher had not stopped me. A few weeks later though, I scanned through my sketches and found this one again. I immediately like it then. Like the other figure from above, I think it is a bit abstract. Abstract is good (in my opinion).